Will Europe focus on green nuclear power?
How the EU will move on green nuclear power. The article by Tino Oldani for Italy Today
The timing speaks for itself. Since Wednesday, the draft of a document with the detailed provisions with which the Commission is preparing to declare that nuclear power and gas must be included in the green taxonomy has been circulating in Brussels.
This means that these two energies can be classified as green, therefore usable in the transition towards the reduction to zero of polluting CO2 emissions, set for 2050.
In favor of this line, which hard and pure environmentalists have always opposed, a group of ten countries had taken sides since October 26, signing a specific request to Ursula Von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission. The latter, with a tweet, had made it clear that he agreed.
But since nuclear power and gas are disliked by environmentalists like Greta Thunberg, and since the COP26 on climate would be held in a few days, Von der Leyen, to avoid controversy, preferred to buy time. And the fact that the EU document in favor of nuclear and green gas came out just the day after the closing of COP26 is nothing more than the acknowledgment that the Glasgow climate summit was a substantial failure.
The affair also concerns Italy, whose position at European level is not received. According to the reconstruction of Euractiv , despite Roberto Cingolani, minister for ecological transition, has declared for months in favor of small fourth generation nuclear plants (he also repeated this on Wednesday in the press ), Italy was not among the ten EU countries that on October 26 they signed the appeal to Ursula in favor of nuclear and green gas.
This group, through the energy ministers, included France, Poland, Finland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Having disclosed the document, the Netherlands and Sweden also then pledged their support, but limited to nuclear energy. The energy ministers of the two countries, the Dutch Stef Blok and the Swedish Anders Ygeman, stressed that "in the transition towards climate neutrality we will need all the economically advantageous solutions, provided they are free of fossil fuels: nuclear it is, gas is not ».
Within a week, almost all 27 EU countries took a stand on the ten document, and some were openly opposed. No response from Italy, where Minister Cingolani seems to prefer interviews in newspapers when he talks about nuclear power, instead of fighting in Europe, which in this case is the seat that counts. We will see in the next EU energy summits whether this depends on any divisions within Mario Draghi's government, where the grillini are opposed to nuclear power, or on the fact that Cingolani, a scientist lent to politics, is still not very familiar with the decision-making mechanisms of Brussels. In any case, it would be advisable for the interviews in the media to be followed by coherent government choices, demonstrating in practice that they are acting in the national interest.
Yes, the national interest. It is no mystery that this is the first rule in Brussels. Thus, it is not surprising that Emmanuel Macron's France, with 56 nuclear power plants, was the leader in the battle to have nuclear power recognized as green energy, to which it added gas during negotiations conducted in secret with most of the EU countries. , to gain its support. It is not surprising even the fake call out of Germany: with the excuse of not having yet launched the new government, Berlin has chosen to abstain on the document of ten. A fiction that tries to hide the divisions within the traffic light coalition, where the Greens are against nuclear power, against fossil fuels and against Nord Stream 2, while the SPD, sponsor of the Russian gas pipeline, is in favor of classifying gas as green energy , but not nuclear. Incompatible positions, on which one of the two parties will have to give something, the Greens certainly more. Together with Germany, Austria and Luxembourg are also against green nuclear power. While the blockade of Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia) is unanimous on the use of gas for many years to come, in order to be able to abandon coal without trauma, of which it still makes extensive use. Line to which Greece, Cyprus and Malta joined.
Among the first to welcome the document of the ten EU countries, Foratom, the trade association that promotes nuclear energy in Europe, stands out: «To achieve the goals of decarbonisation it is necessary to include nuclear power in the mix of green energies. By now many countries admit this, which have changed their opinion in the face of the current energy crisis, caused by the sharp rise in gas prices. This has highlighted Europe's dependence on Russian supplies, while nuclear power is much less dependent on imports and, thanks to new technologies, can provide clean energy, without CO2 emissions ».
The WWF, whose spokesman Henry Eviston declared: "This proposal is a scientific shame, which risks dealing a fatal blow to the taxonomy and seriously damaging the EU's sustainable finance agenda and the Green Deal, is clearly opposed to the document of the ten. . It must be firmly rejected by the EU Commission and by all Member States ”. But a tweet from Von der Leyen, launched before the document of the ten, sounded quite different music: «We need more renewable energies: they are cheap, carbon-free and grow at home. But we also need a stable, nuclear source, and during the transition, gas. This is why we will come forward with our green taxonomy proposal ».
Article published on ItaliaOggi
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/cop26-nucleare-verde/ on Sat, 06 Nov 2021 06:22:30 +0000.