If I remember correctly from when the regulation was originally discussed, there are a lot of restrictions on the natural gas plant before it’s considered green. Its only green if it replaces an existing coal plant, and if the new plant is not larger than the one it replaces, and if it has very low emissions.

Edit. Found a source:

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2022/698935/EPRS_BRI(2022)698935_EN.pdf

Conditions for natural gas to be classified as green.

life-cycle emissions are below 100 g CO2 e/kWh; or

until 2030 (date of approval of construction permit), and where renewables are not available at sufficient scale, direct emissions are below 270 g CO2 e/kWh or, for the activity of electricity generation, their annual direct GHG emissions must not exceed an average of 550 kg CO2 e/kW of the facility’s capacity over 20 years. In this case, the activity must meet a set of cumulative conditions: e.g. it replaces a facility using solid or liquid fossil fuels; the replacement leads to a reduction in GHG emissions of at least 55 % over the lifetime of the newly installed production capacity; the newly installed production capacity does not exceed the capacity of the replaced facility by more than 15 %; the refurbishment of the facility does not increase the production capacity for co-generation of heat/cooling and power from fossil gaseous fuels; the activity takes place on the territory of a Member State which has committed to phasing out the use of energy generation from coal; the activity ensures a full switch to renewable or low-carbon gases by 2035; and a regular independent verification of compliance with the criteria is carried out.

Great waste Poor ressource (100 years max for uranium) Not as good as the hype suggests

I’d guess that the argument on natural gas is one of the following:

It’s replacing coal and coal emits more carbon

The problem is that coal-based power is rapidly declining, at least in the West, and it’s not a huge chunk of the generation mix anymore.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/energy-2025

In 2023, the energy mix in the EU, meaning the range of energy sources available, mainly consisted of 5 different sources:

• crude oil and petroleum products (37.7%)
• natural gas (20.4%)
• renewable energy (19.5%)
• solid fuels (10.6%)
• nuclear (11.8%).

Oil is a pretty expensive way to generate power. I doubt that wood pellet power plants are very common. So if you want to reduce fossil-fuel-based generation past that, you probably do have to look at reducing natural gas.

We can use it in conjunction with intermittent renewables at lower levels to avoid expensive energy storage

Solar and wind aren’t always available when someone wants to use them; they’re intermittent. You have to fill in those gaps somehow. But energy storage is expensive and for pumped hydrostorage, the most-currently-economical form, somewhat geographically-limited. So the idea is that one uses natural gas instead of storing energy from a less-carbon-intensive source to fill in those gaps…but at least you’re using less natural gas than one would if one weren’t using renewable resources and just using natural gas all the time.

Also, one more tidbit:

Austria had sued the European Commission, the bloc’s executive, over the inclusion of gas and nuclear in the EU’s classification system for environmentally sustainable economic activities.

My guess is that Austria’s probably unhappy because Austria uses a ton of hydropower, is very mountainous and has favorable geography for hydropower, so they’d prefer to have hydropower favored.

kagis

https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/Austria

This has hydropower in Austria being 56.2% of Austria’s electricity generation.

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