EU's defence focus risks sidelining cleantech innovation, warns Green MEP

Sitting in his office in Brussels, Green MEP Michael Bloss is getting ready for another busy day.

The European Commission has recently announced a major funding package for defence, as well as rollbacks in CSR reporting deadlines. Funders in the cleantech industry are understandably nervous about what that means for the climate crisis.

Brussels right now seems quite focussed on defence and of course the emergent tariff war. On the security point, hundreds of billions potentially going into military build-up, not a famously carbon-friendly industry. What do you think that means for developing cleantech across Europe?

"I think that is really the point. The clean industrial deal was one of the big ideas and visions for this [legislative cycle], and now it has really lost in the priority ranking. Inside the clean industrial deal, there is an action plan for steel, for cars and for chemistry, but nothing for cleantech. And that's really a problem, because we don't have any time to waste."

"We have great targets in the Net-Zero Industry Act, but up until now really little strategy on how to get to these targets. The commission has to work on that, but we see they are focussed on other questions. The core crisis we have is that we are losing industrial jobs, and supporting emerging technologies is one way to stop it. So we should really focus more on this."

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The white paper on ReArm Europe does refer to the Commission’s hopes that funding will go to more clean or green military and dual-use tech, as well as carbon reduction from harmonising procurement and manufacturing around the continent. Do you see much promise in those ideas?

”It’s really difficult to see where these huge synergies come from. It would be rather in the energy-intensive industries where you would find some synergies. I mean, it's great, and for us important, that there could be more research in military and public applications, and also dual-usage. But not taking the current research budget, which has research and development for greentech, and then thinking how to make dual-use for the military. I think it’s important we don't narrow the space for cleantech.”

The Commission is pushing its ‘Simplification’ legislative package, which rolls back a lot of deadlines for CSR and due diligence reporting, among others. A recent commentary called it “a profound retreat from the EU’s sustainability commitments.” How much do you think this will hamper progress?

”I think [progress] is still possible. The biggest problem is that it puts clean development against economic growth, which is absolutely not the case. The Green Deal is not something that only favours environmental and social issues. It's actually an economic development strategy. Pretending that it isn’t basically says we want to keep the status quo or go backwards. That's not a good pathway for the future. Breaking this dichotomy is really important."

"The other problem with this whole simplification agenda is that it pretends that rules for decarbonising would hamper economic development, whereas the opposite is true. Sustainability reporting is something we did because companies and the industry asked us to simplify the different requirements they get from financial institutions. If we abandon it, that doesn't mean companies don't have to report anymore. In the end you have 27 different member states’ rules, and all of the banks asking different questions, and it makes it even more complicated.”

From the outside, it seems pretty clear environmental issues are simply not top of the agenda right now in Brussels. Does it feel the same way among you and your colleagues in the European parliament?

”Absolutely. And it’s really interesting that we saw the hottest March in history. Last year was the hottest year in history. Europe is the fastest-heating continent on the planet. The climate crisis is hitting hard already and somehow people pretend that it's just not happening. The next five years are really important to getting policies in place that at least mitigate the hardest risks of the climate crisis. We should be thinking about how to be the best in terms of decarbonising, because we know everyone will decarbonise over the mid-term and we should have the best technologies to help them, because there’s a good business case.”

Speaking about technologies, what areas of climate tech are you most excited about at the moment?

”I'm still very much excited by renewables and flexibilities, and how they can impact everyday life. Flexible electricity prices, for instance, if you have a smart home, you can really optimize your energy consumption. We are in a cost of living crisis, and that means reducing the costs for every family, for every household, and I think that's exactly what is needed."

"There’s a lot of potential as well in, for instance, bi-directional charging in cars, and how that could be the storage for the whole electricity system. So really integrating the whole energy system, making it flexible, making it cheap – there are a lot of things to gain there. [The EU] is spending 350 billion euros just to buy fossil fuels from the outside world. That's consumption spending. If we would spend that money as investments into our energy system, that would be a much better deal.”