The Industrial Accelerator Act | Jobs for the Future
On 4 March 2026, the European Commission adopted a legislative proposal to increase demand for low-carbon, European-made technologies and products. The Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) will boost manufacturing, grow businesses, and create jobs in the EU, while supporting industry’s adoption of cleaner, future-ready technologies.
The proposal aims to reverse the decline of EU manufacturing which fell from 17.4% of GDP in 2000 to 14.3% in 2024 with a target of reaching 20% of GDP by 2035.
The IAA introduces targeted “Made in EU” and/or low-carbon requirements for public procurement and public support schemes, applying to selected strategic sectors including steel, cement, aluminium, cars, and net-zero technologies, with a framework that can be extended to other energy-intensive sectors such as chemicals.
For clean technologies, the legislation defines which components of wind, solar photovoltaic, electrolysers, heat pumps, and nuclear must be European.
The IAA is estimated to generate almost 150,000 jobs and achieve approximately 30.58 Mt CO₂eq in greenhouse gas reductions by 2030.
The Industrial Accelerator Act sits squarely at the intersection of ESEIA’s core work areas: clean technology innovation, energy-intensive industry decarbonisation, and the translation of EU policy ambition into real industrial transformation.
The Act’s focus on creating lead markets for wind, solar, electrolysers, and heat pumps all central to Europe’s net-zero technology ecosystem directly connects to the research and innovation work carried out by ESEIA members and partners. Its emphasis on skills, jobs, and green workforce development also resonates with ESEIA’s educational mission.
For ESEIA, this legislation connects directly to active work on clean technology deployment and the green workforce, notably through the RE4Industry project, and sets the stage for the 17th ESEIA Lecture Series | Jobs for Green Transformation to take place on 23 April 2026, which will explore the skills and innovation ecosystem dimensions the Act puts in motion. Registration is now open
