Legal & Regulatory News

The Green Technical Advisory Group publishes a report on the Do No Significant Harm criteria.

On 2 August 2023, the Green Technical Advisory Group (GTAG) published a report entitled ‘Streamlining and increasing the usability of the Do No Significant Harm (DNSH) criteria within the UK Green Taxonomy’. GTAG is a high-level group which provides advice to the UK government on the development of the UK Green Taxonomy. GTAG began a review into the DNSH criteria after recognising the issues around the subject in relation to the EU Taxonomy.

As part of their review, GTAG consulted with key stakeholders and found that they shared its concern about the usability of the DNSH criteria and how this could impact the effectiveness of the UK Green Taxonomy in supporting investors. GTAG identified five common challenges which contribute to these concerns, such as difficulties with measuring, understanding, and evidencing.

The GTAG report includes:-

• key recommendations for the UK government to implement;
• supporting evidence for GTAG’s recommendations;
• details of the usability challenges around the DNSH criteria; and
• methods for overcoming these challenges. 

One of the key recommendations from the report is that UK government should confirm the purpose of, approach to and definition of DNSH in the UK Green Taxonomy, and that this should be set out in the upcoming Autumn 2023 consultation.  GTAG also recommend that greater transparency could be achieved if firms whose activities fail to meet the DNSH criteria, and cannot be labelled as taxonomy-aligned, are able to disclose how far off they are. GTAG recommend that any changes in the approach towards DNSH should be indicated in the Autumn 2023 consultation.

Click here to read the GTAG report.