10-Day Countdown to Unshackle EU Cleantech: #Anticipation and #Predictability

Day 3?The countdown continues! For those catching up, each day until the European Council on 9-10 February, I’ll be sharing one actionable?#idea ?a day that can help accelerate the?#energytransition ?and make Europe a global leader in?#cleantech ?#innovation ?and?#deployment .?

Anticipation and Predictability. What helps cleantech entrepreneurs most is not always a new fund or support instrument. What they really need from policymakers is #anticipation and #predictability . What do I mean?

Anticipation means to be better prepared for what’s to come. While that sounds like a no-brainer, it’s actually difficult to do in #publicpolicy since systems are designed to either deal with the crisis of the day or use practices of the past (think #fossilfuel #age ) to manage the future. For the #EU , I believe that anticipation is a matter of existential importance because in its absence, its 27 Member States start crafting their own rules and regulations. That’s what we’re witnessing at the moment with Carbon Contracts for Difference (#CCfD ) schemes which are drawn up in Germany and France – and I’m sure also other Member States – as well as the EU. That's a guaranteed recipe for fragmentation and complexity. I also came across another example a few months ago when I interviewed the CEO of a company that has managed to transport #greenhydrogen through existing gas pipelines. The hitch? Moving the GH2 across borders because different EU Member States have different blending mandates (i.e. how much GH2 can be transported along with conventional natural gas). For such a small company, it’s an inordinate amount of work to figure all this out, including maneuvering between different languages and administrations, and without any contacts to policymakers. That can ultimately put the entire #businessmodel of innovative companies at risk.

Why is it so difficult for the #EU to pro-actively manage such matters? It’s obvious that if Europe wants to be the global trend setter in hydrogen, it needs to figure out how to transport it. The end result of non-anticipation is often a hotchpotch of measures which only deepen the fragmentation of the so-called Single Market – and that makes it almost impossible for entrepreneurs to scale across Europe. One solution would be for the Commission to have focus groups with companies at the #technology #frontier to better understand the challenges they face. Seeing these early and pro-actively providing solutions could be a real game-changer and would build on Europe’s strength as a global ‘normative superpower’.

Predictability is a 'must' for managing the complexity of standing up an emerging clean technology. Forget all the hype about hydrogen in the past two years; the countless communications, announcements, conferences, positive outlooks. The fact is that in the absence of a definition of what constitutes ‘green hydrogen’, investment decisions have been delayed, or stalled altogether. All that is missing is one technical document, the so-called ‘Delegated Act on Additionality’ - in a nutshell, this is about whether hydrogen producers can prove that the electricity they use is from dedicated “additional” renewable generation projects. Without these guidelines, investors are naturally reluctant to place a bet on Europe given that the playing field can be radically altered depending on the content of the Delegated Act, whether it sees the light of day.

I don’t use these words lightly when I say that a one-year delay on a regulation of such importance to an entire new industry (and that we purportedly want to be world-leading in) is akin to political negligence, especially in times of war and impending deindustrialization.?It’s also an undue burden for companies that operate in the sector, having to wait month after month – while carrying a payroll, having to reassure investors, seeing competitors from other geographies capture a bigger and bigger share of a nascent market where first-mover advantage is of critical importance – without any indication whatsoever when the Delegated Act will ultimately be published. The EU prides rightly itself on stability but better anticipation and more predictability must become part and parcel of its functioning if we want – in the words of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen - ‘the story of the clean-tech economy to be written in Europe’.

That's a wrap for Day 3 of #unshackle #eu #cleantech

#greendealindustrialplan #netzeroindustryact