Book

A green industrial policy for Europe

This Blueprint examines how the European Union can develop a coherent green industrial policy that will serve the goals of the European Green Deal.

Publishing date
17 December 2020

This Blueprint has been produced with the financial support of the European Climate Foundation.

The European Green Deal aims to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. This is not going to be an easy journey. To be successful, the European Green Deal will have to foster major shifts in the European industrial structure, including transitions from fossil fuels to renewable energy and from combustion engine cars to electric cars. Shifting economies from brown to green would be a major, historic socio-economic transformation.

In this context of broad, paradigmatic, change for European industry, a ‘green industrial policy’ will be fundamental to Europe’s climate change ambitions. But what is green industrial policy? What market failures must it address? Unlike traditional industrial policy, green industrial policy must be directed to twin goals of climate protection and social welfare. Green industrial policy initiatives in the European Union so far, however, have been piecemeal and fragmented. This Blueprint examines how past mistakes can be avoided and how the EU can develop a coherent green industrial policy that will serve the goals of the European Green Deal.

 

About the authors

  • Reinhilde Veugelers

    Prof Dr. Reinhilde Veugelers is a full professor at KULeuven (BE) at the Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation.  She has been a Senior fellow at Bruegel since 2009.  She is also a CEPR Research Fellow, a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and of the Academia Europeana. From 2004-2008, she was on academic leave, as advisor at the European Commission (BEPA Bureau of European Policy Analysis).  She served on the ERC Scientific Council from 2012-2018 and on the RISE Expert Group advising the commissioner for Research.  She is a member of VARIO, the expert group advising the Flemish minister for Innovation. She is currently a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors of the journal Science and a co-PI on the Science of Science Funding Initiative at NBER.

    With her research concentrated in the fields of industrial organisation, international economics and strategy, innovation and science, she has authored numerous well cited publications in leading international journals.  Specific recent topics include novelty in technology development,  international technology transfers through MNEs, global innovation value chains, young innovative companies, innovation for climate change,  industry science links and their impact on firm’s innovative productivity, evaluation of research & innovation policy,  explaining scientific productivity,  researchers’ international mobility,  novel scientific research.

    Websites:
    https://feb.kuleuven.be/reinhilde.veugelers
    https://bruegel.org/author/reinhilde-veugelers/

  • Simone Tagliapietra

    Simone Tagliapietra is a Senior fellow at Bruegel. He is also a Professor of Energy, Climate and Environmental Policy at the Catholic University of Milan and at The Johns Hopkins University - School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Europe.

    His research focuses on the European Union climate and energy policy and on the political economy of global decarbonisation. With a record of numerous policy and scientific publications, also in leading journals such as Nature and Science, he is the author of Global Energy Fundamentals (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

    His columns and policy work are published and cited in leading international media such as the BBC, CNN, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, Die Zeit, Corriere della Sera, and others.

    Simone also is a Member of the Board of Directors of the Clean Air Task Force (CATF). He holds a PhD in Institutions and Policies from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Born in the Dolomites in 1988, he speaks Italian, English and French.

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