On Monday 28 May, the environmental NGO WWF warned of the risk that the new EU rules on biomass, set out in the draft revised directive on renewable energies currently under interinstitutional negotiation, could increase greenhouse gas emissions.
According to a report by the research agency for the United Kingdom’s forestry commission, the proposed EU renewable energy 2.0 directive contains hardly any of the biomass sustainability criteria that are needed to reduce emissions. This means that increased bioenergy use would likely increase emissions and have an adverse impact on the climate, rather than protect it, WWF stresses.
Among the main conclusions to the report, WWF warns that some types of bioenergy increase CO2 gas emissions significantly compared to burning fossil fuels, including coal. Without appropriate sustainability criteria, member states should apply additional sustainability criteria at national level to ensure biomass delivers genuine emissions reductions.
WWF concludes: “This is a damning report from the very experts the Commission hired to help it develop its proposals. It’s yet more evidence that the biomass sustainability criteria in the renewable energy directive are seriously flawed. Burning trees instead of coal is complete madness and will make climate change worse not better”. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)