The European Academies Scientific Advisory Council (EASAC), an organisation of the national academies of science of the EU Member States, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK, called on EU lawmakers on Wednesday 26 August to include carbon emissions from the use of biomass for electricity generation in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).
At present, installations exclusively using biomass are not covered by the ETS system, unlike those using fossil fuels. However, according to the EASAC, “not correcting this mistake is climate hypocrisy”, because it considers that a large part of the biomass used in Europe “is anything but carbon neutral” when the whole life cycle of the biomass is properly taken into account.
The organisation is therefore calling on legislators to reform the ETS so that it takes into account the real effects of biomass on CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
To this end, it stresses the need to calculate the “carbon payback period” for each biomass facility and its supply chain.
“Since recent estimates are that 1.5°C may be exceeded in 10-20 years, an acceptable payback period should be no longer than 5 to 10 years”, explains Michael Norton, EASAC’s Environmental Program Director.
This means that only biomass facilities that can demonstrate that they deliver a net reduction of atmospheric CO2 within less than ten years would be treated in the same way as other renewable technologies and thus excluded from the ETS. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)