How industrial innovation can drive the European Green Deal

Industrial innovation will be key to delivering the European Green Deal and achieving complete carbon neutrality across the EU, according to experts at a panel during the third day of the EU Industry Days event.

Representatives from various industrial sectors came together to discuss the feasibility of implementing the European Commission's climate goals in line with the Paris Climate Agreement.

Read more: Major European players convene to lay out industrial energy transition

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has provided industry players with an unprecedented challenge as well as an opportunity to make their business models more sustainable.

Commission officials describe this policy as the ability to "build back better" to make industry more resilient and better equipped to deal with future crises.

The outline of the panel was one primary driver to accelerate the industrial transition.

Policy change and economic overhaul appear to be the primary drivers for real change.

"GDP is not an accurate measure for wealth and wellbeing," said Janez Potocnik, the co-chair of the UN Environmental Programme's International Resource Panel (UNEP-IRP).

"Growth and industrial production will ensure Europe’s recovery. Securing Europe's economic future relies on two factors: how well out economy can keep up with the world in the face of dwindling resources, and how well it can adapt to changing priorities.

"We should cater the economy not toward profit, but to furthering human needs - rethink the purpose for economic growth while overhauling the metrics used to measure growth."

Potocnik thinks the EU Green Deal is a step in the right direction, but there needs to be serious change to allow for implementation.

He said: "We should change the systems for implementation to focus on drivers and pressures for industry change rather than solely focusing on the consequences of not doing so.

"Systems and industry should be designed in a more circular way: are we using all this housing or equipment? We should shift focus to more sustainable models for industry such as interconnected rail lines to better meet societal needs. This will reduce the need for 'clean-up' in the future."

The construction industry accounts for roughly 38% of total global emissions as of 2019.

Decarbonisation of this sector is vital for Europe to meet its own climate targets.

Mel Allwood, the associate director of Arup, a services provider for the construction, engineering and energy sectors said many in the construction sector have poor environmental awareness for their stock.

She said: "There should be new tools and metrics in place to better measure environmental impacts. For example, I would hope to see a shift towards monitoring whole-life carbon emissions and circular economy options, not just for operational carbon, but for permission to build.

"We should switch to a user-centric design focus, which not only includes understanding stakeholders and their wishes for a project but also looking into the material understanding of buildings early in the design phase.

"This could allow us to better cater to various systems such as heating and cooling and this mindset has accelerated the development of things such as glazing."

There was also talks about increasing standardisation for products, including rigid definitions for what counts as a "green product" and making the requirements to meet those definitions stricter.

This could include a "European standard" for greener products such as batteries, or definitions that drive green development of carbon-intensive industries such as heavy industry.

Heavy industry currently accounts for 15% of carbon emissions and many fall within the "high-risk" category for net-zero, meaning there are no clear-cut solutions for lowering their climate impact.

Read more: 86% of heavy industry not prepared for energy transition, TPI warns

Many will require significant overhauls or the adoption of more expensive technologies, such as carbon capture and sequestering technology, which could drive prices up.

Donal O'Riain, the managing director of Ecocem, a low-carbon cement developer said a failure to work towards decarbonising high-risk industries will fail to meet the Paris Climate Agreement's goals.

He said: "Even if we completely decarbonised the energy supply for cement, we would only remove 40% of emissions. 60% of emissions come from the basic chemistry and production processes for cement. This means innovation will be the primary driver for lowering the climate impacts of heavy industry.

"We have to change the technology around creating cement and look at things like using it more efficiently.

"In the long-term, I think it is more helpful to look at what we can achieve in this decade, rather than looking at goals for 30 years' time. Looking at what we can achieve rapidly is more useful to achieving our climate goals because rapid change is necessary to ensuring industry becomes greener."

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