On Tuesday 6 February, European Parliament and EU Council negotiators reached a provisional agreement on the Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA). If it is approved by the Member States and the European Parliament as a whole, the text could see the light of day before the end of the legislative cycle. The NZIA is Europe’s response to the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to prevent investors and promoters of green projects on the other side of the Atlantic from leaving. Some of the technical details of the text have yet to be finalised, but the co-legislators reached agreement on some of the thorny issues in the NZIA, such as sustainability and resilience criteria in public auctions.
List of technologies
The question of the technologies covered by the text, from which industrial projects will be able to benefit, has been settled: the NZIA will include a list of 15 technologies. Nuclear power is included, but Member States can request an exemption from including this sector (like others) if it is not relevant to their energy mix.
The list has also been extended to the value chain, as certain sectors such as wind and solar power are highly dependent on these value chains.
Public procurement
The compromises reached on pre-qualification criteria for public procurement are as follows: Member States will have to apply pre-qualification and selection criteria other than price, in other words environmental sustainability criteria as well as the contribution to the EU’s resilience. As for the role that these criteria should play in the assessment, the Commission will reportedly propose a trajectory for setting the thresholds to be respected, by means of a legislative proposal.
We already know, however, that the resilience criterion will only apply if the proposed technology is more than 50% dependent on a third country that is not part of the World Trade Organization’s Government Procurement Agreement (GPA).
The pre-qualification criterion has disappointed some actors, who claim that it is not feasible in certain sectors. In the case of solar panels, this criterion would exclude around 90% of the solar supply chain, Dries Acke, Director of Solar Power Europe, told EUROPE.
Public auctions
With regard to public auctions, the negotiators have agreed to set a threshold for applying sustainability and resilience criteria: at least 30% of the projects put up for auction each year will have to be assessed on the basis of these criteria, in addition to the price.
The European Commission may review this threshold on the basis of a practical analysis of how the system works.
EUROPE will come back to other details of the text which have not been communicated at this stage. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)