EU draft on financing nuclear and gas plants raises ire

In draft conclusions seen by The Associated Press, the EU’s executive commission proposes a classification system for defining what counts as an investment in sustainable energy.

Under certain conditions, it would allow gas and nuclear energy to be part of the mix. The plans would have a huge impact on nuclear-fired economies like France and on Germany’s gas-fuelled power plants since they might have had to fundamentally change their strategies.

Energy use accounts for about three-quarters of the greenhouse gas emissions produced in the EU and is thus instrumental to the 27-nation bloc’s efforts to meet its commitments for curbing global warming. The plans still need the backing of a large majority of the 27 member states and a simple majority in the European Parliament. But the initial thrust from the EU Commission is a key element of the procedure for passage.

”Classifying investments in gas and nuclear power as sustainable contradicts the Green Deal,” the EU’s initiative that is intended to make the bloc climate-neutral by 2050, said Ska Keller, the president of the Green group in the European Parliament. France has asked for nuclear power to be included in the so-called “taxonomy” by the end of the year, leading the charge with several other EU countries that operate nuclear power plants and want to make it eligible for green financing.

French Minister for European Affairs Clement Beaune said the proposal is good on a technical level and insisted on Sunday that the bloc ”cannot become carbon neutral by 2050 without nuclear energy. Germany, the EU’s biggest economy, is heading the other way. Germany shut down half of the six nuclear plants it still had in operation on Friday, a year before the country draws the final curtain on its decades-long use of atomic power.

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