Faced with the ecological transition, industry is groping for answers 

The 2020s are already proving to be a challenging decade for companies after the slow recovery from the 2008 financial crisis. Many companies have slowed down or even stopped all activity during the lockdown of the spring of 2020, the resumption of the global economy has caused a logistical bottleneck (as reported in the Lëtzebuerger Journal) and has also suffered, with an energy crisis that was already threatening at the end of 2021 and has worsened with the war in Ukraine and its consequences for Russian gas imports (see also our article on the ins and outs of the energy crisis). All this against the backdrop of an ecological transition already underway for some, and still to come for others – and not the least of the challenges they face.

"This has been a topical issue for a long time and will remain so", confirms Jean-Paul Olinger, director of the Luxembourg Employers' Association (Union des Entreprises Luxembourgeoises – UEL). "In its integrated national energy and climate plan (PNEC, editor's note), Luxembourg has set out its objectives for reducing greenhouse gases by 2030 and 2050. Of course, the Covid-19 crisis and now the war in Ukraine, with the inflation that we know, have made all these exercises more difficult because the results of the companies are not as strong as before the pandemic. Some of the financial resources that were available to finance the ecological transition are no longer available. These successive crises may have frozen the momentum of certain projects, and we need to see to what extent they can be put back on track." A position that Nancy Thomas, director of Inspiring more sustainability (IMS), does not share. "I don't have the impression that the energy crisis is impacting on sustainability topics, on the contrary."