On 21 April 2021, the European Commission announced its intention to adopt a complementary Delegated Act of the EU Taxonomy Regulation to include activities not yet covered in the EU Taxonomy Climate Delegated Act. Nuclear energy will be included in this complementary Delegated Act “subject and consistent with the results of the specific review process underway in accordance with the EU Taxonomy Regulation”. The first step of this review process took place in March 2021. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre published the technical assessment of nuclear energy with respect to the ‘do no significant harm’ criteria of Regulation (EU) 2020/852 (‘Taxonomy Regulation’) which concluded that “there is no science-based evidence that nuclear energy does more harm to human health or to the environment than other electricity production technologies already included in the EU Taxonomy as activities supporting climate change mitigation“. Now this report will be reviewed by the Group of Experts on radiation protection and waste management and the Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks in order to complete the evaluation process in June 2021. The European Commission plans to adopt this complementary Delegated Act as soon as possible once the review process has been completed.
For more background information on this matter, read this article.
