ESG Update: Complementary Climate Delegated Act published in Official Journal
The European Commission’s proposal to allow certain nuclear and fossil gas activities to be classified as ‘transitional’ activities for the purposes of the EU Taxonomy, and to include them in the EU Taxonomy Delegated Act on Climate Change Mitigation and Climate Change Adaptation, has been finalised and published in the Official Journal.
The Commission’s proposal had triggered intense debate, but the European Parliament confirmed on 6 July 2022 that the absolute majority threshold (353 MEPs) required to reject the proposal had not been reached in the plenary session vote (278 MEPs voted to reject) and the EU Council did not veto the proposal by the deadline of 11 July 2022. This means that the Delegated Act will apply from 1 January 2023.
The Delegated Act sets out stringent conditions which must be met for in-scope nuclear and fossil gas activities to be capable of classification as ‘transitional’ activities. The Disclosures Delegated Act under Article 8 of the Taxonomy Regulation is also being amended to introduce requirements for large listed non-financial and financial companies to disclose the proportion of their activities linked to nuclear power and fossil gas. Our earlier briefing on the Article 8 Delegated Act is here: EU Taxonomy Regulation: Article 8 Delegated Act Published in Official Journal.
If you would like to discuss any of these developments in more detail, please get in touch with any member of our market-leading cross-disciplinary ESG Group.