Under certain conditions, investments in new nuclear and gas power plants should be considered sustainable, suggests the EU Commission. The technological assumptions on which it is based are extremely optimistic – because there are no systems that are suitable for this yet.
At the turn of the year, the European Commission launched a legal text with the utmost discretion, which some denounce as a betrayal of the EU’s climate protection goals, while others consider it necessary to achieve them. But what exactly does this delegated act of the Commission on the taxonomy regulation contain, with which nuclear power and natural gas are to be assessed under certain conditions as sustainable technologies – in order to build a bridge to the year 2050, in which the Union no longer wants to contribute to the greenhouse effect on a net basis? A “press” analysis.
1 What is the taxonomy for, what exactly does it provide?
A lot of money is needed to break away from the fossil fuel economy – and above all private investments in “green” technologies for generating electricity, district heating and cooling. The Taxonomy Regulation has been creating uniform criteria for this in the EU since July 12, 2020. Taxonomy is a systematic classification, and the Commission has been doing this since then by means of delegated acts (to put it simply, implementing provisions) in order to record what counts as “green” or “sustainable”. This is largely non-binding, but large companies and, above all, financial investors will gradually be given more reporting requirements on how they support the EU’s climate targets. This taxonomy is mandatory here.