Clifford Chance

The European Net Zero Industry Act

24 April 2023

The European Commission (the Commission) has issued proposals aiming to broadly equalise Europe's net zero industry with the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and China's near-monopoly on many critical exports. As part of the EU Green Deal Industrial Plan, the Commission has released a legislative proposal for a Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA).

In March 2023, the Commission rolled out a package of legislative and regulatory proposals in the context of the EU Green Deal Industrial Plan aiming at strengthening the resilience and competitiveness of net zero technologies manufacturing in the EU. The aim is to make the EU energy system more secure, sustainable and less dependent on natural gas imports. The NZIA, coupled with the Critical Raw Materials Act, which we analysed in detail in our recent client briefing, sets out a European framework to reduce the EU's reliance on highly concentrated imports, while the proposed structure and operation of an European Hydrogen Bank (EHB) aims primarily to create an EU domestic hydrogen market and eventually to support imports to the EU.

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