Belgian MEP Ivo Belet focused on the need to protect EU industry from carbon leakage risks in one of his first comments assessing the EU Commission’s post-2020 ETS reform plans on Tuesday.

Writing in an opinion article for The Parliament magazine on Tuesday, Belet, who steered the MSR through the assembly, said the reforms must achieve emission cuts while increasing the bloc’s industrial base.

Belet is co-ordinating the position of the centre-right EPP, the biggest parliamentary grouping, on the proposal.

The debate is just beginning, with the EU Parliament’s main co-ordinator Ian Duncan not expected to produce an initial report until Q2 next year, and an overall agreement not due until the end of 2016 at the earliest.

Belet’s key remarks:

“The final outcome of this legislative process should be reform that truly stimulates European industry to ‘decarbonise’, while safeguarding our ambition to grow industrial activity from 16 to 20 per cent in the upcoming decade.”

He added that the Commission’s proposal was right to target free EUA allocations to sectors at highest risk and changes to benchmark values for determining the amount give would “stimulate the energy-intensive sectors to continue evolving towards energy-efficient production”.

“Industry actors that invest in innovative, low-carbon production technologies must be rewarded; developing new technologies is essential to enable us to meet climate change objectives”

By Ben Garside – ben@carbon-pulse.com