Climate change: EU moves to label nuclear and gas as sustainable despite internal row

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Nuclear and natural gas energy plants could be counted as "green energy" under controversial EU plans just unveiled. The European Commission says it has decided that both types of energy can classify as "sustainable investment" if they meet certain targets. But the move has divided the EU, and been fiercely opposed by some members. Austria's chancellor responded to the news by saying "nuclear power is neither green nor sustainable". "I cannot understand the decision of the EU," Karl Nehammer said. He said he would back his environment minister, Leonore Gewessler, in pursuing legal action at the European Court of Justice if the plans go ahead. "This decision is wrong," Ms Gewessler said. "The EU Commission today agreed its greenwashing programme for nuclear energy and [the fossil fuel] natural gas." Luxembourg has also said it will join in legal action.

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I know that France is pretty much carbon neutral thanks to its mix of nuclear and renewables, but I was wondering if there were any other countries in the EU that want to see more of its energy coming from nuclear.

This site seems to show France, Sweden, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Czech Republic also get a fair amount of power from nuclear sources, but of course one of the most powerful countries in the bloc, Germany, has been shutting down its nuclear (and opting for using more coal, particularly lignite in the short term).

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So Germany, and a number of other countries are objecting to reclassifying nuclear and gas as green, but I have to agree with Steven Novella that the focus should be on removing coal first and using all tools to reduce climate change:

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Germany is pushing back hard against the proposed EU labeling. But they are a case study in why this purist approach is flawed. Germany has a deep anti-nuclear stance, and this has surely affected their decision to phase out nuclear power prior to phasing out coal-power. This decision has been highly criticized, and has resulted in a significant increase in Germany’s CO2 footprint compared to if they had phased out coal first. It has even resulted in Germany having to import energy, some of which is produced by coal. This is happening even as Germany is perhaps in an ideal situation for use of intermittent energy, in that it is in the middle of other industrialized nations, and has the option of exporting and importing energy to balance demand. The same is not true for countries like the US. Still, by opposing the proposed EU labeling Germany appears to be doubling down on a strategy that is demonstrably flawed, delaying reductions in CO2 at a time when all such delays may be critically damaging to our goal of limiting warming to 1.5 C (or as close as we can come). Phasing out coal and then other fossil fuels needs to be our top priority. The IPCC approach is valid – we need to consider plausible pathways to this goal, given a range of possible economic and technological variables. We do not have the luxury of ideology purism, on either end of the ideological spectrum.

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What does everyone else thing?

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