EU to Label Nuclear Energy ‘Green’ for Future Investments

A draft of a report touching on the EU’s classification criteria for sustainable investment by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has been recently reviewed by Reuters. One of its findings states that nuclear energy should be considered a ‘green’ source of power for the purposes of the EU’s subsidies regime. Although the conclusions are not final and the process is still ongoing, if successful, this change could have a major impact on the future of the EU’s nuclear power sector, which represents a significant source of electricity for many EU member states.

The controversy over the labelling of nuclear and gas power is tied to the EU’s subsidies budget, which will make available “hundreds of billions of euros” for energy projects under what has been dubbed the European Green Deal. The EU is in the process of finalising its draft of the ‘sustainable finance taxonomy’ which is being presented as a “classification instrument to help financial players and companies which activities qualify as sustainable.” However, the taxonomy will also be key for determining where EU subsidies will flow in the future.

A group of Central and Eastern European EU countries is calling upon the EU to include nuclear and/or gas power in their list of sustainable energy sources. In the case of nuclear, the French president and the prime ministers of Hungary, Poland, Czechia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia have signed a letter last week in which they expressed their concern that nuclear power is being excluded “from more and more policies” of the EU, taking away member states’ governments’ right to choose between different power sources suitable for their particular countries. France, the geographical outlier on the list, is the EU country most reliant on nuclear power, which represents roughly 70% of its power generation capacities.

Talks of nuclear energy’s inclusion into the EU’s ‘green transition’ have been underway for years. In December 2019, explicit references to nuclear power were included in the legislation laying out EU’s plans to become carbon neutral by 2050. At the time, the president of the Greens in the European Parliament castigated the approach the EU seemed to be leaning towards with respect to nuclear power. She stated:

“Nuclear energy … has nothing to do with renewable energy, nothing to do with the solution, it’s the absolute wrong direction.”

In 2020, these talks have resulted in a stalemate, with some Brussels experts arguing that nuclear power produced very little carbon dioxide, while others were concerned primarily about radioactive waste disposal. 

At the present, it might be likely that this group of countries will be successful in their plea. The draft report on EU’s progress on its classification plans recently reviewed by Reuters states:

“The analyses did not reveal any science-based evidence that nuclear energy does more harm to human health or to the environment than other electricity technologies,”

It also addresses nuclear waste storage facilities. It labelled new developments in this area including “deep geological disposal facilities” as “appropriate and safe”, citing French and Finnish examples.

On the possible fears of nuclear accidents, several of which have featured prominently in the technology’s history, the report recalls that, at the present, only the newest-generation power plans are being commissioned and built:

“The fatality rates characterising state-of-the-art [third generation nuclear power plants] are the lowest of all the electricity generation technologies,”

Greenpeace representatives have criticised the news of the possible reclassification of nuclear energy by questioning the integrity of the Joint Research Centre, which the organisation described as “structurally pro-nuclear.” In response, the European Commission pointed out that the process of the probe includes many other parties before a final decision will be reached in two months’ time.

A controversy over the status of gas is also taking place in the EU. Some more heavily gas-reliant countries are calling for it to be included in the category of more sustainable sources of power to differentiate it from coal, which is the main target of legislation intended to separate between the ‘greenness’ of different types of power.

A different part of EU funding, for technological research, is available in the area of nuclear energy, with research projects receiving considerable amounts of money from the EU. This would not change either way under the changes about to be introduced in the EU, as currently-emerging infrastructure projects are considered separate from long-term potential technological development.