Do not panic: the EU is still firmly in the global race for green tech leadership, says new study

The European Union has not yet fallen behind in the global race for net-zero technologies, despite fears of a loss of competitiveness.

Transcript

00:00 The European Union is in an international race for green technologies. This is the conclusion

00:07 of a study published on Wednesday by the think tank Strategic Perspectives. The authors compared

00:14 the whole of the EU with China, the United States, Japan and India. But the analysis

00:19 points out that industrial competition towards green technologies has intensified sharply.

00:27 While Beijing leads the race in many areas, the EU was first last year in terms of its

00:31 share of renewable energy production, second in terms of investment in renewable technologies

00:37 and also second in 2021 in terms of jobs in the green energy industry.

00:46 While the study highlights the results of the EU's Green Deal, it argues that the bloc

00:50 must not rest on its laurels, especially since the announcement last year of the US Inflation

00:55 Reduction Act, a plan to spend almost $400 billion on clean industries.

01:07 For now, it's the Green Deal really kept it comparative, but it's a bit of a brink. So

01:12 really it's on the next commission and really key that they're scaling up, especially as

01:16 we've seen the Inflation Reduction Act has brought the US again to the forefront. And

01:21 there's a real threat that the EU lags behind the US.

01:25 According to the think tank Strategic Perspectives, all 27 EU member states must redouble their

01:30 efforts and resources in terms of innovation and production capacity or face serious industrial

01:35 and strategic consequences.

01:40 Then we were just being more import dependent on other countries. So we could have seen

01:44 that some of the companies already now say, oh, we get more subsidies in the US, so we're

01:49 going to move to the US. And obviously, already the import dependence on solar is quite high

01:53 now.

01:55 The authors of the report point out that the rhetoric in Europe in favor of a pause in

01:58 the climate effort is dangerous. China and the United States are fully engaged in this

02:04 battle and the EU could miss out on the industrial and growth train linked to green technologies.

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02:15 (whooshing)