Achieving EU climate goals and energy transition targets depends on forest bioenergy that is produced sustainably. Therefore, the 2018 Renewable Energy Directive introduces new sustainability criteria for biomass and biogas in heat and power that cover forest biomass, too.
Several associations have brought forward their concerns, amendment ideas and other input.
A guidance to enable robust and harmonised implementation of sustainability criteria for forest biomass is important. To prevent market barriers, it is crucial to interprete measures and timeliness in transposition and implementation coherently. We need to emphasize that this is not a sustainability issue, but rather an issue of the mechanisms and systems. The draft regulation in its current formulation, stretches the boundaries of the criteria according to the Renewable Energy Directive, by adopting several recommendations from the 2021 Joint Research Centre report on woody biomass. However, the inclusion of these criteria should be avoided as this would lower the momentum.
Link to the EC Draft Act. The deadline for inputs closes on 28th April 2021.