The government of Austria has followed Greenpeace and other environmental groups by filing a legal challenge to the European Union’s inclusion of natural gas and nuclear energy in a list of “green” investments.
At issue is the European Union’s so-called taxonomy, a rulebook defining which investments can be labelled climate friendly and designed to guide investors toward green projects that will help deliver the bloc’s emissions-cutting targets.
The European Parliament in July approved a European Union proposal giving a sustainable finance label to investments in gas and nuclear power, sparking claims of “greenwashing” by environmental lobbyists and paving the way for it to pass into law, prompting Austria to confirm that it would challenge it in the European courts as it had warned for months. Luxembourg said it would support Austria’s move.
“Nuclear energy and gas are neither green nor sustainable,” Austria’s Minister of Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Leonore Gewessle (pictured above) said in a statement. “We have therefore filed a legal challenge against the European Commission’s taxonomy regulation, as we said we would.”
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