The European Commission would consider qualifying any investment in energy infrastructure suitable for hydrogen or low-carbon gas production as ‘sustainable’, says a draft delegated act to establish the EU’s taxonomy for climate change mitigation and adaptation, seen by EUROPE on Monday 22 March.
Scheduled for April, this delegated act seeks to define criteria for determining which investments can be considered “sustainable”, “transitional” or “enabling” activities, under the EU Taxonomy Regulation (2020/852).
In particular, it will have to decide how to treat gas and nuclear power in the taxonomy, two issues that the co-legislators had chosen to leave aside for the time being (see EUROPE 12677/7, 12392/14).
While the gas industry argues that the taxonomy should not close the door to gas altogether, environmental NGOs are concerned about this possibility.
Eleven of these latter reacted immediately to the new draft of the delegated act by sending a letter to the Commission.
Pointing out that ‘low-carbon gases’ have no legal definition, they express concern that this concept will open “loopholes” by being introduced into the taxonomy.
Regarding hydrogen, these NGOs ask that only investments in renewable hydrogen infrastructure (i.e., produced from electricity from renewable energy sources) be included in the taxonomy and that the possible blending of hydrogen with fossil gas be excluded.
EUROPE will come back to the content of the preliminary draft of the delegated act in more detail.
See the NGO letter: https://bit.ly/3190Q3n (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)