On November 30th 2016, the European Commission presented the legislative proposals for the Clean Energy for all Europeans package to ensure that the EU leads the clean energy transition through modernizing the EU’s economy and delivering on jobs and growth for all European citizens. One of the priority goals pursued by the package is to “provide a fair deal for energy consumers”.
The European ceramic industry, which directly employs 200,000 people and is mainly composed by SMEs, belongs to the main industrial energy consumers with up to 35% of the total production costs related to energy.
The European ceramic industry welcomes the Energy Union as a potential enabler of the European industry’s competitiveness, an opportunity to ensure sustainable, secure and affordable energy to retail consumers as well as an occasion to deliver on Europe’s ambitious transition to a low-carbon economy. The package includes four revised regulations and four revised directives as well as the EC Communication together with a Report on the Energy prices and costs in Europe (COM (2016) 769). The European ceramic industry underlines the crucial importance of affordable energy prices as the energy costs constitute a decisive factor for the industrial competitiveness of the sector, and calls for framework conditions that are stable and predictable in order to encourage new investments in energy-intensive industries in the EU.
Already today various ceramic products contribute significantly to energy savings achievements during their use-phase (for example: thermal insulating clay blocks and ceramic ventilated facades in buildings) and along their value chain in different other energy-intensive sectors (such as: refractories in steel or cement industries).