By Mathew Carr
Nov. 18, 2020 — LONDON — The EU’s Innovation Fund could be used to stoke CCfDs and win deep decarbonization, said Antoine Colombani, a green-deal official in the European Commission.

Carbon prices by themselves will probably not be high enough to spur decarbonisation in a “spontaneous” way, Colombani said in an online event held by German think tank Agora Energiewende.

Pilots for the carbon contracts for difference, measures designed to protect factories from a fall in carbon prices, could be deployed to assist refineries and fertiliser factories: Colombani.

“I think there is broad support for them,” said Adolfo Aiello, from steel industry group Eurofer, referring to CCfDs. It’s still not clear they’ll be able to adequately protect the industry from competition outside the EU, he said.

The CCfDs will indeed need to be considered as tool, said Pierre Jeremie, an official at the French government, at the event.

See this for more on CCfDs:
http://carrzee.org/2020/11/15/green-hydrogen-is-already-in-the-money-in-britain-portugal-this-is-why-boris-can-drop-petrol-cars-early/

More on the EU’s Innovation Fund:
https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/innovation-fund_en

State-aid guidelines should be reformed to enable maximum aid levels for electro-intensive industries once the carbon price rises above €30/t of CO2, or full power-price compensation, Agora said. Further reforms may be needed, such as measures to underpin the planned border-carbon adjustments, it said.

EU carbon prices are up 3.3% at €27.51 a ton, at 10:10am on London on the ICE Futures Europe exchange.

(Updated to recast, to add Eurofer)