Environmental groups have sharply criticized the EU Parliament’s decision to classify gas and nuclear energy as “sustainable” energy sources. Greenpeace goes one step further and threatens to sue if this is implemented. Other associations are demanding a reaction from the federal government.
The environmental organization Greenpeace wants to appeal to the European Court of Justice against the classification of gas and nuclear as “sustainable” energy sources. The lawsuit will be filed if the Commission does not change or withdraw the decision to do so, Greenpeace said. Before doing so, the organization wanted to try again to convince the Commission that its decision violated Union law, she said. “Calling natural gas and nuclear energy ecologically sustainable is incompatible with the taxonomy regulation.”
With the announcement, Greenpeace reacted to the decision of the EU Parliament not to object to the classification of gas and nuclear as sustainable. A resolution to block the so-called taxonomy did not get the necessary majority in the Strasbourg Parliament.
The EU should not “deliberately leave investors in the dark about where they can use their money in a climate-friendly and future-proof manner,” explained Greenpeace finance expert Mauricio Vargas after the vote. “Anyone who calls gas and nuclear sustainable throws the financial players into disorientation, which invites them to make shady offers and undermine climate protection.”
Other associations also expressed sharp criticism. “This is a black day for climate protection and for democracy in Europe,” said BUND chairman Olaf Bandt. The EU Parliament has “placed the interests of the nuclear and natural gas lobby above science and the interests of climate protection”. BUND called on the federal government to take legal action, as Luxembourg and Austria have already announced.
With its decision, the EU Parliament “backed fossil systems, autocrats like Putin and brazen greenwashing,” said the climate protection movement Fridays for Future (FFF). “Every euro that flows into new infrastructure for fossil technologies such as nuclear power and natural gas is missing in the expansion of renewables and social compensation measures,” FFF warned against basing investment decisions on the taxonomy classification.
Germanwatch also criticized the inclusion of nuclear energy and natural gas in the criteria for sustainable activities as “seriously damaging this key instrument for transformation”. An instrument against greenwashing for the financial market is now becoming “an instrument for greenwashing of gas and nuclear energy,” explained their political director Christoph Bals. This is all the more incomprehensible given the use of gas supplies as a weapon by Russia.
“This greenwashing by the EU Commission and the majority of the European Parliament is unacceptable,” declared Germany’s Friends of Nature. The federal government must now do everything it can to “prevent this ecological and climate policy madness.” The citizens’ movement Finanzwende spoke of a “disaster for sustainable financial markets”.
