Two European Parliament committees have voted against the European Commission’s plan to include nuclear energy and gas in the European Union’s (EU’s) future energy taxonomy. (The European Commission is the EU’s executive body.) The two committees concerned are the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee and the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee.

To be precise, the majority of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in both committees voted against the European Commission’s ‘Taxonomy Complementary Climate Delegated Act’, which included nuclear and certain gas energy programmes in the list of sustainable energy options, to help with climate change adaptation and mitigation. The votes of the committees would have no direct impact on the European Commission’s plans, but they indicated the mood of the MEPs serving on them. According to World Nuclear News, the total votes from both committees came to 76 against the Act, 62 in favour and four abstentions, while six MEPs did not vote.

This Act was introduced in March and would come into force on January 1 next year, unless a full session of European Parliament voted against it. The European Parliament has 705 MEPs and they would start voting on the Act on July 4.

The EU has been divided over nuclear energy and whether or not it should be categorised as sustainable (12 EU states, including France, publicly backed the inclusion of nuclear). As a result, nuclear (along with gas) was left out of the European Commission’s initial Delegated Act, to allow further assessment of its sustainability. The EU Joint Research Centre, in a report that was then reviewed by two other expert groups, concluded that nuclear energy was sustainable. As a result, the European Commission decided to include nuclear as a transitional energy source, by means of the Complementary Delegated Act.

The European Commission defines transitional energy sources as those which “cannot yet be replaced by technologically and economically feasible low-carbon alternatives, but do contribute to climate change mitigation and with the potential to play a major role in the transition to a climate-neutral economy, in line with EU climate goals and commitments, and subject to strict conditions, without crowding out investment in renewables.”

On its release, the nuclear industry welcomed the inclusion of nuclear energy in the Complementary Delegated Act. However, reservations were expressed about it being classified as transitional.    

“The Commission has been right to reject political pressure to keep nuclear excluded from the taxonomy,” affirmed World Nuclear Association director-general Sama Bilbao y León, on the release of the Act. “But in seeking a politically acceptable compromise, it has produced some conditions that are not scientifically justified or applied consistently to other energy technologies. This will hinder the EU from achieving its energy and environmental goals.”