After my US biomass fact finding trip, what next?

I’ve been back from the USA almost a week now. As you’ll know if you’ve read my previous blogs about my trip, I went out there to see the impacts of UK and EU bioenergy policies. The beautiful forests are being cut down and turned into wood pellets that in many cases are being shipped to the UK to be burned in our power stations.

But after seeing the impacts for myself, and meeting with the decision makers, what are the next steps and what can we do to make sure that the wrong kinds of bioenergy aren’t being used and that the right kinds are?

• US decision makers at the federal and the state level are currently considering the role of bioenergy in the Clean Power Plan (President Obama’s big new renewables initiative). These decision makers need to make sure that whole trees from forests aren’t part of the mix.
• The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board rejected a finding from a biomass panel that would have seen biomass defined as carbon neutral over 100-year timescales. Science unequivocally shows that biomass cannot be presumed carbon neutral and that some kinds of biomass can even be worse for the climate than the fossil fuels they replace over these timescales. This SAB finding now needs to be enforced through policy.
• European and UK decision makers need to draw up strict sustainability standards for bioenergy and implement full carbon accounting. The European Commission will propose, later this year, new sustainability standards for bioenergy across the EU that will come into force from 2020. These need to include: full carbon accounting; a cap on the overall use of bioenergy in line with sustainable available supply; robust sustainability criteria; ensuring that the use of biomass complies with the waste hierarchy.
• In the meantime, states such as the UK should strengthen their sustainability criteria and implement full carbon accounting until 2020. The UK should also review its Bioenergy Strategy.
• More support is needed for the bioenergy that provides carbon savings and helps nature: for example, genuine wastes and residues, and vegetation arising from management of nature reserves.
• At the global level, rules governing how emissions from land use are accounted need fixing through a UN process that will begin this May and decide on the rules that are implemented after 2020.

The next two years are a critical time for bioenergy in the US, the UK and the EU. Decision makers need to make decisions that support the right kinds of biomass and rule out the ones that put the climate and wildlife at risk.