Glass Alliance Europe, the European Alliance of Glass Industries, is once again raising its voice, renewing its call for urgent and crucial actions at a continental and national level, aimed at supporting the sector and facing the EU’s complex energy issue.
Glass Alliance Europe has outlined an action plan structured in 8 points
- Authorities should ensure that the criterion on irreversible damages to industrial facilities is duly applied in national emergency plan to prioritize the supply of energy to continuous production processes, thus avoiding the loss of industrial assets.
- To design and urgently introduce measures to contain energy costs for both natural gas and electricity for the energy-intensive glass industry. In this regard, it is necessary to consider the validity of the various mechanism (price cap/ corridor/ brake) to ensure a sufficient supplies of gas, to lower costs and to restore the competitiveness of the European glass industry.
- Glass Alliance Europe welcomes the easing of qualification criteria and the increase in the cap on financial support, although these solutions remain too low for most energy-intensive sectors.
- To facilitate fuel switching by allowing more flexibility within the local implementation of the IED to change operational permits. In this context, Glass Alliance Europe refers to the reintroduction of heavy fuel oil for glass melting and the reduction of permitting time for biogas, in an attempt to reduce Europe’s dependence on natural gas and to diversify energy sources.
- To support increased electrification of the glass industry by revising the guidelines for some subsidies for the compensation of indirect emissions under the EU ETS.
- To offer the European glass industry immediate relief on taxes and surcharges for electricity and gas. Glass Alliance Europe also aims to preserve the exemption for mineralogical processes under the Energy Tax Directive.
- To quickly launch the reform aimed at decoupling electricity from gas prices and redesigning the energy market, involving glass sector experts in the reorganisation.
- To continue the trade defense measures on subsidized and dumped imports and to consider the rapid introduction of additional measures in case of new flows.
Concrete measures
As pointed out by Glass Alliance Europe, the stakes are too high for institutions to refuse to contribute to the short- and long-term safety and competitiveness of the supply chain. Indeed, the European glass industry is a highly innovative and strategic sector for the EU, on which several crucial sectors depend (energy, construction, transport, food & drink, medical; just to mention the main ones), also in relation to the transition towards climate neutrality.
The time for planning has now come to an end, Glass Alliance Europe and the entire glass supply chain are now demanding concrete actions that can revive the fortunes of the sector and give due credit to an excellence of the Old Continent’s secondary sector.
Sources: glassallianceeurope.eu, glass-international.com
