Coalitions
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.
Why coalitions sit at the heart of BACC
If you want to go fast in Brussels, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. The EU institutions need to see that an issue matters across multiple industries and multiple capitals before they act on it. Early movers are, by definition, ahead of their sector, which means they are often the smaller voice inside broader industry federations that have to speak for the full range of ambition in a sector.
Coalitions are how BACC solves for that. Over the past decade I have built and coordinated coalitions of early movers, both informal groupings assembled for a specific file and formal coalitions with a standing name and a secretariat. Both have their place. Informal coalitions are faster to set up, lighter to run, and well suited to a specific legislative window. Formal coalitions carry more weight over time, give members a recognisable brand to rally around, and can sustain pressure across several files and several institutional cycles.
BACC is happy to work with clients in either mode, depending on what the file calls for.
Business for CBAM Coalition
The first formal coalition that BACC runs is the Business for CBAM Coalition, which I founded in 2025 and for which BACC acts as secretariat.
The EU ETS (ETS1) and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism are the most important pieces of EU climate and trade policy of the last decade. They are also two of the most politically contested. The Coalition exists to make sure that early movers with a direct stake in a robust, well-implemented ETS1 and CBAM have a dedicated and coordinated voice in the debate, alongside the usual industry federations.
Membership spans early movers across steel, iron, cement, fertilisers and hydrogen, together with cleantech associations that share the same view on carbon leakage protection. The founding members are LKAB, Ecocem, INTERFER Group, Stegra, Gravithy, Hydnum Steel, the Renewable Hydrogen Coalition, Cleantech for Europe, and the Alliance for Low-Carbon Cement and Concrete. SSAB, Outokumpu and FertigHy have since joined to strengthen the Coalition further.
The Coalition publishes positions on the files that shape the effectiveness of ETS1 and CBAM in practice, including:
- For CBAM, Article 27a, anti-circumvention, downstream products, indirect emissions, international credits, and the Temporary Decarbonisation Fund.
- For ETS1, the linear reduction factor (LRF), market stability reserve (MSR), free allocation conditionality, ETS product benchmarks, sector scope extension, and funding instruments such as the ETS investment booster and Innovation Fund.
Full membership, manifesto and positions are available at businessforcbam.eu.
How BACC runs coalitions
Running a coalition well is a craft. It is also the difference between a group that appears once on a joint letter and then fades, and one that shapes a file over several years. BACC’s coalition work rests on five building blocks: Secretariat, member onboarding, policy drafting, institutional outreach, and campaigning. Get in touch so we can run you through all of these building blocks in detail.
Starting a new coalition
If you see a file where early movers are not yet organised and should be, get in touch. BACC can assess whether the demand is there, test the idea with policymakers, and build the coalition from scratch if the opportunity is real.
