been successfully applied in multiple industries, from clothing and household appliances to food and packaging materials. Leading examples are the EU energy label scheme and the voluntary US Energy Star programme. Labels for CO2-derived products would have to clearly indicate emissions reductions. Governments are well-placed to set up appropriate labelling programmes in consultation with industry.

While labels may steer consumers towards purchasing more CO2-derived products, testing and certification are required to validate product quality and ensure compliance with certain criteria defined by authoritative organisations. Certification plays an important role in many product markets, from electronics to food and sustainable forest products. Testing of new products can take many years to ensure that criteria are met. Although governments are not always involved in these processes, they can facilitate them by co-ordinating testing and certification requirements. Furthermore, governments can support the development of international standards for CO2-derived products. This is particularly important for building materials, such as CO2-derived cement and aggregates, which require extensive demonstration and compliance with industry standards before widespread adoption (ICEF, 2017).

Research development and demonstration

Support for research, development and demonstration (RD&D) can play a key role in the deployment of promising CO2-derived products and services that are scalable, provide climate benefits and have good prospects to become competitive over time. This includes both shortterm opportunities, such as certain building materials, and long-term applications that can play a key role in a net-zero CO2 emission economy, for example aviation fuels and chemicals. In addition to conversion technologies, RD&D is needed across other parts of the value chain, such as CO2 capture technologies and low-carbon hydrogen production. RD&D support should have a clear link to deployment policies.

To date, several governments and agencies have been supporting RD&D of CO2-conversion technologies. For example, Japan released a Carbon Recycling Roadmap in June 2019 with emphasis on early RD&D for commercialisation of CO2 use technologies form 2030 (METI, 2019). The European Commission (EC) is funding several RD&D programmes, including publicprivate partnerships, under the Horizon 2020 umbrella. In total, 61 projects on CO2 use technologies were funded over the last decade for a total of USD 273 million23 (SAM, 2018). In addition, the EC is designing the Innovation Fund, which will be funded by the auctioning of the emission allowances of the EU ETS, starting in 2021. The Fund will include support for the demonstration of innovative CO2 use technologies amongst a broad portfolio of low-carbon technologies and may total more than USD 11 billion, depending on the carbon price (EC, 2019). In the United States, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) and the DOE Carbon Use and Reuse R&D portfolio have supported CO2 conversion projects and R&D initiatives (respectively) (US DOE, 2019). In China, several R&D programmes were set up as part of the 13th Five Year Plan, primarily focusing on chemicals and building materials (ACCA21, 2019) while in Canada several innovation funding programs are supporting CO2 us in various applications (NRCan, 2019).

In parallel, several prize programmes have been initiated with the aim to promote the development of CO2 conversion technologies by awarding a prize to the most innovative CO2 use applications. The most notable example is the NRG COSIA Carbon XPrize, which is a

23 Based on a conversion rate of 0.89 EUR/USD for the year 2017 (OECD, 2018).

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IEA. All rights reserved.

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IEA. All rights reserved.