ABSTRACT
From the very beginning, the development of climate policy has been closely scrutinised for its potential impact on overall economic development and welfare. At EU level, this has been most prominent by using cost-effectiveness as a central guiding principle for the overall climate strategy to deliver 2020 and 2030 targets. 1 In combination with specific instruments to deal with distributional and social aspects, broad political acceptance was obtained. Gradually, a wider policy approach emerged not only to create low-carbon technologies, but more importantly to deploy these at scale and to make them competitive on global markets. The new geopolitical context has accelerated this process and the EU is now implementing a policy of ‘open strategic autonomy’ 2 in which the low-carbon industry plays a central role. This chapter describes how several key elements of this policy emerged over the last decade.
