Walkout After EU Commission Classifies Bunker Fuel & Cutting Trees For Pellet Fuel As "Sustainable"

[hatrack]

Environmental and consumer organizations are pulling out of an EU expert group in protest at the European Commission’s decision to classify destructive forestry practices and highly-emitting types of biomass as sustainable investments. The new rules are not based on climate and environmental science and ignore the recommendations of the EU expert group on sustainable finance, the organizations said.

NGOs Transport & Environment, WWF European Policy Office, BirdLife Europe and Central Asia, consumer group BEUC, and eco-standards advocates ECOS are demanding discussions with the Commission to establish rules that stop the scientific basis of the EU taxonomy law being compromised further. Today, the chairperson of the expert group, Nathan Fabian, joined the organizations in calling for an overhaul of the rules.

Luca Bonaccorsi, director of sustainable finance at T&E, said: “The taxonomy law was supposed to be the gold standard of sustainable finance. But the result has been the greenwashing of dirty cargo ships, gas buses, and logging and burning trees. Environmentalists will not come back to the process until the Commission comes back to science.”

The decisions to endorse harmful forestry and biomass projects completely discredits the taxonomy, which is required by law to be science based, the organizations said. The Commission also decided to classify as “sustainable” cargo ships burning highly polluting “bunker” fuel and buses running on fossil gas. It delayed a decision on fossil gas as an energy source until a later stage of the process. The five organizations have suspended their participation in the expert group to avoid a cover-up of further greenwashing. They called on the expert group’s members and leading MEPs to join their protest. They will resume work when the Commission addresses the demands of the expert group chairperson to protect against political interference.

EDIT

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/04/25/greenwashing-of-eu-finance-law-sparks-walkout-by-experts/

[hunter]

1. If "better than coal" is your standard, there are a lot of things are better than coal.

w