Commission says ‘No’ to biomass environmental safeguards
Disagreements between Commission departments as climate campaignerswarn of legal loopholes.
The European Commission’s energy department has decided against proposing environmental safeguards for the use of plants and wood as a source of power and heating.
Climate campaigners have accused the Commission of undermining its other efforts to preserve forests and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Around 60% of all renewable energy in the EU comes from biomass – energy derived from wood or plant matter that is used in heating or power generation.
With European countries obliged to get 20% of their energy supplies from renewable sources by 2020, the use of biomass is expected to increase. But some scientists, MEPs and climate campaigners are warning that a legal loophole means the pursuit of biomass could run counter to the aspiration to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The EU agreed a law on renewable energy last year that included green safeguards to keep biofuels with a heavy carbon footprint off the market. But no similar safeguards were included, outside the transport sector, for biomass. Instead, the Commission was asked to report on the issue before the end of 2009.
Concession
European Voice understands that the Commission will not be proposing legislation. Instead, it will publish a non-binding recommendation calling on member states to apply biofuels standards to biomass.
Officials from the environment department had wanted binding standards, but that approach was rejected by officials in the energy department. As a concession to environment officials, the Commission will review whether legislation is needed in 2011.
Sirpa Pietikäinen, a centre-right Finnish MEP, hosted a conference on the subject in the European Parliament yesterday (11 November). Pietikäinen said that non-binding standards were unacceptable. “We see it in all legislation that we need binding mechanisms and sanctions to make them really effective,” she said.
She said that the absence of legally enforceable standards “might speed up the loss of the forest cover”, because there would be nothing to stop countries importing biomass derived from ancient forests. Commission officials think it would be difficult to draw up sustainability criteria for biomass.
Ariel Brunner, a policy officer at the conservation group Birdlife International, said the Commission risked “repeating problems” that had occurred with biofuels, such as deforestation and competition with food crops. Campaigners against biofuels were particularly critical of how forests in Indonesia were cut down to produce palm oil that was imported into the EU. Brunner said the same perverse incentives were possible for parts of palms that were used as biomass.
“There is no reason why palm-oil kernels should have a different environmental or social story from palm oil,” he said.
A Commission spokesman said: “There is a lot of scientific research going on. We have our own data that we are working on, in consultation with other people.”
He said the Commission would publish its report in the second half of December.
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