FuelsEurope Position Paper – Sustainable Finance: Regulation on a framework to facilitate sustainable investments

The Sustainable Finance package launched by the Commission aims to make sustainability considerations part of financial decision-making in order to enhance the efforts to fight climate change and address environmental risks. Among the proposals, the “regulation on the establishment of a framework to facilitate sustainable investment” should create a unified classification system of sustainable economic activities (“taxonomy”).

The EU has promoted an energy policy characterized by a diversified energy mix to ensure the security of supply and encourage investments in infrastructure, in line with its Member States’ needs.

During the past decades, all the components of the energy mix have played a key role within the European economic development and for the well-being of EU citizens. The energy transition to a more sustainable economy should take into account all the players already involved in the current energy landscape in order to guarantee a smooth, efficient and inclusive energy transition model.

In this context, the EU refining industry recently launched its “Vision 2050” to demonstrate its commitment towards greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions reductions and the EUs sustainability goals.

The sector is developing and investing in new low-carbon technologies, contributing to the EU environmental objectives, such as the transition to a circular economy, while continuing to provide affordable solutions both to the EU transport system, to the industrial value chain (such as petrochemicals) and to EU citizens. However, the refining industry cannot walk this path alone.

Alternative technology solutions that are being developed to reduce the EU carbon footprint also require broad financial resources and the investments often struggle to generate competitive returns.

The affordability of these alternative solutions will improve with economies of scale, but, until then, support is vital to enable the successful transition towards a low-carbon future.