More than 150 NGOs sent a letter to the European Commission on Thursday 23 September calling on it not to include fossil gas in the EU’s taxonomy.
These organisations believe it would “ruin the taxonomy’s credibility, undermine the European Green Deal, and send a disastrous global signal at odds with the urgent need for climate mitigation efforts”.
To support their claim, they point out that, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), there is no need to invest in new fossil fuel projects for the global energy sector to achieve zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 (see EUROPE 12721/27).
They added: “Given that the average lifespan of gas-fired plants is 25 years, it is clear that there is no room in the EU’s carbon budget (...) for any new fossil gas-fired plants”.
The EU taxonomy is a classification system for economic activities that are considered to be sustainable. It consists of a regulation that is progressively supplemented by the adoption of delegated acts.
When the first delegated act on the climate aspect of the taxonomy was presented last April, the institution decided to leave the issue of fossil gas and nuclear power in abeyance in order to take the time to examine the possibility of including them in the taxonomy through a subsequent delegated act (see EUROPE 12703/2). The latter is expected by the end of the year.
See the letter: https://bit.ly/3AwcmGd (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)