EUROSOLAR Rejects The Inclusion Of Nuclear And Natural Gas Activities In The EU Taxonomy For Sustainable Financing

The real Green Deal needs fast exit paths from natural gas and nuclear

Bonn, January 6, 2022. EUROSOLAR rejects any elements of nuclear and natural gas supply in the EU taxonomy for environmentally sustainable activities. If these technologies were to be included in the EU taxonomy as sustainable investments, they would be eligible for favorable financing terms.

Prof. Peter Droege, EUROSOLAR President: “New investments in gas and nuclear power plants would be another massive obstacle in the efforts to bring about the transition to renewables and mitigate the catastrophic consequences of abrupt global warming in Europe and around the world”.

Including either lethal energy system would substantially harm all of the six environmental objectives the Taxonomy Regulation is meant to uphold:

1. They further contribute to climate change through life-cycle emissions and opportunity costs

2. they make climate change adaptation infinitely more difficult by creating rigid systems prone to failure in extreme weather events

3. they do great harm to water and marine resources through heating and pollution

4. they obstruct the transition to a circular economy in creating unsolvable linear waste streams

5. they are both leading polluters

6. they are proven contributors to biodiversity and ecosystem damage and collapse in mining, processing, construction and waste production.

EUROSOLAR presents a vision in which the European Union and European countries embark on the renewable, climate-stabilizing path of a "Regenerative Decade": this is the most urgent goal for Europe in 2022 and requires a clear phase-out of all fossil fuels and nuclear energy as the overriding imperative of both EU policy and national practice.

The full declaration can be found here.

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