Time for the flat glass industry’s decarbonization efforts to pay off

The opportunities that the Green Deal should offer a sector like ours are simply not materialising. It’s time that the flat glass industry’s decarbonization efforts to deliver on the Green Deal pay off. European flat glass products are essential to realize EU ambitions, yet our industry faces many pressing hurdles.

Davide Cappellino is the President for Architectural Glass at AGC Glass Europe / Glass for Europe Chair.

Let’s travel forward to the end of this decade, the end of the mandate of this new European Commission. The EU aims to be within touching distance a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

And, if so, our flat glass sector will have unquestionably played its part in making this happen. Our made-in-Europe high efficiency glazing products will have avoided the release of above 150 million tonnes of CO₂ between now and 2030 by limiting energy consumption in buildings.

More than the Netherlands’ annual CO₂ emissions in 2021, just thanks to a doubling of the renovation rate of windows in six years.

Our products’ contributions will also have extended to transport, contributing to developing safe and low-carbon mobility, and to renewables, enhancing photovoltaic efficiency. Our low carbon glass made in Europe is a strategic asset to help achieve carbon neutrality.

Our commitment to making this picture real in the next five years remains undiminished. We’re also doing our homework at our manufacturing sites: deploying R&D resources to develop and test new production technologies, playing an active role in enhancing circularity, and adopting lower emission technologies as soon as they have become available and affordable. We’ve already put lower carbon glass products on the market.

Although we’ve already reduced our sector’s CO₂ emissions by an impressive c.45% per tonne of glass since 1990, many real and pressing hurdles are eroding our industry’s competitiveness and ability to maintain our pace of sustainable transformation.

2023 saw our sector’s worst year on record, below that of even the COVID-19 pandemic or 2013 crisis. And the closing of the EU’s final remaining solar glass production.

These numbers hide dark realities. The EU is renovating its old inefficient windows and facades in buildings far below the rate needed to achieve climate-neutrality. And despite recent policy initiatives and isolated projects, the wider EU solar PV value chain is disappearing.

The opportunities that the Green Deal promised to a sector like ours are simply not materialising. In the last 12 months, this has translated to over 15% of production capacity stopped with the inherent, continued erosion of industrial jobs.

Whilst we need abundant, affordable and accessible low-carbon energy to decarbonise our processes, Europe’s energy prices remain 3 to 4 times higher than those of our competitors. With energy accounting for over 30% of our production costs, this situation is simply not sustainable.

After losing the solar glass market to our competitors, we are already witnessing increasing imports in automotive glass, primarily from China. For instance, imports of Chinese laminated automotive glass have doubled in just 6 years.

Without a level playing field, we currently lack a viable business case for lower carbon glass. Necessary investment to drive decarbonisation and increasing operational costs risk further widening our industry’s competitive disadvantage on the global stage.

That is why, I’m sure many of you, like me, welcomed that competitiveness has become a stated priority of the next European Commission.

In particular, my attention focused on the elements echoing the priorities we’ve called for in Glass for Europe’s 2024-2029 Manifesto, namely the Clean Industrial Deal, Circular Economy Act, Industrial Decarbonisation Act, and Affordable Housing Plan.

These policy announcements represent a chance to overcome the pressing hurdles facing our sector around energy, circularity and competitiveness.

For us, targeted actions in four essential areas are needed to make sure that our decarbonisation efforts can pay off and be sustained to help deliver on the EU’s Green Deal.

First, maintain and strengthen Europe’s industrial base.

Today, European flat glass manufacturers supply 85% of the EU’s demand for building glass. If we’re going to safeguard this position, Europe has to guarantee the affordability and supply of decarbonised energy and massively upgrade energy infrastructure.

We also need a more tailored, comprehensive policy to narrow the unavoidable competitiveness gaps as Europe’s industry decarbonizes. The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is not the solution for our sector. Risks are high that exports can shift from the flat glass material to higher added-value downstream products, which will seriously hit the entire value-chain.

Second, significantly boost window replacement.

Windows account for up to 30% of a building’s energy loss. Mainstreaming high performance glazing can reduce heating and cooling demand by up to 75.5 Mtoe annually in 2030.

Heating a leaky building, even with low-carbon electricity, is a waste of precious energy. We must accelerate building renovation and window replacement to combine decarbonisation efforts with better comfort and living conditions for millions of Europeans.

Third, properly support energy and carbon efficiency of our industrial processes.

We’re already making real progress here by switching to novel manufacturing technologies, low carbon energy, and improved process efficiency. However, technologies for the wide-scale production of low-carbon glass don’t yet exist.

Consequently, research and trialling remain essential in glass making to help us innovate on low-carbon glass production, and require substantial support to de-risk the necessary, large-scale investments.

Fourth, strongly incentivise the recycling of old glazing.

We have an enormous recycling potential to tap into: Each year, the EU generates 1.5 million tonnes of waste glass from buildings. Recycling offers us a leading way to reduce CO₂ emissions, energy consumption, and raw materials demand but we do not have enough glass to recycle.

The European Commission has to prioritise construction in its circularity policy to improve the collection and sorting of old glazing.

It’s targeted actions in these four streams that will preserve our industry’s competitiveness and sustain investments in Europe’s flat glass sector. I repeat, our sector’s decarbonisation efforts have to pay off for the EU to realise its Green Deal ambitions.

Yes, we see positive signals with the announced Clean Industrial Deal, Circular Economy Act, Industrial Decarbonisation Act, and Affordable Housing Plan.

Yes, we welcome Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s plea for more dialogue in materialising these priorities.

Let’s put our collective efforts into delivering on the four areas of targeted actions needed to support and empower a competitive European flat glass industry.

This is how the flat glass industry’s decarbonization efforts will pay off, so we can play our irreplaceable role in helping Europe deliver on its Green Deal ambitions.