The Bioenergy ‘Blind Spots’ in EU Climate and Energy Law

Abstract

This article analyses how the climate performance of forest-based bioenergy is treated under the revised European Union (EU) climate and energy law in the form of the recast Renewable Energy Directive and the new land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) Regulation on land use and forestry. Forest-based bioenergy exemplifies the troubled relationship between bioenergy, forest management and emissions and removals from the land use and forestry sector. The article focuses on the climate-related legal challenges that arise from the regulatory approach taken to the use of forest-based bioenergy as a widely available renewable raw material for energy production. The article argues that this regulatory approach does not fully consider the underlying climate-related concerns and hence the current approach risk weakening the overall ambition of the EU’s legislative approach to the challenge of climate change. This article exposes the ‘blind spots’ in the link between the Renewable Energy Directive and the LULUCF Regulation both to support this argument and to point out the grave challenges related to the current legal approach on bioenergy. forest-based bioenergy, carbon neutrality, climate change, climate law, energy law, the Renewable Energy Directive, the LULUCF Regulation