EU: Alternative green taxonomy launched by environmental coalition

A coalition of environmental experts and NGOs have published an Independent Science-Based Taxonomy and are appealing to the investor community to use these technical screening criteria instead of the official EU Taxonomy (see here and here). 

A spokesperson for the Observatory Against Greenwashing coalition said: 

“The EU Taxonomy was originally designed to eliminate greenwashing but instead has become another tool to deceive consumers. The science-based Taxonomy wants to succeed where the original Taxonomy failed: it will create rigorous criteria, which financial institutions can use to properly assess what is green and what is not”. 

According to the coalition, the new taxonomy duplicates the EU Taxonomy’s technical screening criteria wherever they are robust and only departs from them when they are not rooted in science or harmful to the environment. 

It will categorise all economic activities using a traffic light system: “green” for sustainable activities, “amber” for activities that operate between significantly harmful and substantial contribution performance levels, and “red” for harmful activities. 

The criteria will be updated every 3 to 5 years to reflect technological, scientific and legislative developments. 

In the meantime, the European Commission still has not indicated when it will publish the delegated act with the technical screening criteria for the remaining four environmental objectives in the EU Taxonomy and various legal challenges are still outstanding in respect of other aspects of the EU Taxonomy (see our previous blog posts here and here).