{"id":103451,"date":"2021-02-12T15:32:48","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T14:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/?p=103451"},"modified":"2021-02-13T10:10:50","modified_gmt":"2021-02-13T09:10:50","slug":"fossil-gas-included-in-guidelines-for-eu-recovery-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/it\/fossil-gas-included-in-guidelines-for-eu-recovery-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Fossil gas included in guidelines for EU recovery plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Commission has adopted a technical guidance document<\/strong>\u00a0for upcoming spending under the newly agreed <\/strong>\u00a0Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF),<\/strong> which will channel funds to member states for their post Covid-19 recovery<\/strong>. The European Environmental Bureau<\/strong> (EEB)<\/strong> is concerned about the flexibility given to member states <\/strong>when requesting<\/strong> money for gas projects<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

This technical documen<\/a>t will provide guidelines in line with the Do No Significant Harm (DNSH) principle<\/strong> and, together with the climate tracking methodology, will be essential to assess whether the measures and investments that the Member States are including in their national Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) should be granted support by the EU.<\/p>\n

The document should provide more clarity on how the EU recovery fund will be spent, as NGOs and the European Parliament requested last December following the agreement on the RFF. The EEB regrets that fossil gas is labelled as a \u201cbridge\u201d technology in the energy transition.<\/p>\n

Barbara Mariani<\/strong>, senior policy officer for climate and energy at the European Environmental Bureau, said:<\/p>\n

We called for guidelines that would prevent EU money from funding climate wrecking and polluting activities, instead the way they look now they just risk opening the floodgates for yet more funding to gas-related projects.<\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no such a thing as a \u2018bridge\u2019 fuel when millions of euros are invested in long-lasting and expensive technology needed to produce, transport and deploy fossil fuels. Gas is not a \u2018bridge fuel\u2019, it\u2019s a stranded asset and a climate disaster for people and the planet.<\/em><\/p>\n

We also fear that the Commission is by-passing the tough controversy over gas as a transition fuel, which is delaying the adoption of the delegated acts for the Taxonomy regulation.<\/em><\/p>\n

Future generations are being asked to pay twice: once for the impact of climate change and\u00a0 then through their own pockets to repay the public debt of the recovery plan.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Davide Sabbadin, <\/strong>policy officer for climate and circular economy at the European Environmental Bureau, added:<\/p>\n

\u201cFossil gas has no role to play in<\/em> the<\/em> decarbonisation<\/em> of our economy<\/em>. <\/em>With the right policies in place, we already know that renewables could do the job by 2040. <\/em>Switching from coal to gas will not only undermine once again Europe\u2019s climate <\/em>neutrality goals<\/em>, it will<\/em> also<\/em> prolong Europe\u2019s addiction to a fossil fuel which we currently import from foreign countries.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Labelling gas as a \u2018bridge\u2019 fuel also means that it will continue to benefit from a preferential tax regime at the expense of renewables, while failing to internalise its economic and environmental cost already paid by Europeans.<\/p>\n

The Commission said concessions will be made under the condition that gas infrastructure will be compatible with the use of biomethane or hydrogen, assuming that these fuels will be largely available for future energy use. This is highly questionable, as many studies have shown that both biomethane and hydrogen will deliver a very limited contribution to EU\u2019s decarbonation plans [1<\/a>; 2<\/a>]<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The European Commission has adopted a technical guidance document\u00a0for upcoming spending under the newly agreed \u00a0Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), which will channel funds to member [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":103458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[121,123,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-energy","category-climate-change","category-news","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/martin-adams-a_PDPUPuNZ8-unsplash-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}