Commission Notice on the interpretation and implementation of certain legal provisions of the EU Taxonomy Climate Delegated Act establishing technical screening criteria for economic activities that contribute substantially to climate change mitigation or climate change adaptation and do no significant harm to other environmental objective

Concurrently to the publication of a second notice providing frequently asked questions for non-financial entities on the „interpretation and implementation of certain legal provisions of the Disclosures Delegated Act under Article 8 of EU Taxonomy Regulation on the reporting of Taxonomy-eligible and Taxonomy-aligned economic activities and assets“ (EventID 23615), the EU Commission has published a notice again with FAQs on the interpretation and implementation of certain provisions of the EU Taxonomy Climate Delegated Act (Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2139) which establishes technical screening criteria for economic activities that „contribute substantially to climate change mitigation or climate change adaptation and do no significant harm to other environmental objective“ as defined in the EU Taxonomy Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2020/852). The key purpose of the FAQs, so the Commission, it to help financial and non-financial market players in their consistent assessment of taxonomy alignment of economic activities. The Commission thereby emphasizes that the FAQs do not alter the existing legal rights and obligations, but are merely meant to assist market participants in implementing the noted regulations and requirements. As the number of FAQs is quite large (187), we refrain from publishing ALL FAQs at this point. Questions as they relate to
– updates and further development of the screening criteria and the Climate Delegated Act in general and
– „horizontal questions on the scope of economic activities and on technical screening criteria set out in the Climate Delegated Act“
are outlined below. For all other FAQs and the answers of those questions listed, please refer to the legal notice.
#### Questions on updates and further development of the screening criteria and the Climate Delegated Act
1. Will the technical screening criteria set out in the Climate Delegated Act be made stricter and updated over time?
2. How will the Taxonomy be further developed – will there be more activities contributing to climate change mitigation (CCM) included in the Climate Delegated Act?
#### Horizontal questions on the scope of economic activities and on technical screening criteria set out in the Climate Delegated Act
3. What does checking the compliance with the TSC on the substantial contribution and the DNSH mean in practice?
4. How should verification requirements in the technical screening criteria be understood? What documentary evidence could support the demonstration and verification of compliance with those criteria?
5. Can technical consultancy services be counted as Taxonomy-eligible, and potentially Taxonomy-aligned, if they are related to an activity defined in the Taxonomy Delegated Acts?
6. How should GHG emissions for technical screening criteria be calculated (scope, methodologies etc.)?
7. How can an undertaking’s activities that are carried out in jurisdictions outside the EU be assessed for compliance with the technical screening criteria by reference to local third-country requirements or guidelines? When criteria refer to EU/national legislation or standards, should the level of requirements be adapted for criteria to be achieved outside the EU?
8. How to interpret the use of ‘and’ and ‘or’ in the description of economic activities (for instance in ‘Construction or operation of electricity generation facilities that produce electricity from hydropower’ in Section 4.5; or ‘Construction and operation of electricity generation installations that produce electricity exclusively from biomass, biogas or bioliquids’ in Section 4.8)?
9. How to deal with technical screening criteria that are not relevant to a specific activity mentioned in the description (e.g. a maintenance-only service with no construction-related waste)?
10. In a number of cases of enabling activities, benchmarks compared to industry averages, peers or best available technologies are required. However, such information is not always available publicly. How should the requirement to provide these benchmarks be met?
11. How does the sustainable finance framework apply to access to private funding for the defence industry?
12. How about companies without any Taxonomy-aligned activities? Will they lose access to finance?