Nuclear not defined as Green
Posted: 31st July 2025
Much to the delight of the Nuclear Free Local Authorities, the UK Government has abandoned the latest plan to introduce a new taxonomy for ‘green’ energy technologies. Why? Because, in the small print, Ministers wanted to include nuclear so the plan would have amounted to ‘greenwashing’ the industry. The government recently published its response to a consultation conducted earlier this year by the Treasury. In the consultation, a taxonomy was described as ‘a classification tool which provides its users with a common framework to define which economic activities support climate, environmental or wider sustainability objectives.’ It should have been a mechanism to facilitate further investment in ‘green’ energy projects, but the proposal was in the NFLA’s view fatally flawed as in the small print the consultation document obliquely included nuclear.