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 influencing 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 ambitions 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 enabling conditions that allow EU heavy industry to reach those targets. 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 such solutions is crucial to make it less costly and less scary for others to make the transition as well.
Affordable clean electricity
Whether directly or indirectly (via hydrogen), electrification will be the key lever for most heavy industries to decarbonise. 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 the non-price criteria in EU public procurement, state aid and other funding rules to make sure European cleantech producers are not unfairly outcompeted by imports that are excessively subsidised or do not face 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.
Synergies with the EU defence agenda
New geopolitical realities and a war being waged at the EU’s borders mean Europe must stop relying on a peace dividend and ramp up its own defence and energy resilience. We therefore aim to find sensible synergies with the EU’s cleantech agenda to ensure one agenda does not come at the expense of the other.
Your cause
Get in touch if you need help on any of the aforementioned 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 other stakeholders to signal to clients at an early stage what is coming up EU policy-wise.
- We help clients craft winning narratives aimed at what EU policymakers actually care about, in the way that is most useful for them.
- We are hyper-focussed on assessing when it is best for our clients to engage individually with the EU institutions, and when it is time to build dedicated coalitions of like-minded organisations.
This is how we help clients move the EU policy needle.
