RSPB contributes views to European Commission on role for bioenergy post-2020

I returned yesterday from a meeting at the European Commission on bioenergy. The discussion was about new sustainability criteria that would apply to all bioenergy across the EU from 2020 onwards. Bioenergy currently makes up around 2/3 of all the renewable energy used in the EU, and in the UK it's even higher at 72%.

Only a few member states have sustainability criteria right now, including the UK. But the new criteria would apply to all member states. These criteria are badly needed, since the existing use of biomass for transport, heat and energy has led to severe impacts on biodiversity, has sometimes failed to deliver emissions reductions, in some cases potentially even resulted in increases in emissions.

These problems have arisen because many policy makers have assumed that bioenergy is carbon neutral. They have based this assumption on the misconception that the emissions will be fully accounted for in the land sector and therefore don't need to be accounted for in the energy sector. This is flawed because the rules for accounting emissions in the land use sector contain numerous loopholes. In effect this results in many emissions 'going missing', and never being counted.

Yesterday's stakeholder conference brought together over 100 representatives, mostly from the bioenergy industry. The meeting was opened with the news that in the recent consultation on this issue 57,000 US citizens had submitted messages asking for European policies to stop the destruction of US forests for bioenergy. A few NGOs were present in the room as well as some policy makers. There was a clear divide between many of the industry and policy makers' views and the concerns expressed by NGOs, including myself.

Many feel that we can deal with the risks posed by bioenergy through weak sustainability criteria and through the land use emissions accounting rules. These accounting rules, in their current form, will do little to deal with the emissions generated when biomass is burned. It's also important to note that in many cases burning biomass, particularly whole trees, can be more polluting than the fossil fuels it replaces, simply because wood is less energy dense per unit weight than coal. And this effect can last many decades or longer as the trees slowly regrow.

Instead of the proposals put forward yesterday, many NGOs, including RSPB, are calling for:

- Full carbon accounting in the energy sector, including biogenic emissions

- Robust safeguards for the natural environment

- The optimum use of limited bioenergy resources

- A cap on the overall amount of bioenergy used in line with available, sustainable supply.

We consider that there are some sustainable kinds of biomass that are genuinely sustainable and truly deliver emissions reductions. In particular the use of combined heat and power or heat only power plants that are very efficient, and the use of genuine wastes and residues, very limited use of energy crops and arisings from nature conservation such as of UK woodlands.

We hope that, when it proposes its new legislation on biomass later this year, the European Commission will take these views from NGOs clearly into account.