In reaction to the presentation of the final draft of the complementary delegated act on the climate part of the EU taxonomy, Nathan Fabian, the chairman of the ‘Platform on Sustainable Finance’ (a stakeholder group advising the European Commission on taxonomy), issued a statement on Thursday 3 February criticising the institution for not maintaining a science-based approach to the issue of including fossil gas and nuclear in its taxonomy.
“The evident departure from a science-based approach to determining when transitioning energy activities do or do not make a substantial contribution to climate change mitigation targets, risks weakening the integrity of sustainable finance”, Fabian said.
Unveiled on Wednesday 3 September, the draft delegated act provides for the inclusion of certain fossil gas and nuclear energy activities in the EU’s taxonomy – a classification system to determine whether an economic activity is considered environmentally sustainable in order to guide private investment – as “transitional” activities.
The text therefore includes a number of conditions, such as greenhouse gas emission thresholds for gas installations, criteria for nuclear waste management and deadlines for issuing permits, which are intended to ensure the transitional nature of these activities (see EUROPE 12882/1).
Nevertheless, Fabian laments in his statement that the criteria are now “weaker” than the draft text that was sent to the ‘Platform on Sustainable Finance’ and Member States for consultation (see EUROPE 12860/1).
However, the Platform had already criticised the previous criteria in an assessment of the draft text submitted to the Commission (see EUROPE 12875/9).
According to Mr Fabian, fossil gas and nuclear activities may have “a role [...] in a transitioning economy”, but “their place is not in the Green Taxonomy”, given the “weak technical selection criteria in the complementary delegated act”.
See the statement: https://aeur.eu/f/5w (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)