ERT Statement on Sectoral Approaches

ERT’s 57 Chief Executives and Chairs of leading multinational companies of European parentage, covering a wide range of industrial and technological sectors, fully support the EU Climate Law’s target to reach climate neutrality by 2050. ERT believes that the transition to climate neutrality gives the opportunity to build back better and transform the lives of EUcitizens – the products they consume, the materials that build their living environment, the energy that powers their homes and workplaces, the technology and skills that can help them achieve their goals.

ERT sees an opportunity to enhance the EU Climate Law as a framework for companies to invest in the green transition through the introduction of indicative Sectoral Roadmaps or Pathways to Net-Zero Emissions. Sectoral Roadmaps would provide a strategy and “soft” policy guidance intended to:

• Deliver policy coherence for sectoral decarbonisation, ensuring an EU-wide approach and complementing the revised EU legislative framework.

• Synchronise policies to create sectoral markets for clean energy, build infrastructure and deliver supply.

• Support the EU´s goal to gain competitive edge by being a first mover in the development of industries including the technologies that will enable the energy transformation and Europe’s growth strategy.

• Offer sectoral platforms to engage all relevant actors to identify measures and pathways to reach Net-Zero Emissions in an open and transparent way.

• Be flexible and adaptable to allow for advances in climate neutral technologies as a general orientation tool rather than a planning exercise.

• Provide clarity to investors on the measures, aid investment and competitiveness support in order to mobilise the necessary investment in relevant industrial ecosystems.

Sectoral Roadmaps should be overseen by the European Commission to ensure the alignment across the multiple EU and national level initiatives that will be essential to build and accelerate the business case for investment and enable innovation within each sector. ERT calls on the EU Institutions to support Sectoral Roadmaps to unleash investment at the scale required and in cooperation towards a common goal of climate neutrality.