The European Energy Policy for 2020–2030 RED II: what future for vegetable oil as a source of bioenergy?

Abstract

The support for vegetable oils biodiesel is defined by the Renewable Energy Directive (RED). After three years of negotiations, RED II (recast of the 2010–2020 RED I) has been adopted and published in December 2018. RED II sets the framework for the EU renewable energy policy for 2021–2030. Although RED II gives a priority to advanced biofuels and electricity in transport with specific targets and multipliers. For crop-based biofuels as vegetable oil biodiesel, RED II offers the possibility to preserve the current investments by giving the Member States the possibility to cap their consumption at the national 2020 consumption level (plus 1%) with maximum of 7%. With the idea to cut the link of crop-based biofuels with deforestation, a change of approach on the ILUC issue is introduced by RED II with the definition of “high ILUC-risk feedstocks with a significant expansion on land with high carbon stocks”. The high ILUC-risk feedstocks will be capped in each Member State at the 2019 level until 2023, and then progressively eliminated by 2030. An exemption from these constraints is provided for to low ILUC-risk feedstocks not linked to deforestation – direct or indirect – and identified by a certification granted to additional feedstocks produced either through productivity improvements or from cultivation on abandoned or degraded land. An Implementing Act will further detail by 2021 the conditions of the low ILUC-risk certification. In a Delegated Act published in March 2019, the EU Commission classified the palm oil as the sole high ILUC-risk feedstock with more than 40% expansion on high carbon stock land (vs. 8% for soybean) on the base of the current available data. Nevertheless, there is a certain uncertainty on the final use of palm oil in bioenergy, as the details of the certification of low ILUC-risk feedstocks are unknown before the publication of the Implementing Act (2021), and as the Delegated Act himself will be reviewed in 2021 and 2023.