by Kate Abnett
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Two European Parliament committees adopted a resolution on Tuesday opposing the Commission’s plan to include gas and nuclear activities in a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities.
The text was approved by 76 votes for, 62 against and 4 abstentions by the deputies of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee and the Environment, Health and Food Safety Committee.
The resolution will now have to be voted on in plenary during the July 4-7 session. If an absolute majority of MEPs (353 out of 705) opposes the Commission’s proposal, the latter will have to withdraw or modify it.
Last February, after more than a year of discussions, the Community executive proposed to consider in the future as “sustainable” certain investments in gas and nuclear power.
But this proposal to integrate these two sources of energy into the European taxonomy, a classification on which the access of future power plant construction projects to private funding will partly depend, divides the Member States of the Union and the European Parliament.
France, in particular, sees nuclear power as a means of achieving its CO2 emission reduction targets, while Germany is wondering about the problem of waste storage.
The classification of gas as a “green” investment is defended by Poland and Bulgaria among others, while Denmark, Ireland and others believe that it would undermine the Union’s credibility in the fight against climate change.
The text of the resolution voted on Tuesday stresses that gas and nuclear cannot be considered sustainable energy sources because they do not meet the environmental criteria established by the EU and that their inclusion in the taxonomy would only increase investor confusion.
“We need massive investment in expanding renewables, not in energies of the past,” said Green MEP Bas Eickhout, one of the lawmakers behind the resolution.
(Kate Abnett report, French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse, edited by Sophie Louet)
click here for restrictions
©2022 Reuters
