The Court upholds the legitimacy of the technical screening criteria for wind energy, ruling out the requirement for rigid quantitative thresholds for the circular economy due to the complexity of the durability and recyclability parameters.
The judgment concerns European Commission decision Ares (2022) 4952619 of 7 July 2022, in which the Commission rejected as unfounded the request for internal review of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2139 of 4 June 2021, which supplements Regulation (EU) 2020/852 of the European Parliament and of the Council by establishing technical screening criteria to determine under which conditions an economic activity can be considered to make a substantial contribution to climate change mitigation or adaptation, and whether it does not cause significant harm to any other environmental objective, with respect to certain aspects related to the economic activity of “electricity generation from wind energy.”
Specifically, the applicants contested the absence of quantitative thresholds and clear reference criteria regarding the availability and usability of necessary equipment and components, their respective sustainability and recyclability, as well as their ease of disassembly and refurbishment, arguing that this was inconsistent with Article 17(1)(d) of Regulation 2020/852, which indicates the conditions under which an activity would be considered to cause significant harm to the circular economy objective.
The Court dismissed this argument, ruling that the European Commission had adequately explained why the concepts of “availability,” “usability,” “durability,” and “ease of disassembly” and “refurbishment,” as used in the technical screening criteria, are highly complex, limiting the effectiveness of general thresholds within the framework of the EU Taxonomy. Furthermore, the Court upheld the Commission’s decision to rely on more specific legal instruments, dedicated to circular economy aspects, to establish a more detailed framework and, potentially, quantitative thresholds.