EU Taxonomy Regulation
Reporting Principles
The EU taxonomy is a classification system for “green” economic operations and is intended to promote investments in sustainable activities and to help create greater transparency and comparability. In accordance with the EU taxonomy, we disclose the share of turnover generated with products/services that are associated with environmentally sustainable economic activities. We also report the shares of capital expenditure and operating expenses linked to assets or processes that are associated with environmentally sustainable economic activities.
We reported on our climate-related taxonomy-eligible business activities for the 2021 fiscal year. For the current reporting year and for the first time, Vonovia is reporting the shares of taxonomy-aligned and non-taxonomy-aligned turnover, capital expenditure and operating expenses in accordance with the requirements set out in Article 8 of the EU Taxonomy Regulation for the EU environmental objectives of climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation. The EU Commission is currently developing technical screening criteria for the other four EU environmental objectives (sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources, transition to a circular economy, pollution prevention and control, and protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems), which in the future will also be subject to a reporting obligation.
When determining if a particular taxonomy-eligible economic activity is taxonomy-aligned, it must be established that,
- firstly, it makes a substantial contribution to the achievement of one or more EU environmental objectives (“substantial contribution”),
- secondly, it does not significantly harm any other EU environmental objective (“do no significant harm”),
- and thirdly, it will be practiced in compliance with minimum standards of protection (“minimum social safeguards”).
The construction industry and real estate sector are covered by the taxonomy, as they are responsible for a substantial share of CO2 emissions within the EU. Accordingly, companies operating in these industries can make a significant contribution to climate change mitigation (EU environmental objective 1) by reducing CO2 emissions and improving energy efficiency.