EU lawmakers urge action on energy prices to save steel sector
Resource from: Platts Likes:180
Sep 26,2013
High energy prices, climate legislation, trade restrictions and research and development are the four biggest challenges facing Europe's steel industry, the European Parliament's industry and energy committee heard in debate Wednesday.
"The liberalization of the [EU's] electricity and gas markets has not delivered," Hungarian center-right MEP Andras Gyurk told the committee.
"We have to concentrate on high energy prices," said Gyurk, who is the lead negotiator for the parliament's report on the European Commission's action plan for a competitive and sustainable steel industry in Europe, unveiled in June.
Energy prices can account for 40% of the total costs in the steel industry, he added. Many of his committee colleagues also referred to the problem of high energy prices on the EU steel sector's global competitiveness.
On climate change, Gyurk said the steel industry had the potential to help cut more EU emissions than it produced itself, given its key role in wind turbine manufacturing for example.
He urged the EC to draw up the next EU carbon leakage list -- which controls which sectors are allowed more free Emissions Trading System allowances -- in an "open and transparent way, taking account of electricity prices."
Gyurk also urged the EC to guard against foreign trade partners dumping steel in EU markets, and to look at ways to promote research and development to help the steel industry innovate and cut emissions further.
"Modern steel plants have reached the limit of their possible emission reductions," Gyurk said. "We need a technological breakthrough to achieve more."
The EC industry department's unit head for metals, Mattia Pellegrini, told the committee that the steel industry's problems were caused by a combination of issues, including a fall in demand, unfair competition and added costs from EU legislation, particularly on climate.
Pellegrini said an EC-commissioned study published in July showed that "in periods of crisis, such as in 2009" EU legislation had been a "substantial part" of the steel industry's costs.
He said that the EU's national governments have the option to redistribute revenues from auctioning ETS allowances to the energy intensive sector, such as steel, but that they are not doing this.
"Due to the [financial] crisis instead of reinvesting in industry they are using it for the general state budget," he said.
Pellegrini said the EC was thinking now about making it mandatory for governments to use the ETS revenues to support the energy intensive industry, for example in research and development.
The parliament's report has no legal force but indicates how the parliament would respond to formal legislative proposals on these issues.
The committee is scheduled to vote on the report in December, and the full parliament in February.
(Platts)
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