EU-Bioenergies: Status and Future Prospects

Abstract

For climate protection and a sustainable economy, the European Union is pursuing a policy of switching from fossil to renewable energies, which should lead to a reduction in greenhouse gases (GHG) and a reduction in dependence on energy imports. This report uses publicly available databases and analyses to examine the extent to which these goals are achieved or are achievable by means of bioenergy (fuel, heat, electricity). In addition, EU regulations and databases relevant to bioenergy are critically scrutinised. Today, bioenergy accounts for around 10% of Europe's energy supply, making up more than half (59%) of renewable energies. There is potential to further increase bioenergy, but the future contribution to energy supply and independence from imports is rather to be estimated as moderate. The evaluation of GHG suffers from the fact that the official databases do not meet the requirements for a scientific evaluation. In order to make a sustainable contribution to the EU targets, besides energy, all other options for the use of biomass, the use of biogenic CO2 through carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) and the combination of bioenergy and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) should be integrated. To promote the implementation of such an integrated approach, the pricing of GHG should be combined with incentives for the upscaling of sustainable bioenergy, CCU and CCS.

Received: 20 October 2023 | Revised: 11 January 2024 | Accepted: 26 February 2024

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares that he has no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

The data is available upon request from the author.