The Berlaymont building in Brussels, seat of the European Commission. Photo Emdee via Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The Labour government aims to tie Britain to the EU’s severe net zero targets, pushing up energy costs. The EU’s decarbonisation target is nearly twice Britain’s current level. Reaching it would require accelerating the rollout of electric vehicles and the phasing out of gas boilers to an impractical extent.
On 4 March, Brussels published its proposed Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA). Industry Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné said, “We need to be very clear [this] is going to accelerate decarbonization. That’s the whole point of it.”
So it is not about accelerating industry. It was originally called the Industrial Decarbonization Accelerator Act, but the name was changed in an attempt to deflect the growing public opposition, across all the EU member countries, to net zero policies.
Brussels is trying to distance itself from its earlier “Green Deal” language – but not from the reality. Former EU climate chief Frans Timmermans, the architect of the Green Deal, recently asked, “Why don’t we rephrase the Green Deal? Why don’t we give it another name?”
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