Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2139 of 4 June 2021 supplementing Regulation (EU) 2020/852 of the European Parliament and of the Council by establishing the technical screening criteria for determining the conditions under which an economic activity qualifies as contributing substantially to climate change mitigation or climate change adaptation and for determining whether that economic activity causes no significant harm to any of the other environmental objectives (Text with EEA relevance)

• Celex Number: 32021R2139
• Coming into Force: 01 January 2022,29 December 2021
• End of Effective Date: 31 December 9999
• ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg_del/2021/2139/oj
• Published date: 09 December 2021
• Date: 04 June 2021
• Official Gazette Publication: Official Journal of the European Union, L 442, 9 December 2021

9.12.2021 EN Official Journal of the European Union L 442/1

---

COMMISSION DELEGATED REGULATION (EU) 2021/2139

of 4 June 2021

supplementing Regulation (EU) 2020/852 of the European Parliament and of the Council by establishing the technical screening criteria for determining the conditions under which an economic activity qualifies as contributing substantially to climate change mitigation or climate change adaptation and for determining whether that economic activity causes no significant harm to any of the other environmental objectives

(Text with EEA relevance)

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

Having regard to Regulation (EU) 2020/852 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 June 2020 on the establishment of a framework to facilitate sustainable investment, and amending Regulation (EU) 2019/2088 (1), and in particular Articles 10(3) and 11(3) thereof,

Whereas:

(1) Regulation (EU) 2020/852 establishes the general framework for determining whether an economic activity qualifies as environmentally sustainable for the purposes of establishing the degree to which an investment is environmentally sustainable. That Regulation applies to measures adopted by the Union or by Member States that set out requirements for financial market participants or issuers in respect of financial products or corporate bonds that are made available as environmentally sustainable, to financial market participants that make available financial products, and to undertakings that are subject to the obligation to publish a non-financial statement pursuant to Article 19a of Directive 2013/34/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council (2) or a consolidated non-financial statement pursuant to Article 29a of that Directive. Economic operators or public authorities that are not covered by Regulation (EU) 2020/852 may also apply that Regulation on a voluntary basis.

(2) Articles 10(3) and 11(3) of Regulation (EU) 2020/852 require the Commission to adopt delegated acts establishing the technical screening criteria for determining the conditions under which a specific economic activity qualifies as contributing substantially to climate change mitigation or climate change adaptation, respectively, and to establish, for each relevant environmental objective laid down in Article 9 of that Regulation, technical screening criteria for determining whether that economic activity causes no significant harm to one or more of those environmental objectives.

(3) Pursuant to Article 19(1), point (h), of Regulation (EU) 2020/852, the technical screening criteria are to take into account the nature and the scale of the economic activity and sector that they refer to, and whether the economic activity is a transitional economic activity as referred to in Article 10(2) of Regulation (EU) 2020/852, or an enabling activity as referred to in Article 16 of that Regulation. For the technical screening criteria to meet the requirements of Article 19 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852 in an effective and balanced way they should be set as a quantitative threshold or minimum requirement, as a relative improvement, as a set of qualitative performance requirements, as process or practice-based requirements, or as a precise description of the nature of the economic activity itself where that activity by its nature can contribute substantially to climate change mitigation.

(4) The technical screening criteria for determining whether an economic activity contributes substantially to climate change mitigation or climate change adaptation should ensure that the economic activity makes a positive impact on the climate objective or reduces negative impact on the climate objective. Those technical screening criteria should therefore refer to thresholds or performance levels that the economic activity should achieve in order to qualify as contributing substantially to one of those climate objectives. The technical screening criteria for ‘do no significant harm’ should ensure that the economic activity has no significant negative environmental impact. Consequently, those technical screening criteria should specify the minimum requirements that the economic activity should meet in order to qualify as environmentally sustainable.

(5) The technical screening criteria for determining whether an economic activity contributes substantially to climate change mitigation or climate change adaptation and does no significant harm to any of the environmental objectives should build, where relevant, on existing Union law, best practices, standards and methodologies, as well as on well-established standards, practices and methodologies developed by internationally reputed public entities. Where objectively there are no viable alternatives for a specific policy area, the technical screening criteria could also build on well-established standards developed by internationally reputed private bodies.

(6) In order to ensure a level playing field, the same categories of economic activities should be subject to the same technical screening criteria for each climate objective. It is therefore necessary that the technical screening criteria, where possible, follow the classification of economic activities laid down in the NACE Revision 2 classification system of economic activities established by Regulation (EC) No 1893/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council (3). To facilitate the identification by undertakings and financial market participants of the relevant economic activities for which technical screening criteria should be established, the specific description of an economic activity should also include the references to NACE codes that can be associated with that activity. Those references should be understood as indicative and should not prevail over the specific definition of the activity provided in its description.

(7) The technical screening criteria for determining under which conditions an economic activity qualifies as contributing substantially to climate change mitigation should reflect the need to avoid producing greenhouse gas emissions, to reduce such emissions or to increase greenhouse gas removals and long-term carbon storage. It is therefore appropriate to focus first on those economic activities and sectors that have the greatest potential to achieve those aims. The choice of those economic activities and sectors should be based on their share of overall greenhouse gas emissions, and on evidence regarding their potential to contribute to avoid producing greenhouse gas emissions, to reduce such emissions or to contribute to greenhouse gas removal, or to enable such avoidance, reduction, removal or long-term storage for other activities.

(8) The methodology to calculate life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions should be robust and widely applicable and thereby promote the comparability of greenhouse gas emissions calculations within and across sectors. It is therefore appropriate to demand the same calculation methodology across activities, where such calculation is required, while providing sufficient flexibility for entities applying Regulation (EU) 2020/852. Accordingly, the Commission Recommendation 2013/179/EU is useful for the calculation of life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, with, as an alternative, the possibility to use ISO 14067 or ISO 14064-1 standards. Where alternative well-established tools or standards are particularly suitable to provide exact and comparable information on the calculation of life-cycle greenhouse gas emission for a specific sector, such as the G-res tool for the hydropower sector and the ETSI standard ES 203 199 for the information and communication sector, it is appropriate to include such tool or standards as additional alternatives for that sector.

(9) The methodology to calculate life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions for activities in the hydropower sector should reflect the specificities of that sector, including new modelling methodologies, scientific knowledge and empirical measurements from reservoirs worldwide. To allow accurate reporting on the net impact on greenhouse gas emissions for the hydropower sector, it is therefore appropriate to allow for the use of the G-res tool that is publicly available free of charge and has been developed by the International Hydropower Association in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair for Global Environmental Change.

(10) The methodology to calculate life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions for activities in the information and communication sector should reflect the specificities of that sector, in particular the specialised work and guidance that has been provided by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) for the operation of life-cycle assessments in the information and communication sector. It is therefore appropriate to allow for the use of the ETSI standard ES 203 199 as a methodology to accurately calculate greenhouse gas emissions for that sector.

(11) The technical screening criteria for certain activities rely on elements of considerable technical complexity and the assessment whether those criteria have been complied with may require expert knowledge and may not be feasible for investors. To facilitate that assessment, the compliance with such technical screening criteria for such activities should be verified by an independent third party.

(12) Enabling economic activities as referred to in Article 10(1), point (i), of Regulation (EU) 2020/852 do not substantially contribute to climate change mitigation through their own performance. Such activities play a crucial role in the decarbonisation of the economy by directly enabling other activities to be carried out at a

...