Brussels, Paris He has almost reached his target. The European politician Sven Giegold has collected more than 66,000 signatures, and it should be 75,000. With the virtual petition, the Green politician is resisting the idea that investments in new nuclear and gas-fired power plants in Europe will in future be considered climate-friendly. Giegold warns of a “fatal course”. The chance of stopping them, however, disappears – no matter how many signatures are added.
The outrage applies to the EU taxonomy, a set of rules that defines which business activities will be shown as sustainable in the future and which will not. One might think that such technical questions only interest specialists. But the topic has achieved the highest political importance.
While nuclear power is considered an energy policy taboo in Germany, it forms the foundation of economic transformation in France. The French are fighting with all their might to ensure that nuclear power plants receive the seal of climate friendliness. Because they fear that the taxonomy will not only become the guideline for bank lending, but could in future also determine which technologies can still be subsidized by the state in accordance with EU law.
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And the French seem to be doing well. In an internal commission paper that is available to the Handelsblatt, nuclear power is classified as a sustainable investment. At the beginning of December, possibly before the new federal government takes office, the EU authority is likely to make its decision public. Then the taxonomy could hardly be stopped.
Nuclear power proponents are in the majority
The outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) has practically lost the fight. The Commission’s proposal is a so-called delegated legal act and can therefore only be rejected if Germany has 19 other EU states by its side. “That is a very high hurdle and is unlikely to be the case,” said Merkel in a recent interview.
The Chancellor’s nuclear defeatism also alarms the Greens. “It is of crucial importance to dissuade the commission from their bad idea,” warns Giegold. “It is neither in the German nor in the French interest that a secondary question spoils the mood and spoils the prospect of a new start in European politics.”
But from France’s point of view, dealing with nuclear energy is non-negotiable. “We cannot think taxonomy without nuclear power,” said Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire in an interview with Handelsblatt last week. “We have invested in nuclear energy for decades. It’s part of the French identity and a strategic decision. ”
Around 70 percent of French electricity comes from nuclear power, which in France plays a key role in decarbonising the economy and producing climate-neutral hydrogen.
France sees nuclear power as a technology of the future
The government in Paris sees itself confirmed by an analysis by the electricity grid operator RTE, which has run through several scenarios for France’s energy supply in 2050. The result: the total costs for a conversion to exclusively renewable energies would be significantly higher than for an electricity mix with nuclear power.
The French government therefore wants to build new power plants and promote the development of new types of mini-reactors, the so-called Small Modular Reactors (SMR).
It recently pledged a billion euros in government support to the nuclear industry. But Paris is also banking on private investments in nuclear power – which would be endangered by an exclusion from the taxonomy.
The compromise that France is offering the Germans is: temporarily and “under strict conditions”, gas could also fall under the green investment rules. “We know that France and Germany have made different decisions on energy policy,” said Le Maire. “The question is: will we highlight the differences or try to find an agreement?”
However, Le Maire should also know that such a deal is unacceptable to the Greens in Berlin, from their point of view fossil gas cannot be considered sustainable any more than nuclear power.
Does nuclear power fit in with the “Do No Significant Harm” principle?
The aim of the EU taxonomy is to give investors orientation and to help ensure that more money flows into green business areas. In order to be considered sustainable, investments must comply with the “Do No Significant Harm” principle, i.e. they must not cause any significant damage. The decisive question in the nuclear power debate is therefore: What does significant mean?
The EU Commission’s scientific service came to the conclusion a few months ago that nuclear power does not violate the “Do No Significant Harm” principle. Physicists at the German Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management, BASE for short, see things differently – and accuse the Commission study of methodological deficiencies.
The fact that the question of nuclear waste disposal has not yet been answered contradicts a green classification, according to the experts at BASE. So far there is not a single nuclear repository in the world. Only one is currently being built in Finland.
Since, however, every country geologically and in terms of the settlement structure was unique, this could not be an argument for other countries to continue to stick to nuclear power. Nuclear waste must be kept safe for a million years. The geological conditions in the distant future could not be reliably predicted, nor could human behavior.
Austria wants to go to the European Court of Justice
Even beyond the unresolved issue of nuclear waste, nuclear energy is risky: According to calculations by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, statistically speaking, a reactor accident occurs every ten to 20 years. The more nuclear power plants there are in the world, the shorter this period of time becomes.
In principle, EU law provides for three different classifications of sustainable technologies – “green”, “enabling” and “transitional”. Nuclear power does not fall into any of the three areas, argue legal experts from the law firm Redeker Sellner Dahs in a study for the Austrian Ministry of Climate Protection.
But there is little to suggest that the EU Commission can still be changed. According to the current status of the discussion, the authority wants to declare nuclear power as a green investment, more precisely the construction and operation of the nuclear power plants. Uranium mining and processing should be regarded as “enabling” technology, as well as the search for and operation of nuclear waste repositories and the recycling of nuclear fuel.
After that, the Council and Parliament each have to give their approval – which is likely to be seen since the majority of those in favor of nuclear power are in Brussels.
On the side of France are Finland, the Visegrad countries Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, as well as Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. Germany can count on the support of Austria, Luxembourg, Denmark and Portugal.
The traffic light coalition has not yet decided whether Germany will join an Austrian lawsuit.
(Photo: imago images / SEPA.Media)
As a precautionary measure, Austria has announced that it intends to go to the European Court of Justice: “Should the Commission adopt a legal act that is not compatible with the fundamentals of taxonomy and opens the back door for the greenwashing of nuclear power, we will also challenge this in court and sue it”, said the Austrian climate protection minister Leonore Gewessler the Handelsblatt.
The traffic light coalition has not yet decided whether Germany will join the lawsuit. Green politician Giegold wants to avoid a legal escalation and speaks out in favor of a compromise. The commission must make it clear that the taxonomy is not used as an instrument for subsidy control, with which the sovereign energy policy of the EU states can be governed.
“It would be completely undemocratic if Brussels were to undermine the contractually guaranteed competences of the member states with a delegated act,” says Giegold. The taxonomy must be traced back to what it actually is: a guide for investors, not a master plan for restructuring the European economy.
More: Europe column: Nuclear power will come back – whether Germany wants it or not