CO₂ Value Europe Provides Input to the EU Taxonomy to Recognise CCU

CO₂ Value Europe contributed to the European Commission’s consultation on the EU Taxonomy, proposing to recognise Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) as a standalone sustainable activity and to acknowledge the contribution of CCU in making other activities more sustainable.

The EU Taxonomy is a European Union tool that lists economic activities considered to be sustainable according to the EU. The EU Taxonomy is regularly reviewed and updated and at the end of 2023, the EU Taxonomy Stakeholder Mechanism was created to allow stakeholders to propose additional activities to be recognised as sustainable in the Taxonomy.

Through this mechanism, CO₂ Value Europe submitted suggestions for CCU to be officially included in the EU Taxonomy. CCU is yet to be fully recognised as a sustainable activity, even though some aspects of it already are, including hydrogen-derived fuels and R&D on Direct Air Capture. Our contributions argued for CCU to be considered as a standalone sustainable activity. Additionally, suggestions to amend existing sustainable activities to include CCU, for example, the transport of CO₂ for mitigation purposes or when using CCU to produce added value products while reducing their carbon footprint like fuels, chemicals or plastics, where the contribution of CCU in making these activities more sustainable should be acknowledged.

The overall goal of the EU Taxonomy is to provide both public and private investors with more certainty about the activities they fund. CO₂ Value Europe urges EU authorities to officially recognise CCU as fundamentally necessary to mitigate climate change and to acknowledge it as sustainable under the EU Taxonomy to facilitate investments and scale up CCU projects.

The contributions to the EU Taxonomy are currently being reviewed and potential amendments to the list of activities will be presented at a later date.

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