About BACC
BACC stands for Business Advisers on Climate & Competitiveness, and the acronym is deliberate. Europe can come back as an industrial power, and that comeback runs through effective energy and climate policy rather than around it. BACC wants Europe to go “back to the future”: leveraging what Europe already does well in frontier engineering and clean innovation, and shaping EU climate policy to scale those innovations into homegrown low-carbon production and exports.
BACC works for early movers with actual skin in tomorrow’s industrial game
Through focused lobbying, coalition-building and narrative work, we help early movers win the policy battles that decide whether their cleaner products reach scale inside Europe, or whether that market share ends up somewhere else.
For that to work, two things have to move together. Climate ambition has to hold, so that early mover investments are rewarded rather than eroded. And the enabling conditions for heavy industry have to improve, so that Europe keeps its industrial base at home while it decarbonises.
What BACC focuses on
We work across the full policy stack that decides whether a sustainable business case in heavy industry flies or fails in Europe. That means ambitious energy and climate targets combined with the enabling conditions that allow EU heavy industry to reach them. Our focus includes, but is not limited to:
Climate ambition that works for early movers and can empower the rest
We focus on the reforms of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS1) and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), as well as sectoral targets and mandates. We push for ambition that creates demand for the companies already doing the hard work. Industrialising their solutions makes the transition less costly, and less daunting, for everyone that follows.
Affordable clean electricity
Whether directly or indirectly via hydrogen, electrification is the key decarbonisation lever for most heavy industries. If European power prices do not become more affordable for households and industrial consumers, the transition happens elsewhere. We work on electricity market design, grid expansion, industrial power purchase agreements (PPAs), and more effective EU funding instruments.
A level playing field on trade
Beyond CBAM, trade and climate need to meet across the full policy toolkit. We work on non-price criteria in EU public procurement, state aid and other funding rules, so that European cleantech producers are not outcompeted by imports that are excessively subsidised or face no equivalent climate costs.
Faster permitting
Grids, clean industrial sites and mines for critical raw materials cannot wait a decade. We work on permitting reform so that the infrastructure the transition depends on can actually be built.
Your cause
Get in touch if you need help on any of these topics, or another issue in the EU energy and climate policy space.
BACC helps early movers cut through the Brussels noise in three ways:
- We monitor and gather intelligence through our extensive network of EU policymakers and stakeholders, signalling early to clients what is coming up in EU policy.
- We help clients craft winning narratives aimed at what EU policymakers actually care about, delivered in the form most useful to them.
- We assess when it is best for clients to engage the EU institutions individually, and when it is time to build a dedicated coalition of like-minded organisations.
This is how we help clients move the EU policy needle.
