We actively contribute to the public debate on sustainable finance and engage in dialogue with leading sustainability rating agencies. Our sustainable financial instruments underpin our corporate strategy to develop into a sustainable and innovative infrastructure partner.

EU taxonomy

The European Green Deal includes the target of reducing net emissions from greenhouse gases in the European Union to zero by 2050. A key element of the EU Green Deal is the EU taxonomy, a classification system used to define “environmentally sustainable” business activities. The key performance indicators relating to taxonomy-eligible business activities have to be published for the 2021 financial year. In line with our sustainable corporate strategy, we are also voluntarily publishing additional information on the proportion of taxonomy-aligned business activities, even though those disclosures are not yet mandatory.

One year ago, EnBW was one of the first companies in Europe to apply the EU taxonomy to selected parts of its business portfolio. This second EnBW report on the application of the EU taxonomy – including a presentation of our taxonomy-aligned business activities – demonstrates that EnBW is consistently and reliably investing in the future with its environmentally sustainable capex of 68.2% in the 2021 financial year.

Thomas Kusterer, CFO

To implement the taxonomy requirements across the Group, we already launched a project in the2020 financial year. We established a steering committee to work together with the relevant specialist departments in determining the environmentally sustainable revenue, capex and opex, as well as the adjusted EBITDA, related to the Group’s taxonomy-eligible activities. Our reporting was based on the Taxonomy Regulation in the version from 18 June 2020 and the technical screening criteria in the draft delegated act for the Taxonomy Regulation from 20 November 2020. It disclosed information on some of the activities in our former Grids and Renewable Energies segments, which became the new System Critical Infrastructure and Sustainable Generation Infrastructure segments in the 2021 financial year.

In the 2021 financial year, we expanded the application of the Taxonomy Regulation to all of EnBW’s business activities described in the delegated acts. The delegated acts supplementing Article 8 of the Taxonomy Regulation from 6 July 2021 and the associated technical screening criteria for the objectives of climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation from 4 June 2021 were applied. The formulations and terms contained in these pieces of legislation are subject to uncertainty and need further clarification. Our own interpretation is presented below.

As well as those activities reported in the previous year, we also considered the following business activities in the 2021 financial year that can be classified as taxonomy-eligible according to the EU taxonomy: biomass, water grids/extraction, e-mobility and hydropower (pumped storage with and without a natural flow of water).

Activities examined for the EU Taxonomy Regulation

The determination of whether activities in the areas of wind, solar and run-of-river were taxonomy-aligned was carried out at the level of each individual activity. The existing business transactions for each activity were analyzed and evaluated with respect to being taxonomy-aligned. In addition to the information required by law on the taxonomy-eligible activities in the 2021 financial year, we are also disclosing information on the taxonomy-aligned activities as in the previous year. All of the taxonomy-eligible activities were also classified as taxonomy-aligned.

Based on the available documentation for the six environmental objectives of the EU Taxonomy (delegated acts for environmental objectives 1 and 2 and drafts for environmental objectives 3 to 6), we carried out an in-depth examination of the contributions made by our business activities. We believe that our main contribution is in the area of climate change mitigation and the contribution made by EnBW’s activities to the other five environmental objectives will thus not be examined further.

Climate change mitigation

Climate change adaption

Sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources

Transition to a circular economy

Pollution prevention and control

Protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems

The EU Taxonomy defines business activities as being “environmentally sustainable” if they:

(1) contribute substantially to one of the six environmental objectives, verified by compliance with the technical screening criteria;
(2) do not significantly harm the five remaining EU environmental objectives; and
(3) comply with minimum safeguards with regard to labour and human rights.

The following proportions were determined:

KPIs for the taxonomy-aligned business activities of the EnBW Group

	2021	2020
Adjusted EBITDA	2021 2,959.3 / 100.0	2020 2,781.2 / 100.0
of which environmentally sustainable	2021 1,853.1 / 62.6	2020 1,891.7 / 68.0
Capex	2021 2,676.9 / 100.0	2020 2,870.8 / 100.0
of which environmentally sustainable	2021 1,826.5 / 68.2	2020 2,008.9 / 70.0
Capex inkl. IFRS 11 I IAS 28	2021 2,963.6 / 100.0	2020 2,907.6 / 100.0
of which environmentally sustainable	2021 2,108.9 / 71.2	2020 2,036.7 / 70.0
Revenue	2021 32,147.9 / 100.0	2020 19,694.3 / 100.0
of which environmentally sustainable	2021 4,698.4 / 14.6	2020 3,993.7 / 20.3
Opex	2021 1,142.8 / 100.0	2020 947.9 / 100.0
of which environmentally sustainable	2021 335.0 / 29.3	2020 351.3 / 37.1

in € million / in %

Proportion of taxonomy-aligned adjusted EBITDA in the segments

	2021	2020
Adjusted EBITDA Smart Infrastructure for Customers	2021 323.1 / 100.0	2020 335.0 / 100.0
of which environmentally sustainable	2021 -34.4 / -10.6	2020 -28.1 / -8.4
Adjusted EBITDA System Critical Infrastructure	2021 1,288.5 / 100.0	2020 1,346.6 / 100.0
of which environmentally sustainable	2021 916.8 / 71.2	2020 1,032.9 / 76.7
Adjusted EBITDA Sustainable Generation Infrastructure	2021 1,535.1 / 100.0	2020 1,277.8 / 100.0
of which environmentally sustainable	2021 970.7 / 63.2	2020 886.9 / 69.4

in € million / in %

Proportion of taxonomy-aligned expanded capex in the segments

	2021	2020
Expanded capex Smart Infrastructure for Customers	2021 296.9 / 100.0	2020 284.4 / 100.0
of which environmentally sustainable	2021 107.2 / 36.1	2020 91.5 / 32.2
Expanded capex System Critical Infrastructure	2021 1,711.5 / 100.0	2020 1,696.8 / 100.0
of which environmentally sustainable	2021 1,396.4 / 81.6	2020 1,227.5 / 72.3
Expanded capex Sustainable Generation Infrastructure	2021 897.8 / 100.0	2020 862.3 / 100.0
of which environmentally sustainable	2021 605.3 / 67.4	2020 717.7 / 83.2