Frontier’s report on effective mandatory product standards for low carbon industrial products launched today.

This report outlines the important role of effective mandatory product standards in decarbonising heavy industry and supporting economic growth in the UK.

Mandatory product standards, as one element of the policy package, can help play an important role in creating a level and credible playing field for industrial products. 

The report is based on engagement with over two dozen experts from industry, think tanks, and academia, and research into the effectiveness of product standards policies internationally.  Stakeholders consulted for this report overwhelmingly reported that voluntary standards are unlikely to produce the significant change needed to establish markets for low carbon industrial products, and that mandatory standards are needed to have an effective impact on reducing emissions.  The real challenge is how to ensure mandatory standards are well designed.

Well-designed work on mandatory standards should:

• outline clear timelines for their introduction;
• assign responsibility for developing and implementing mandatory product standards to a named institution;
• require data transparency and reporting as soon as possible;
• apply throughout the supply chain to both intermediate and finished products;
• ensure methodologies account for products’ whole life-cycle climate impact;
• be adjustable over time to ensure that standards continue to encourage innovation and decarbonisation;
• be interoperable with those developed internationally;
• account for drivers of consumer behaviour to maximise their impact; and
• build on the Industrial Decarbonisation and Net Zero Strategies.

For more information on these policy recommendations as well as the opportunities for mandatory product standards to support decarbonisation and investment in the UK,  please click the following link.  

For further information please contact media@frontier-economics.com or call +44 (0) 20 7031 7000.