Letter: Open, inclusive, and pragmatic Green Deal Industrial Plan for Europe

To: Ms Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission

Brussels, 31 January 2023

Dear President,
We are writing to express our support and appreciation to the Green Deal Industrial Plan announced in your address to the World Economic Forum. We believe that this much-welcomed initiative will help Europe overcome the consequences of several overlapping crises, keeping EU competitiveness, while accelerating the transition of the EU's economy to net-zero with the creation of new jobs and growth opportunities for European citizens and businesses.

For this to happen, we call for an open, inclusive and pragmatic approach that will enable the scaling-up of all decarbonization options needed to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, including natural, renewable and decarbonized gases and CCUS technologies.

Building on the existing gas market and network as the backbone of the future EU energy system, the forthcoming Green Deal Industrial Plan should create a level playing field for commercially mature technologies and reap the full benefits of all European gas resources to decarbonize the EU economy in a fast and cost-effective way, on the path towards climate neutrality.

This needs to come along with a substantial increase of the infrastructure to support the deployment of clean energy technologies such as the CO2 transport and storage infrastructure¹. The EU Hydrogen Strategy² recognizes that, alongside renewable hydrogen, low-carbon hydrogen produced through natural gas reforming in combination with CCUS or through pyrolysis will play a fundamental role in providing the necessary volumes to develop an integrated hydrogen market. This is also in line with the analysis of the International Energy Agency (Energy Technology Perspectives 2023³), and reflects the majority position of the co-legislators in the framework of the inter-institutional negotiations on the Hydrogen and Decarbonised Gas market package.

The entire gas value chain looks forward to a fruitful collaboration with the European institutions and Member States to make the definition and implementation of the Green Deal Industrial Plan a success for Europe.

Yours faithfully,

François-Régis Mouton de Lostalot-Lassalle, Regional Director Europe, IOGP

Dr James Watson, Secretary General, Eurogas

Boyana Achovski, Secretary General, GIE Ewa Abramiuk-Lete General Manager, Liquid Gas Europe

Andrea Stegher, Vice President, IGU

Dr Robert Judd, Secretary General, GERG

CC:
Mr Frans Timmermans, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission
Ms Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission
Mr Vladis Dombrovskis, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission
Ms Kadri Simson, Commissioner for Energy
Mr Thiery Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market

¹ As the IEA at global level estimates ‘The total amount of CO2 captured worldwide is projected to increase from 44 Mt today to 1.2 Gt in 2030 and 6.2 Gt in 2050. Around 95% of all captured CO2 is stored, so injection capacity for CO2 storage needs to expand from 42 Mt today to 1.2 Gt in 2030 and 5.9 Gt in 2050.’
² COM(2020) 301 final
³ The 2023 ETP identifies six clean energy technologies (including H2 and CCUS) which hold the potential to unlock around 50% of cumulative emissions reductions to 2050 in the IEA Net Zero Emissions Scenario.

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