What kind of energy sources is the EU planning to label as green?

Question

The EU Commission is going to vote on the green energy plan. Allegedly this plan contains a controversial green labelling for gas and nuclear. But this article by Deutsche Welle left me somewhat confused. It states that the plan will not give the green label to fossil gas:

A first draft of the taxonomy, published on News Year's Eve, stated that certain strings remain attached. For example, gas plants could only be considered green if the gas comes from renewable sources, such as biomass or hydrogen produced with renewable energy.

So I interpret this sentence as labelling as green the systems that recover and burn gas coming from cattle and pig manure. But later on the article throws accusations to the fossil gas lobby:

Critics say the objective of climate neutrality could be under threat, as the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, aims to give nuclear energy and natural gas, a fossil fuel, a green label under this taxonomy.

On what grounds do they involve fossil gas?

Furthermore this article keeps making the usual confusion between nuclear and gas. But actually many European countries are already investing a lot in renewables, what is left is the base load required by the heavy industry still present in central Europe. There is a conflict over whether this base load should come from nuclear or gas, the two technologies are in conflict and they are very different, it makes no sense putting them together.

So I would like to understand better what could be labelled (maybe by today) as green energy.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, like many EU documents, the actual document being discussed is not easily digestible and as a result, many news articles have over-simplified the changes. The main changes are to the first two annexes of the Commission Delegated Regulation (Eu) 2021/2139.

The first annex details the "criteria for determining the conditions under which an economic activity qualifies as contributing substantially to climate change mitigation and for determining whether that economic activity causes no significant harm to any of the other environmental objectives laid down in Article 9 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852"

The second annex details the "criteria for determining the conditions under which an economic activity qualifies as contributing substantially to climate change adaptation and for determining whether that economic activity causes no significant harm to any of the other environmental objectives laid down in Article 9 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852"

These annexes will each have six new sections added:

• Pre-commercial stages of advanced technologies to produce energy from nuclear processes with minimal waste from the fuel cycle
• Construction and safe operation of new nuclear power plants, for the generation of electricity or heat, including for hydrogen production, using best-available technologies
• Electricity generation from nuclear energy in existing installations
• Electricity generation from fossil gaseous fuels
• High-efficiency co-generation of heat/cool and power from fossil gaseous fuels
• Production of heat/cool from fossil gaseous fuels in an efficient district heating and cooling system

These sections each contain a list of criteria through which these economic activities can be designated as 'contributing substantially to climate change mitigation' or 'contributing substantially to climate change adaptation', and do not label every instance of these activities as such.

For example, under the new fossil gaseous fuels section in Annex I, this activity only qualifies as contributing substantially to climate change mitigation if either the life-cycle GHG emissions from the generation of electricity using fossil gaseous fuels are lower than 100 g CO2e/kWh, or if the emissions are higher, the activity replaces an existing high emitting electricity generation activity that uses solid or liquid fossil fuels, the power to be replaced cannot be generated from renewable energy sources, the facility is designed and constructed to use renewable and/or low-carbon gaseous fuels and the switch to full use of renewable and/or low-carbon gaseous fuels takes place by 31 December 2035, and so on.

The full proposed changes to these annexes can be reviewed here (Annex I) and here (Annex II), while the main text of the amendment can be viewed here.