It is important for policymakers in the EU to control the types of biomass feedstock used – and supported by policy frameworks – in order to limit negative impacts on the climate. Summary
- This paper summarizes the patterns of supply and demand for woody biomass for power and heat, and the policy frameworks that support them, in nine of the largest EU member state consumers: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Sweden and the UK.
- Thanks largely to the targets for renewable energy set by the 2009 Renewable Energy Directive, the EU is the main global source of demand for woody biomass: in 2016, energy from solid biomass accounted for about 44 per cent of total EU renewable energy consumption.
- The EU is also a major producer: in 2014, it was estimated that 42 per cent of harvested EU wood was used for energy. Domestic supply is insufficient to meet demand, however, so the EU is also a major importer: about a third of total consumption was imported, mainly from the US, Canada and Russia.
- Demand for biomass energy is likely to increase as EU member states set more ambitious renewable targets. While biomass electricity is steadily been out-competed by other renewables, mainly wind and solar PV, biomass is likely to remain the main source of renewable heat at least in the near term.
- As argued in Woody Biomass for Power and Heat: Impacts on the Global Climate (2017), the use of biomass for energy can increase carbon emissions in the atmosphere for years or decades. Financial and regulatory support should therefore be limited to those feedstocks that reduce carbon emissions over the short term: in practice, sawmill residues and post-consumer waste.
- Sustainability criteria can be used to distinguish between feedstocks with different impacts on the climate, but neither the national sets of criteria currently in use within the EU nor those proposed in the new Renewable Energy Directive yet achieve this.
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