What’s a “delegated act on taxonomy”? 

On the last day of 2021, someone in the European Commission was getting ready for a very special firework display. Only a few weeks after COP26, where leaders were holding hands with the fossil fuel lobby, the Commission published its complementary Delegated Act on Taxonomy. 

Wait, on what?

Earlier this year, the EU Commission unveiled a labeling system for investment that could direct hundreds of billions of Euros to corporations and industries that by then would be labeled “sustainable”.

Thus, “taxonomy” is a set of rules spelling out detailed criteria that companies need to comply with in order to win a ‘green investment’ label in the EU.

From the beginning, the Commission made it very clear that they had a special definition of “sustainable”. It came as no surprise that environmental NGOs immediately distanced themselves from the project. After bilateral negotiations with each member state government, the Commission set off the firework on 31 December: 

Repeat after me: Nuclear and gas are g-r-e-e-n!

The complementary Delegated Act includes nuclear and gas. No kidding, sorry.

The complementary act which aims to include nuclear and fossil gas energies into the sustainable finance framework is incompatible with the taxonomy regulation, the scientific recommendations, and the EU goal to be net zero by 2050 at the latest.

Taxonomy has become overly politicised.

Our MEPs in the European Parliament’s Environment Committee demand a Taxonomy that is science-based and not the result of political interest bargaining. We expect other groups to join us and object to the EU Commission sacrificing science for the sake of political expediency. 

The words from EU Commissioner for Financial Services Mairead McGuiness seem to come right from the script of the movie “Don’t look up”. She  shocked climate activists and scientists alike when in reference to the controversies around gas and nuclear she claimed, “Taxonomy has to be science-based but you cannot divorce the science from the real world and real concerns”.

https://twitter.com/silviamodig/status/1486315526351695882?s=20