On Tuesday 2 June, the Official Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Belgium and Luxembourg held another lunch-time discussion as part of its ‘Business Circle’ series, at which Johannes Ten Broeke, Head of Cabinet to Wopke Hoekstra, Commissioner for Climate, Net Zero and Clean Growth, gave a presentation explaining how the EU combines climate policy with energy security objectives.

Following the welcome cocktail reception, the Chamber’s president, Pablo López Álvarez, opened the lunch by thanking the speaker for his participation in the debate and outlining his career.

Next to speak was Maarten Wetselaar, CEO of Moeve, the event’s sponsor, who highlighted the company’s commitment to decarbonisation and sustainability, with numerous major projects in Spain. An example of this is the Andalusian Green Hydrogen Valley, Europe’s largest renewable hydrogen project.

However, Wetselaar considered that, although we are on the right track, “Europe has homework to do”, and urged the authorities not to change climate policy ambitions at this stage and to focus on their execution.

Ten Broeke, for his part, began his presentation by setting the current state of climate policy against the backdrop of the conflict between Iran and the United States, which is causing a rise in energy prices across the European Union as a side effect. This situation has once again highlighted Europe’s vital need to regain energy sovereignty.

The ETS, under review

In this regard, the Head of Cabinet to the Climate Commissioner listed the legislative initiatives currently underway to reconcile energy security with sustainability and decarbonisation, such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which came into force last January.

In this context, the revision of the Emissions Trading System (ETS), due to be adopted this summer with the aim of continuing to incentivise European industrial electrification, will also play a very significant role, and its adoption will be “crucial”.

According to Ten Broeke, the key to ensuring these European measures have a long-term impact lies in “bringing in the rest of the world” that clean climate policies work and that they are viable and attractive from a business perspective: “Decarbonisation does not mean deindustrialisation”.

Following the presentation, there was an extensive question-and-answer session in which topics such as large-scale hydrogen projects, the management of non-recyclable waste and the modernisation of the energy tax system were raised.