The CEO Alliance for Europe
CEO Alliance
The CEO Alliance for Europe is a cross-sector Action Tank, working towards a more prosperous, sustainable and resilient Europe.
ID: 503213049843-91
Lobbying Activity
Response to How to master Europe’s digital infrastructure needs?
29 Jun 2024
The CEO Alliance welcomes the European Commissions invitation to submit a response to its public consultation on the White Paper on Europes digital infrastructure needs. The CEO Alliance was founded in 2020 as a platform of eight European companies coming together to make decarbonisation happen. The CEO Alliance is a cross-sector action tank of leading European companies representing key industry sectors, with ~1.6 million employees and ~EUR 560 billion annual revenue. We use our broad platform to make decarbonization of European industry happen. In spite of the challenging times we firmly believe that the only way forward for a competitive, prosperous, resilient and sustainable Europe is an acceleration of the transition to green energy and technology. Further information about our work is available on our website, www.ceo-alliance.eu. The Alliance sees huge potential in digitalisation as an enabler and booster for sustainability, contributing to achieving the goals set out in the European Green Deal. The twin transition, green and digital, are too often treated separately and not enabling each other. In fact, the potential of existing digital solutions to reduce CO2 emissions is estimated to be 15-20% by 2030 . In this context, the CEO Alliance supports the framework and objectives of the 2022 EU Action Plan on digitalising the energy sector , and welcomes the Commissions efforts through its February 2024 White Paper on Europes digital infrastructure needs, titled How to master Europe's digital infrastructure needs?, to which we are glad to submit this response. We want a strong, innovative and competitive Europe. To achieve this, the legislative environment must be focused on incentivizing the opportunities we are facing, and not as todays focus on regulating hypothetical risks. Through this, we can create progress and put Europe in the pole position. As indicated in our February 2024 policy paper Digitalisation for Sustainability, we believe more can and must done to maximise the untapped potential of digitalisation for sustainability. To this end, we have three overarching, strategic messages: 1. Secure connectivity roll-out needs to be supported in order to enable flexibility and data flows; 2. Europe needs to drive innovation and the scaling of cutting-edge technology, including AI; 3. Investments in digital infrastructure and solutions supporting sustainability must be incentivized more. It is of crucial importance that operators are enabled and supported in rolling out secure and next generation connectivity solutions, such as 5G, 6G, and fibre. Such innovative technologies are better suited for in turn rolling out sustainability friendly applications, such as AI, virtualisation, cloudification, IoT, and Web 4.0. To achieve the roll out of these next generation networks, scaling and financing are key elements, as it requires vast amounts of resources. More consolidation in such markets should therefore be looked at as an option to support the creation of an investment-friendly environment in Europe. Furthermore, we welcome the inclusion in the White Paper of a section on sustainability (section 3.2.9), and are glad to see the Commission is looking at ways to create incentives to attract investments in the electronic communications sector and that it intends to engage with industry to further improve the usability and potential scope of the EU Taxonomy in this context. The CEO Alliance further welcomes the proposal of assessing the metrics to estimate the net carbon impact of digital solutions in climate critical sectors such as energy, transportation, construction, and manufacturing, as our membership represents those sectors, and we look forward to participating in that work. *** The members of the CEO Alliance look forward to working with policymakers in the EU and its Member States to contribute towards digitalising Europe and its economy for sustainability purposes.
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