The European Union can continue to count nuclear power, and in some cases fossil gas, as “environmentally sustainable,” after the EU’s top court ruled the European Commission was not breaching its obligations to tackle climate change. The General Court on Wednesday found against a complaint from Austria, which sought to overturn the decision to include the two energy sources in the EU’s taxonomy regulation, which determines which investments can be considered as green. The General Court, part of the Court of Justice of the European Union, said in its judgment the Commission “was entitled to take the view that nuclear energy generation has near to zero greenhouse gas emissions and that there are currently no technologically and economically feasible low-carbon alternatives at a sufficient scale.” The court added it “endorses the view that economic activities in the nuclear energy and fossil gas sectors can, under certain conditions, contribute substantially to climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation.” The case was brought by Vienna in 2022, arguing that the inclusion of nuclear power and fossil gas breached EU law and that the Commission had neglected to carry out an impact assessment or public consultation and bypassed normal legislative processes. Leonore Gewessler, who was then Austria’s climate and energy minister and now leads the opposition Green Party, launched the legal action after the list of green investments was published almost three years ago. “What I oppose with all my might is the attempt to greenwash nuclear power and gas via the backdoor of a supplementary delegated act,” Gewessler said at the time. “I think it is irresponsible and unreasonable. From our point of view, it is also not legal.” The government of Luxembourg also expressed support for the case. The ruling means that a deadlock over EU funding for conventional nuclear reactors could come to an end, and is a boon to French efforts to unlock such investments. It also comes just after Germany last week penned an agreement with France to develop a coherent policy accepting the inclusion of atomic power in a low-carbon energy mix. The move has created speculation that Berlin, which shuttered its own reactors in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, may stop blocking efforts to direct EU funds toward the technology.

LONDON — The U.K. can find a way to work with Donald Trump’s America on energy security while still retaining close cooperation with China on climate and renewables, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said. Speaking at a London energy summit, Miliband told POLITICO that, despite having a “different perspective” to the Trump administration on the role of fossil fuels in securing energy supply, the U.K. could still collaborate on low-carbon technologies like nuclear and geothermal power. Trump administration official Tommy Joyce used his appearance at the Future of Energy Security summit on Thursday to rail against allies’ net zero goals and to warn of a growing global dependence on China for clean energy technology. But Miliband sought to cool temperatures. “Despite the differences, we can find common ground,” he said. “Issues like nuclear cooperation are issues where we can work together with the U.S. We might be doing it with a different perspective but we can work together.” On China, which has not sent a delegation to the summit, Miliband said that “cooperation” on climate change was a “no brainer” but acknowledged concerns about Beijing’s dominance of global supply chains for clean energy technology like solar, wind and electric cars. “There is too much concentration in the clean energy market and one of the things we need is greater diversity,” Miliband said. The solution, he said, was to promote manufacturing of clean technology at home, pointing to £300 million of newly-announced investment by the Labour government’s embryonic state-run power company, GB Energy. Reducing reliance on China “starts with actually taking seriously a proper industrial policy where you start to build it in Britain,” Miliband said. The U.K., he added, should be emulating China’s economic success in investing in the energy transition. “Clean energy is also an economic opportunity, China recognizes that. Chinese growth was 40 percent higher last year because of their investment in clean energy. Why don’t we have some of that too?”

Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and author of “False Alarm” and “Best Things First.” Europe is alone. The post-1945 world order has collapsed, and — as incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz puts it — we’re at “five minutes to midnight.” Amid this ever-darkening back drop, both Merz and French President Macron advocate “strategic autonomy” for Europe. But this will be expensive and require major trade-offs. U.S. President Donald Trump’s hyperactive, isolationist policy is hardly the continent’s only challenge either. The EU is suffering anemic growth — barely above 1 percent per person. Long gone are the 1960s, when the economy would double in just 16 years. Now, it takes over half a century. Europe is also growing old, with increasing health and pension costs. Education is floundering; immigration is challenging both budgets and cohesion, and hasn’t increased growth; and innovation has come to a near halt, with Europe dramatically outspent on research by China, the U.S. and even the rest of the world. So, how is Europe going to get its mojo back? How can it find the resources to rearm, grow and return to a path of innovation? Simple. It’s well past time the bloc reconsidered hemorrhaging money on an unaffordable and ineffectual climate policy that no other continent is emulating. The costs to get Europe back on track are considerable: To rearm, the bloc will need to at least double or even triple its 1.8 percent of GDP defense spending — that means at least another €325 billion each year. For innovation, the EU itself set a target of €170 billion more — something it has failed to do for 25 years. And yet, increasing innovation could deliver €800 billion in additional growth each year over the coming decades. Pundits, meanwhile, offer solutions that range from slashing welfare and increasing taxes to borrowing and getting richer. Welfare costs 30 percent of the EU’s GDP, amounting to some €3 trillion each year for social protection and €1.5 trillion for pensions. But both spending cuts and tax hikes would be immensely challenging to pull off. Borrowing is tempting but dangerous, given the mountains of existing debt. And getting richer would obviously solve many problems but requires more innovation investment, fewer brakes on growth and deregulation. There is, however, one obvious reform that could drive growth and free up enormous resources: overhauling our climate policy. Currently, the EU spends a third of its entire budget on climate policy. Just last year, the price tag for buying things like solar panels, wind turbines, transmission lines, electric cars and chargers was €367 billion — this amount alone could fund Europe’s need for defense spending. The EU’s extremely high energy prices also drain the continent’s growth rate, leaving less money for all other priorities. Currently, the cost is already beyond another 1 percent of GDP, and toward 2050, it will escalate to about 10.5 percent of GDP, or some €3.3 trillion annually. The post-1945 world order has collapsed, and — as incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz puts it — we’re at “five minutes to midnight.” | Sean Gallup/Getty Images Of course, climate campaigners will counter that Europe is now all that’s standing against unmitigated climate disaster. But this is far from true. While climate change is a man-made problem, it pales in comparison to most of the pressing challenges Europe is now facing. Moreover, the EU has already cut its emissions a lot. Further cuts will have zero impact on temperatures over the coming decades. Even spending hundreds of trillions of euros on net zero by 2050, the impact will be unmeasurable. Just run the U.N.’s climate model with EU emissions going to zero, and the change in global temperature is zero today and an imperceptible 0.017 degrees Celsius by mid-century. The world won’t thank the EU for its self-sacrificial net-zero approach. It will, however, hold up the continent as a dangerous example of what to avoid. Nobody will follow a self-defeating, self-punishing policy. I’m not suggesting we throw out climate policy altogether. But for a much lower cost, the EU could embrace a much smarter policy. Climate economists have long known the solution to climate change isn’t self-immolation but innovation: Drive down the future price of low-carbon energy through R&D spending to eventually outcompete fossil fuels, and everyone will switch over — not just rich, well-meaning Europe, but China, India and Africa too. And it would cost just one-twentieth of the resources currently being poorly spent. Europe is now at a crossroads. It can continue to keep net-zero policies as its central pillar — amounting to ruinous virtue signaling while the rest of the world passes it by. Or it can end this singular obsession and implement a smart climate policy, spending €27 billion on green innovation, leaving far beyond €300 billion to be spent better elsewhere.   This would not only have a much greater chance of fixing climate change, it would also free precious European resources to drive innovation, boost defense and — through much lower energy prices — reinvigorate a high-growth continent to once again meet the challenges of the future.