Net-Zero Industry Act: Successful Initiative on the Way to an All-Electric Society

The Green Deal Industrial Plan strengthens the competitiveness of European fully decarbonized industry and accelerates the transition to carbon neutrality. It does so by creating a more favourable environment for expanding EU manufacturing capacity for net-zero technologies and products needed to meet Europe's ambitious climate targets.

In its proposal for the Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA), the EU Commission designates net-zero technologies and sets explicit production targets for each technology. The Act also aims to create a regulatory framework suitable for rapid deployment by ensuring simplified and accelerated approval procedures, promoting European strategic projects, and developing standards to support the diffusion of technologies throughout the Single Market.

We at DKE are pleased that the Net Zero Industry Act refers explicitly to the development of European standards.

Standards and specifications for a strong Europe

In 2022 the European Commission has published its European Standardization Strategy.

This strategy is intended to make the European standardization system agile, efficient and future-proof. In this way, the EU Commission wants to strengthen European industry in global competition and bring innovations to market more quickly. In addition, the aim is to ensure that European and international standards are in line with the strategic interests and values of the EU.

European standards already accompany the deployment of clean and digital technologies. This basis can be built upon further so that standardization can meaningfully support the implementation of the Net Zero Industry Act. In particular, innovations and new industrial value chains benefit from the trust of customers and business partners, who can rely on existing European standards and, where appropriate, on those to be further developed. Standards thus provide industry with an important competitive advantage - also at the global level.   European standards enable EU industry to disseminate its technologies throughout the Single Market - this is very important for start-ups and SMEs. The Commission can also use the Net-Zero Industry Act to promote European standards and thus the rapid deployment of key technologies.

As a standards organization, we support the vision of the All-Electric Society, i.e. a society that achieves complete decarbonization through the use of renewable, essentially electrical energy (wind, solar, hydro) and comprehensive energy-efficient electrification, automation and digitalization. The concept of the All-Electric Society thus coincides in many respects with the EU Commission's Net-Zero Industry Act.

DKE Commitment 2030

With a key focus on the digitization of standardization, we are creating the architectural framework for achieving the vision of an All Electric Society. We are driving the networking of stakeholders worldwide for the standardization of a sustainable energy system and also provide the organizational framework for this.

The Net-Zero Industry Act identifies 8 so-called strategic "Net-Zero technologies" that are considered essential for the energy transition:

1. Solar photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies
2. Onshore wind and offshore renewable technologies
3. Battery/storage technologies
4. Heat pumps and geothermal energy technologies
5. Electrolysers and fuel cells
6. Sustainable biogas/biomethane technologies
7. Carbon Capture and storage (CCS) technologies
8. Grid technologies

Industry focuses on systems and products used in the industrial sector. The central topic is, for instance, increasing automation because there will be increases in intelligent exchanges between machines and objects. You can find further information about this subject area in