Wuppertal Institute – Infrastructure for net-zero heavy industry in Europe - The cases NW-Europe, S-France & S-Poland, Brussels, 18.3.2020

The Green Deal aims to make the EU greenhouse gas neutral by 2050 at the latest, requiring enormous efforts from all sectors to speed up decarbonisation. Recent studies show, that the transformation of energy and carbon intensive industries to net zero GHG emissions is a huge, but feasible challenge. It will need various leap innovations to change the production systems. This will result in considerable geographically concentrated additional demands for renewable electricity, hydrogen and fuels and/or carbon capture and storage/utilisation. The clean industrial transformation will require new, efficient transport and storage infrastructures, which are not sufficiently taken into account in recent planning.

This event will discuss how the EU and Member States need to step up their infrastructure planning efforts. The following key questions will serve as a basis:

• Where in Europe and its industrial regions will (new) demand for electricity and hydrogen emerge until 2050, depending on different de-carbonisation strategies?
• Which regions in Europe are affected most from the net-zero industrial transition and have the highest needs for adopting and expanding (existing) infrastructures?
• How much infrastructure and what kind of infrastructure solutions will be needed to cover the future demands of electricity and H2, and to transport remaining CO2 to carbon storages?
• What should be the next steps for a sustainable infrastructure? 

 

Draft Agenda:

09:30 | Registration

10:00 | Welcome by Secretariat General Benelux

10:05 | Keynote speech "Is European energy infrastructure ready for decarbonisation of heavy industries?"

10:25 | Key results from the study "Infrastructure Needs of an EU Industrial Transformation towards

           deep decarbonisation“

11:15 | Regional views on infrastructural challenges from different industrial cluster regions:

• Northwestern Europe (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg & North Rhine-Westphalia)
• Southern France 
• Southern Poland 

12:00 | Invited Comments & Panel Discussion

12:45 | Lunch

 

Venue: The Benelux House, Regentschapsstraat 39, 1000 Brussels

 Registration

For questions and further information:  rannveigvaniterson@europeanclimate.org  or frank.merten@wupperinst.org

 

 

Background of the event is the EIT Climate-KIC funded research project "Infrastructure Needs of an EU Industrial Transformation towards deep decarbonisation“, which is also part of the European Climate Foundation's Industrial Transformation 2050 initiative and builds on net zero pathways for heavy industry developed as part of this initiative. Further information on INFRA NEEDS EIT Climate-KIC and INFRA NEEDS Wuppertal Institute