Energy Uni­on: Com­mis­sion adopts del­eg­ated act on sus­tain­ab­il­ity cri­ter­ia for bio­fuels as reques­ted by the co-legislators

The enhanced use of elec­tri­city pro­duced from renew­able sources includ­ing in the trans­port sec­tor, is cru­cial for the decar­bon­isa­tion of our eco­nomy. A new bind­ing, EU-wide renew­able energy tar­get for 2030 of at least 32% was agreed between the Mem­ber States and the European Par­lia­ment in June 2018. It includes a review clause by 2023 for a pos­sible upward revi­sion of the EU level tar­get. The Dir­ect­ive, already in force, includes a gradu­al reduc­tion of the amount of cer­tain types of bio­fuels for which a sig­ni­fic­ant expan­sion of the pro­duc­tion area into land with high-car­bon stock is observed (so-called high Indir­ect Land-Use Change (ILUC) risk bio­fuels), to be coun­ted towards the renew­able energy tar­gets. ILUC can occur when pas­ture or agri­cul­tur­al land pre­vi­ously destined for food and feed mar­kets is diver­ted to bio­fuel pro­duc­tion. In this case, food and feed demand still needs to be sat­is­fied, which may lead to the exten­sion of agri­cul­ture land into areas with high car­bon stock such as forests, wet­lands and peat­lands. This implies land use change (by chan­ging such areas into agri­cul­tur­al land) and may cause the release of green­house gas emis­sions (CO2 stored in trees and soil) that neg­ates emis­sion sav­ings from the use of bio­fuels instead of fossil fuels. Act­ing on the clear request of the Co-legis­lat­ors and in order to imple­ment the new approach, the Com­mis­sion has today adop­ted a del­eg­ated act. With today’s decision the Mem­ber States will still be able to use (and import) fuels included in the cat­egory of high ILUC-risk bio­fuels, but they will not be able to include these volumes when cal­cu­lat­ing the extent to which they have ful­filled their renew­able tar­gets. For fur­ther inform­a­tion see MEMO. Source: European Com­mis­sion, Daily News 13 / 03 / 2019