‘The race is on’ to maintain EU competitivity in clean techs: VDL

The European Union wants to speculate extra in analysis and improvement and enhance mining and processing of important uncooked supplies to make sure its clear know-how corporations can compete sooner or later, Ursula von der Leyen stated on Wednesday.

Talking to MEPs in Strasbourg, the pinnacle of the European Fee stated that “the race is on” to find out “who’s going to be dominant” within the clear tech market sooner or later.

Von der Leyen’s deal with to MEPs got here a day earlier than the Fee is ready to unveil two key legislative proposals: a Web-Zero Trade Act to spice up the manufacturing and set up of unpolluted tech within the EU and a Essential Uncooked Supplies Act to make sure regular provides of the uncommon earths wanted to energy the inexperienced transition.

The proposals are a part of the European Inexperienced Deal business Plan launched final month and designed in response to $369 billion in subsidies Washington has began doll out to its clear tech producers, sparking fears EU corporations may up and go away the bloc to benefit from the cash provided by the US’s Inflation Discount Act.

“We should get our act collectively if we need to keep entrance runners,” the Fee chief informed MEPs.

China dependency

In response to the EU’s govt, international investments within the clear transition rose by 30% year-on-year to complete $1 trillion in 2022. It’s anticipated to triple by 2030. 

One of many key points highlighted by the Fee president that hinders European corporations is the bloc’s low manufacturing of important uncooked supplies in addition to low capability to course of them.

“We get 98% of our uncommon earth provide from China. 93% of our magnesium from China, 97% of our lithium from China and you’ll proceed this listing time and again,” she stated.

“The pandemic and the warfare have taught us a bitter lesson about dependencies. If we need to be unbiased, we urgently need to strengthen and diversify our provide chains with like-minded companions,” she added.

To curb this dependency on China, von der Leyen has already proposed the creation of a Essential Uncooked Supplies Membership with “like-minded” and “dependable” companions to supply uncooked but in addition processed uncommon earth. She mentioned the subject with US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau throughout her go to to North America final week.

However the EU must go additional.

“We need to extract extra ores and minerals right here within the EU . We need to enhance our processing capability to no less than 40% of annual consumption. And naturally, we have to recycle extra,” she stated.

‘We want rather more’

The second massive difficulty hampering European corporations’ capacity to compete is funding and purple tape, in keeping with von der Leyen.

“We Europeans have set ourselves the goal of spending 3% of our GDP on R&D (analysis and improvement) by 2030. Slowly however certainly, we’re getting nearer to that focus on. However that’s not sufficient. Others are faster and higher. Whereas the quantity we spend on R&D is slowly rising, our share of world R&D expenditure has fallen from 41% to 31% over the past 20 years,” she stated.

In response to the European Funding Financial institution’s annual Funding Report launched two weeks in the past, company spending on R&D within the EU stood at 1.5% of GDP in 2020, whereas the US and Japan had charges of two.6%.

The survey additionally discovered that EU corporations are much less prone to innovate or to undertake new applied sciences than US corporations with the hole widening by round 10 share factors to 19 share factors. 

To treatment that, the Fee is to suggest a rise of the EU’s frequent goal for analysis spending, von der Leyen stated.

She can also be urging governments to slash the bureaucratic burden on cleantech corporations, to make authorisation procedures less complicated and sooner. 

Portuguese MEP Pedro Marques (S&D) stated the bulletins on decreasing purple tape “are okay, however we’d like rather more.”

“We want a real European response, meaning assist to all of the international locations in Europe to actually inexperienced their industries, and never simply Germany and France,” he added, referring to the truth that the 2 international locations, that are the EU’s greatest economies,  dolled out over three-quarters of all of the state assist programmes accepted by the Fee in 2022.

EU leaders will focus on the Fee’s proposals to spice up the bloc’s inexperienced transition and competitiveness at a Council summit in Brussels subsequent week.