ClientEarth v. Commission

Summary:

With the Taxonomy Regulation 2020/852, the European Union established the criteria for determining whether an economic activity qualifies as environmentally sustainable for the purposes of establishing the degree to which an investment is environmentally sustainable, with the aim of facilitating sustainable investment.

Articles 10(3) and 11(3) of the Taxonomy Regulation require the Commission to adopt delegated acts establishing the technical screening criteria for determining first the conditions under which a specific economic activity qualifies as contributing substantially to climate change mitigation or adaptation, and second whether that economic activity causes no significant harm to one or more environmental objectives.

In its Delegated Regulation 2021/2139, the Commission labeled bio-plastics and the use of forest-biomass for bio-energy as ‘green investments’, declaring these activities as substantially contributing to climate change mitigation or adaptation and as doing no significant harm to the environmental objectives.

According to ClientEarth, this label is unlawful because the Commission disregarded a number of essential elements of the Taxonomy Regulation, and because the Commission made manifest errors as to the scientific evidence concerning combustion of forest biomass for energy, as to the manufacture of OBCs and as to the manufacture of bioplastics.

At Issue: Whether the labeling by the Commission of bio-plastics and the use of forest-biomass for bio-energy as ‘green investments’ is unlawful.