"The European Commission is facing a furious backlash over plans to allow gas and nuclear to be labelled as “green” investments, as Germany’s economy minister led the charge against “greenwashing”.

The EU executive was accused of trying to bury the proposals by releasing long-delayed technical rules on its green investment guidebook to diplomats on New Year’s Eve, hours before a deadline expired.

The draft proposals seen by the Guardian would allow gas and nuclear to be included in the EU “taxonomy of environmentally sustainable economic activities”, subject to certain conditions.

The taxonomy is a classification system intended to direct billions to clean-energy projects to meet the EU goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

Robert Habeck, who became the economy and climate action minister last month as part of a traffic-light coalition of Social Democrats, business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens, said the plans “water down the good label for sustainability”. Habeck, a co-leader of the Greens, also told the German press agency dpa it was “questionable whether this greenwashing will even find acceptance on the financial market”.

Austria’s government repeated its threat to sue the commission if the plans go ahead. Leonore Gewessler, the country’s climate action minister, said neither gas nor nuclear belonged in the taxonomy “because they are harmful to the climate and the environment and destroy the future of our children”.

She added: “We will examine the current draft carefully and have already commissioned a legal opinion on nuclear power in the taxonomy. If these plans are implemented in this way, we will sue.”

She also accused the commission of a “a night and fog operation” in the timing of the publication, a charge echoed by Luxembourg’s energy minister, Claude Turmes, who described the draft as a provocation.

However, opponents are not expected to secure the supermajority needed to block the plans.

France and other pro-nuclear states, such as the Czech Republic and Hungary, support the inclusion of nuclear, while many governments in central, eastern and southern Europe lobbied for gas to be included as a “bridge” fuel.

Germany’s finance minister, Christian Lindner of the FDP, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung on Sunday that Germany needed gas-fired power plants as a transition technology because it was foregoing coal and nuclear power. “I am grateful that arguments were apparently taken up by the commission,” he said.

He was speaking after Germany closed three of its six nuclear power plants on Friday, to meet a pledge of phasing out the technology by the end of 2022.

France’s European affairs minister, Clément Beaune, said the proposal was good on a technical level and the EU could not reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 without nuclear power."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/03/fury-eu-moves-ahead-plans-label-gas-nuclear-green

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-30/eu-considers-giving-some-gas-and-nuclear-projects-green-label


EU Weighs Giving Some Gas and Nuclear
Projects Green Investment Label


European Commission is drafting sustainability criteria rules
Green classification for gas and nuclear divides EU members

By

Ewa Krukowska

and Alberto Nardelli
November 30, 2021, 11:12 AM EST

The European Union is considering allowing some natural-gas and nuclear energy projects to be labeled as green investments -- as a temporary measure -- in a move that could help the shift to net zero but will also upset environmentalists.

The European Commission is weighing whether to classify as sustainable investment in gas plants that replace coal and emit no more than 270 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The projects would have to be finalized by 2030, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the talks on the proposal are private.

The design of the EU investment classification system, known as taxonomy, is closely watched by investors worldwide and could potentially attract billions of euros in private finance to help the green transition. The challenge is to ensure the decision on nuclear and gas gets political support, while avoiding the risk of greenwashing, or overstating the significance of emissions cuts.