In their latest paper, a NGO coalition from the EU member countries, gives the account of bioenergy as the main source of renewable energy in the majority of the EU countries, emphasizing that this source is not without draw-backs.
Recently a briefing of European NGOs took place, where the problems and perspectives of renewable energy were discussed. One of the key issues was the Renewable Energy Directive to 2030 and the ways of meeting its targets. The paper, released after the meeting, points out existing and potential problems of the conversion to biomass RES in Europe.
The Renewable Energy Directive sets quite ambitious goals: to cut the greenhouse gases by 40%, to raise the consumption of renewable energy and total energy efficiency by 27% by 2030, compared to those indexes in 1990, and also a colossal target of absolute decarbonisation by 2050. But because of some continuous reasons, these aims seem to be imperiled. Firstly, the demand for energy should be reduced by itself, as it becomes only harder to provide all the energy needs with eco-friendly energy.
But in this context, there is another significant issue. Bioenergy is currently the main renewable energy source in Europe, and it has some serious strains attached. According to the latest scientific data, represented in the NGO's paper, biomass burning causes sizable emissions of greenhouse gases. Depending on the type of biomass or biofuel burned it varies from completely negligible to those of amounts, produced by burning of the fossil fuels. Three quarters of the biomass used today comes from forestry, which in its turn adds to the demand of forests and land. This fact gives the evidence of impossibility to provide biomass enterprises with the sufficient amounts of forestry fuels, especially when it comes to the 2030 goals. Furthermore, deforestation endangers biodiversity and in some regions it may lead to some social issues, like landgrabbing.
The European Commission has already acknowledged that current biomass policy is inefficient and needs to be reconsidered. The main point to be taken into account is the fact, that biomass availability is limited, thus, its role in the renewable energy sector is to be limited too. Recently many power stations and plants have been converted to biomass burning throughout Europe due to numerous government subsidy programs. And the enterprises working on any type of biomass fuel may apply for these subsidies, while some preferences should be made, according to the GHG emissions and to the availability of the fuels. In future those plants may confront a challenge of fuel supplies shortage. The new biomass policy will be adopted in the period between 2015 and 2017 and the NFO coalition gave their recommendation on biomass issue. The main points of their statement went as following:
-Reduce the volumes of biomass to levels that can be sustainably supplied;
-Provide efficient use of biomass resources, applying the principles of cascading use;
-Establish biomass sustainable criteria;
-Carry out correct carbon emissions evaluating.
To sum up, the renewable energy question appeared to be a very complicated issue to deal with. Now it is up to the state governments to decide how to react on NGO's points. Biomass became the main energy source to meet the 2020 RES targets, but it seems to fail to be that efficient to fulfil the goals of the next decade.
