Wind turbine blade materials producers are calling for EU authorities to take steps to facilitate resilient supply chains as part of the Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA).
The companies include TECH-FAB Europe, CEFIC UP/VE, CEFIC Epoxy Europe, Glass Fibre Europe and Rotorblatt Allianz.
In their open letter the companies stated that upstream materials such as glass fibres and fabrics, resins and core materials, are strategic value chain components for net zero technologies.
Upstream industries in the wind energy turbine blade value chain have made valuable and instrumental contributions to the production of wind turbines in the EU, including important innovations enabling for example the constant increase in the length of wind turbine blades, leading to an increase in power output.
They stated: “While we support the urgent requests of a variety of EU manufacturing industries, expressed in the recent Antwerp Declaration, including the need to ensure access to secure, low carbon energy sources at reasonable and competitive prices, the wind turbine blade supply chain has additional specific needs.
“To understand these additional specific needs, it is first necessary to recognize that the positive elements of the NZIA alone are not sufficient to ensure the resilience and scaling-up of the manufacturing capacity of these strategic value chain components.
“The EU market is currently facing challenges with EU manufacturers throughout the supply chain being substantially undercut by imports from third countries with immense subsidised overcapacities.
“This unbalanced situation needs to be addressed for the NZIA to start delivering its benefits, in particular to new ‘strategic projects’ to start delivering.”
They companies have set out three requests in their open letter.
The first is for the EU to urgently adopt policies that favour local content and introduce specific requirements to increase wind turbine blade supply chain resilience (70%), as done in other countries to reinforce the competitiveness of local production and bolster supply chain resilience.
Secondly they are asking for the EU to investigate and impose needed trade defence measures on subsidised and dumped imports at each step of the wind turbine blade value chain.
Thirdly the companies are asking for expanded and improve custom controls of imports, to prevent circumvention of trade defence measures and to better enforce environmental, sustainability and social requirements for imports (including REACH, forced labour, other labour standards and anti-bribery).