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Proposals for the EU's main policy lever for renewable energy
foresee a continued but less subsidized role for traditional
bioenergy through at least 2050.
The European Commission's proposed revision to the
Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) would force EU states to do
their part to meet more ambitious EU-wide targets for renewable
energy of 38-40% by 2030, raising the existing 32% target for that
year. The stronger renewable aims are needed to achieve the bloc's new net-zero emissions
targets outlined in its Fit for 55 policy agenda.
The revisions to RED II would also add a 49% indicative target
for renewable energy used in buildings, alongside new sub-targets,
including a binding EU-wide target for heating and a higher
obligation for states to increase the share of renewables for
heating and cooling (by 1.1% per year), according to analysis by
IHS Markit.
But opponents say the higher targets for renewable energy will
push the envelope of bioenergy's sustainability by spurring its
demand for wood from forests, at least in the short term. The
sector already receives subsidies from member states despite its
questionable carbon benefits, leading to a 150% increase in the use
of biomass since 2000, a June study from consultancy Material
Economics found.
Bioenergy makes up 60% of EU renewable energy consumption when
counting both electricity and non-electrified heating, such as
firewood burned in fireplaces or wood pellets burned in boilers,
district heating, or power plants, according to Eurostat 2019
figures. (Wind power dominates the EU's renewable energy sources
when excluding heating.)
The EU is the world's largest market for wood pellets, and the
US Southeast is the world's largest producer of wood pellets for
export to the EU.
Bioenergy has a key role to play in the growth of renewables,
the EC said, but its role in
electricity production will be curbed beginning in 2026 when state
subsidies for electricity-only forest biomass power plants will be
prohibited under the proposal.
The subsidies will be permitted to continue for biomass-powered
heating and in poorer regions identified by the EC. It noted
bioenergy is also the largest renewable energy sector in terms of
jobs and had a turnover of about €67 billion ($78 billion) in 2019,
particularly in rural areas.
The proposal's long-term green light to harvesting trees for
bioenergy is vehemently opposed by green groups, who say the
ongoing clear-cutting of forests removes carbon sinks needed to
stop climate change while harming biodiversity.
The UN and the EU both have said that re-planting of the trees
harvested for burning makes the practice carbon-neutral, but
experts argue this is not the case because the time it takes to
grow new trees where the carbon is no longer stored makes the
practice "dirtier" than burning coal.
"It takes several decades for forests to regrow. It is not
prudent to cut down trees just to provide biofuel and then say,
'Okay, we can simply plant more trees.' Climate benefits from that
will be delayed, and considering the urgency of the climate crisis,
we don't have that time," said Michael Davies Venn, a visiting
fellow in ethics and guest environmental researcher at VU
Amsterdam.
Activists have filed legal actions to stop the EU's subsidizing
of bioenergy as renewable energy, albeit unsuccessfully. In May
2020, the European General Court dismissed a case brought by
individuals and environmental groups from six countries to annul
biomass provisions contained in the current RED on the grounds the
plaintiffs did not have legal standing.
Mary Booth, director of the Partnership for Policy Integrity and
a witness in the case, is a critic of the practice of converting
coal-fired power plants to run on biomass that the EU currently
encourages. "When you burn biomass, you are emitting more CO2 on a
heat output basis than even coal, like a smokestack per MWh, and
yet biomass plants are counted as zero-emission [under RED]. So
those who convert coal plants are claiming that they're increasing
the percentage of renewable energy because now they've got a
renewable energy plant instead of the coal plant and claim that
they're reducing emissions," Booth told Net-Zero Business
Daily.
"The emissions are greater than they were before: They're just
counting them as zero. The problem is, you can put that on paper,
but it doesn't follow in the atmosphere," said Booth.
At the point of combustion, wood may burn 74% of the emissions
of coal, but its benefits over coal fade when accounting for
bioenergy's supply-chain and knock-on carbon impacts.
This is why the EC proposes to pivot to subsidies for bioenergy
where new technology can be deployed: the experimental
carbon-negative practice known as biomass carbon capture and
storage (BECCS).
But activists contest even the carbon benefits of BECCS. A
February joint NGO statement by environmental
academics said that BECCS would remove very little carbon. To
replace fossil fuel power with burning wood fails to account for
the lost opportunity to use the harvested trees to remove CO2, keep
carbon in soils, and the excess fossil fuel emissions caused by
processing wood, they said.
Expanded GHG emissions reductions
IHS Markit analysts writing in July noted the EC's proposal will
change the carbon accounting rules for biomass energy producers and
their suppliers.
The proposal would apply GHG savings thresholds to pre-existing
biomass energy installations, whereas currently they only apply to
new installations.
For example, it would require existing bioenergy installations
to deliver at least a 70% GHG emissions reduction immediately, then
80% in 2026.
The bioenergy association Bioenergy Europe worries the GHG
savings threshold, while attainable for large operators, would bury
small operators like rural woodchip companies "in red tape which
will critically impact their business plans and threaten their
long-term commitments to clients and suppliers."
Sustainability criteria
The EU's existing sustainability criteria for bioenergy, revised
in 2018 with new biodiversity and climate safeguards for forest
biomass under RED II, would also be further strengthened under the
proposal.
For example, it would create "no go areas" for tree harvesting,
including primary, highly biodiverse forests and peatlands. Other
proposals were intended to minimize the negative impacts of
harvesting on soil quality and biodiversity include prohibiting the
harvesting of stumps and roots.
What is more, all 5-MW-and-larger biomass power plants that were
not covered by the existing rules (which covered 20-MW-and-larger
plants) would be captured under the revision, so an increased
number of bioenergy plants would have to comply.
As less forest biomass is considered renewable under the
proposal, it would raise the cost of biomass within Europe, but
also reduce the reliance on imports from outside Europe, write IHS
Markit analysts.
Not everyone approves of the added protection for forests,
though. The proposed change to sustainability criteria "will result
in negative repercussions on the entire bioenergy value chain," in
particular harming rural economies, said Bioenergy Europe. "The
current approach can have the unintended effect of increasing red
tape and cost compliance without delivering increased
sustainability," it warned.
The Wood Pellet Association of Canada said it was cooperating
with Bioenergy Europe in talks with the EU on the revised RED. It
is "strongly in favor of responsible biomass feedstock sourcing and
sustainability criteria" that the Canadian pellet industry is
well-positioned to meet with its existing certifications, but hopes
the criteria can "achieve their intended objectives without adverse
impacts to trade and the rights of [Canada's] indigenous
people."
There are also sustainability criteria critics in the opposite
camp.
Booth explains that the sustainability criteria, while aiming to
make certain harvesting practices less damaging, don't do anything
about the ongoing issue of harvesting trees. "Fundamentally, it
comes down to this, this problem …. that they treat bioenergy as
having zero emissions, even though it doesn't. So, they haven't
changed anything in the sustainability criteria to fix that
underlying fundamental problem—that burning wood emits carbon
faster than trees can regrow to sequester," said Booth.
The EC sought to partly address carbon sink concerns in other
Fit for 55 proposals, but it's a work in progress.
It has proposed a Forest Strategy aiming to improve forestry
research while preserving the EU's last old-growth forests,
alongside plans for a delegated act on the cascading use of biomass
to prioritize the use of wood for creating long-lived products like
buildings, retaining carbon storage benefits, in lieu of burning
for energy use.
But the issue of abandoning tree harvesting must wait for later
proposals, as the EC plans to take another look at the proposed
subsidies in 2026 and may enact further restrictions for forest
biomass.
Posted 23 August 2021 by Cristina Brooks, Senior Journalist, Climate and Sustainability
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