Lever 1 Policy measures Policy measures are crucial to catalyse strategic clean fuel investment by rewarding system value and ensuring fair, performance-based competition. Businesses stress the criticality of policy stability, emphasizing that even moderate but consistent policies can unlock investment, while shifting rules erode confidence and stall capital. Given the 20- 30-year lifetimes of most plants, long-term policy predictability is vital to sustain viable business cases. Market-based incentives Market-based incentives narrow the price gap between clean and fossil fuels by internalizing system value in market prices. Carbon pricing penalizes fuels proportional to their emissions, while tax credits reward clean producers via fiscal support. Contracts for difference (CfDs) complement these tools, providing revenue certainty through a guaranteed fixed strike price and compensating producers when market prices fall, reducing investor risk and unlocking capital. Incentives that price in local benefits, such as tax rebates for projects demonstrating community value like job creation, can further incentivize investment and ensure that clean fuel development delivers shared economic and societal gains. Targeted direct incentives, for example with capex or development subsidies, also help kick-start and crowd private capital into emerging technologies, where there is a plausible path to competitiveness. Standards and certifications Effective, transparent and stable certification systems and taxonomies are essential for investor confidence, ensuring clean fuel projects qualify for incentives, comply with regulation and deliver verified environmental benefits. International alignment and interoperability enable trade and efficient supply-demand matching, allowing advantaged producers to compete in high-demand markets. Consistent LCAs underpin performance- based tools such as credit issuance and trading, while shared standards translate environmental integrity into economic value, rewarding real performance and supporting global scale. Demand creation Demand-creation mechanisms, such as mandates and public procurement, secure offtake to improve revenue predictability, reduce investor risk and enhance project bankability. Blending mandates set minimum clean fuel shares in the fuel pool, establishing stable demand for long- term investment. Performance-based mandates reward verified carbon intensity, allowing the most sustainable options to compete to deliver abatement in the most affordable way. Public procurement uses government purchasing power to create early demand and attract private capital. Together, these tools can build visibility, confidence and scale, unlocking early clean fuel projects ahead of organic market demand growth when deployed in the right way. Parallels could be drawn with natural gas markets for pipeline gas and LNG, where long-term contracts have played a key role in underpinning large investments to build markets. There are also similarities with renewable electricity, where auctions, power purchase agreements and feed-in tariffs played a key role in early scaling-up of markets and investments. Given the 20- 30-year lifetimes of most plants, long-term policy predictability is vital to sustain viable business cases. Fuelling the Future: How Business, Finance and Policy can Accelerate the Clean Fuels Market 24

Fuelling the Future 2026