The European Council has agreed ambitious targets aiming to increase the share of energy coming from renewable sources including solar, wind and green hydrogen from 22% in 2021 to 42.4% by 2030, but failed to remove incentives that mean newly felled wood is included in this mix. This is despite repeated calls from researchers to exclude trees chopped down for the sole purpose of making wood pellets to power electric generators from being subsidised through the Renewable Energy Directive.
Agreement on the EU’s renewable energy directive brings to a close an 18-month process to upgrade the bloc’s climate policies as part of work to achieve a 55% net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
EU member states and MEPs agreed on Thursday to almost double the share of renewables in the energy mix by 2030, a key component of Europe's ambitious climate plan.The approved text enshrines biomass (wood burned to produce energy) as green energy, to the chagrin of environmental NGOs concerned about the impact on forests, and takes into account the role of nuclear power in producing carbon-free hydrogen - a subject that has sharply divided the Twenty-Seven. The agreement, reached at dawn after fifteen hours of final talks, sets the binding target of 42.5% o
As Europe races to replace Russian fossil fuels with cleaner power sources, EU lawmakers are weighing up the future of firewood as a renewable energy source. The debate is getting heated.