Greta Thunberg slams carbon offsetting panel for 'greenwashing'

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Austria has unleashed fury at European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for labeling gas and nuclear energy as “green” investments under an EU classification system, and has filed a lawsuit amid concerns of “greenwashing”. As the EU scrambles to wean itself off fossil fuels to tackle the urgent climate crisis, it is attempting to make room for natural gas and nuclear energy to guarantee a stable energy supply during the green transition. To do so, the block passed a law in July to include the energy sources in its green “taxonomy”, a financial classification system that is aimed at directing investments into clean-energy projects.

But the move had already sparked a furious backlash from climate campaigners, including the WWF and Client Earth, who launched legal challenges amid fears the policy promotes “greenwashing”. 

Now, Austria has appeared to join the club of dissenting voices opposed to the Commission’s rule. Austria’s minister for climate action, Leonore Gewessler, said: “We need to safeguard the trust of consumers and investors,” which must be sure that if a product “is labelled green, it’s actually green in content.”

She added that including nuclear and gas in the green taxonomy “increases the risk of greenwashing”, while also arguing that it threatens to boost investments into projects that “do not help us reach our climate ambition.”

She said: “What I am resisting with all my strength is the attempt to greenwash nuclear and gas through the back door. Tying a green bow around polluting gas for electricity production is misleading.”

Greenwashing refers to the process of giving off a false impression that something is “green” or climate-friendly, when in actual fact it may be harmful to the environment. 

Critics of the EU’s taxonomy fear that allowing natural gas, a polluting fossil fuel, to be emitted will scupper to the EU’s chances of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Meanwhile, although nuclear energy does not emit carbon, it produces radioactive waste and gives off thermal pollution that threatens marine ecosystems. 

Austria is itself opposed to nuclear energy and was the first nation and became the first EU country to file legal action against the bloc for including nuclear and gas as climate-friendly investments.

Ms Gewessler has also called the rule “irresponsible and unreasonable”. Now, Vienna has put forward 16 arguments for why Brussels should scrap the rules. This includes the point that nuclear energy cannot meet a requirement to “do no significant harm” to the environment, a requirement of the taxonomy classification because it produces nuclear waste. 

A European Commission spokesperson said “the EU’s taxonomy is to a very large extent focused on renewable energies. Renewables will continue to be the focus for green investors and the creation of green financial products”, adding gas and nuclear investments will need to meet “strict conditions” to be included.

A group of four NGOs, which includes ClientEarth, WWF’s European Policy Office, Transport & Environment (T&E), and BUND (Friends of the Earth Germany), have also argued that “Gas is a potent fossil fuel that threatens European energy security and has led to sky-high energy prices across Europe”.

A spokesperson from the group has said: “Propping up gas, a fossil fuel which is currently at the centre of a cost of living crisis across the bloc, undermines the EU’s fundamental aims of achieving cleaner, cheaper and more secure energy.”

And along with Austria and the group of NGOs, several other EU members have also signalled their disapproval of the rule. This includes Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal and Denmark, who all jointly called for nuclear to be excluded from the rules last November when the EU was still drafting them up. 

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However, a panel of experts from the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the Commission’s scientific arm, has argued that nuclear does in fact deserve a green label. A draft of the report, which was seen by Reuters, said: “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 production technologies.” 

And the issue is proving to be divisive within the EU, with France, Hungary, and five other countries this month urging the Commission to back nuclear energy. 

France, which generates 70 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, had lobbied the EU to label nuclear energy as a transition fuel in the taxonomy, sparking concerns among green campaigners who believed French President Emmanuel Macron to be “interfering”. 

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