Green industrial policy: building the market, not just the factory
Five years into the implementation of the France 2030 strategy, the first results are visible: gigafactories in the “Vallée de la Batterie”, ArcelorMittal’s final investment decision on a green steel furnace in Dunkirk, an emerging pipeline of synthetic aviation fuels. But subsidising projects is no longer enough.
Without secured demand and a coordinated, targeted European framework, the French and European green industries risk skidding to a halt on the road to scale. Two new I4CE pieces set out the next steps to keep up the momentum.
In an op-ed for Les Échos, I4CE Executive Director Benoît Leguet argues that French industrial policy must now pivot decisively from supply-side support to demand-side steering. The diagnosis is clear: firstly, gigafactories were built before critical input supply chains were secured. Secondly, not a single European synthetic fuel project has reached final investment decision in the absence of long-term offtake contracts with airlines and fuel providers. The toolbox to fix this exists, but is underutilised and is incomplete: mandatory environmental and local content criteria in public procurement, long-term contracts to secure offtake, standards that align private purchasing with industrial strategy.
Some of the most powerful levers run through Brussels as much as Bercy – and the Industrial Accelerator Act and the design of the next European multiannual financial framework (2028–2034) are precisely the frameworks France should help shape.
This EU budget and in particular the proposal for a European Competitiveness Fund is the focus of a blog by cleantech researchers Ciarán Humphreys and Elena Schneider, reacting to the European Parliament’s ITRE committee draft report on the matter. The proposed Economic and Technological Advisory Council is a step forward for more targeted public spending, and a revival of some of the original ambition behind the Competitiveness Coordination Tool – but without a public data observatory and real coordination with Member States, €234 billion will not be enough to align twenty-seven national industrial strategies.
In Paris or Brussels, it is clear that green industrial policy is no longer short of plans or political ambition. What is needed now is the coordination to pull demand, investment and disparate national interests in the same direction, towards a decarbonised, competitive industrial base.
