During the Euractiv workshop „Transitioning to renewables: What role for biomass?”, the representatives of the European Parliament and the Commission together with experts and stakeholders participated in a discussion co-organised by the Polish Electricity Association (PKEE).
Workshop in Brussels
Biomass will continue to play an important role as a green source of energy. According to the data presented by the official of the European Commission, Mr Giulio Volpi around 50% of RES in the EU are already based on biomass. Discussing the future potential of biomass, the rapporteur for the RES Directive in the European Parliament, Mr José Blanco López, highlighted his particular focus on making all renewables development and deployment coherent with the Paris Agreement goals.
Biomass can play a key role not only in fulfilling the climate goals but also can contribute to the circular economy. Biomass investments contribute to job creation as well as to development of the rural and post-industrial areas. Panellists discussed how important it is to ensure that biomass is obtained in a sustainable way in order to prevent the negative impact on the environment.
Representative of the PKEE, Mr Maciej Gomółka, Member of the Management Board of Enea Bioenergia, a company servicing one of the world’s biggest biomass–based electricity generation plants in Połaniec, Poland, supported the EU-wide introduction of criteria for sustainable acquisition of biomass and CO2 reduction for bioenergy. This is a condition to ensuring consistence of all solutions concerning generation of bioenergy, including the use of biomass in the energy sector, with the EU climate and energy targets. This is of particular importance in the context of the present high share of biomass in energy production in the EU, and the ambitious RES targets for 2030. “We believe that the criteria should be formulated in a way that will not jeopardise the growth of the bioenergy sector in the EU” – said Mr Gomółka.
As the PKEE highlights, some of the proposed restrictions would have negative impact on biomass investments. In particular, the proposal to limit the right to be considered as a contributor to the RES target in case of capacity exceeding ca. 7 MWe (20 MW fuel capacity) if the unit concerned is not a high-efficiency combined power and heat installation. With the measures provided at the same time by the regulations concerning sustainable development and CO2 reduction criteria, these restrictions would not provide any added value but would significantly undermine development of biomass as the transition fuel towards low-carbon economy in coal dependent countries. Moreover, the capacity limits give no consideration at all to the local specifics of individual Member States. Individual circumstances in many countries do not justify building numerous small cogeneration installations due to the lack of continuous demand for heat, existing heating infrastructures and other local conditions favouring construction of units generating electricity only.
As concluded by the panellists, the revised RES Directive should guarantee correctly used and managed biomass in sustainable way in order to continue its positive impact on social prosperity in full correlation with the European climate goals, in particular the development of renewable sources of energy.
PKEE: Biomass might be the future of the EU
Polish Electricity Association (PKEE) appreciates the very thorough work on the proposal for a revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED II). We support the EU-wide introduction of the criteria for sustainable acquisition of biomass and CO2 reduction for bioenergy. These criteria (Article 26) are a condition to ensure consistence of all solutions concerning generation of bioenergy, including the use of biomass in the energy sector, with the EU climate and energy targets. At the same time, we believe that the sustainability criteria should be formulated in a way that will not jeopardise the growth of the bioenergy sector in the EU (e.g. by significantly reducing the supply of fuel meeting the restrictive criteria). This is of particular importance in the context of the present high share of biomass in energy production in the EU, and the ambitious RES targets set for 2030.
Therefore, we propose reconsideration of the restrictions set out in Article 26.8 of the European Parliament position on the Directive. These restrictions would limit the right of capacity exceeding ca. 7 MWe (20 MW fuel capacity) sources, if the unit concerned is not a highly efficient combined power and heat installation, to be considered as a RES. Considering the measures provided by the regulations concerning the sustainable development and CO2 reduction criteria these restrictions would not provide any added value but significantly undermine development of biomass as a transition fuel towards low-carbon economy in coal dependent countries. Appropriately formulated sustainability criteria shall cause the capacity limit to be neither needed nor reasonable.
Moreover, capacity limits give no consideration at all to the local specifics of individual Member States. According to individual circumstances, in many countries it is not justified to build numerous small cogeneration installations due to the lack of continuous demand for heat, existing heating infrastructures and other local conditions favouring construction of units generating electricity only.
The principle of confidence in the rule of law requires that the new legislation shall not adversely affect the investments realised based on hitherto regulations or at least provide time for adaptation to the new regulations if it is possible – thus requiring provision of sufficiently long transition periods. Therefore, we strongly advocate to keep taking already existing units of biomass into account in the share of RES in the domestic energy mix and not depriving them of eligibility for State aid support for RES.
Polish Electricity Association (PKEE) welcomes the changes proposed by the Council in the Article 26.8 (limitations only for co-firing, threshold raised to ca. 25 MWe, derogation for the CCS and other emission reduction methods). We also support the introduction of derogation for the outermost regions – as the right direction for considering the local specifics and providing the possibility of transition by conversion of coal fired units to biomass (for instance Denmark, United Kingdom, Spain, Poland).
PKEE