Across Europe, industrial decarbonisation has moved to the centre of debates on growth and competitiveness, with particular focus on hard-to-abate sectors: steel, cement, chemicals, and aluminium. These industries are capital-intensive, trade-exposed, and deeply embedded in European value chains, yet face some of the most difficult decarbonisation challenges. Policymakers increasingly view their transition as a test of whether Europe can combine emissions reductions with sustained productivity-growth and industrial renewal. Simultaneously, climate policy is increasingly under attack in many EU countries, both due to geopolitical tensions, as well as increasingly fractured domestic political landscapes, making the net-zero transition generally harder to sustain. Given the scale of its energy-intensive industrial base and its central role in European manufacturing value chains, Germany occupies a particularly important position in these debates.
This event examines under what conditions industrial decarbonisation in hard-to-abate sectors can be designed as a growth strategy for Europe, and Germany in particular, and where trade-offs and risks of deindustrialisation remain.
This event is organised in collaboration with the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California.
