Sustainability and greenhouse gas emissions-saving criteria and low indirect land-use change-risk criteria

SUMMARY OF:

Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/996 on rules to verify sustainability and greenhouse gas emissions saving criteria and low indirect land-use change-risk criteria

WHAT IS THE AIM OF THE REGULATION?

It lays out common rules to ensure efficient and consistent checks of whether businesses are:

complying with European Union (EU) sustainability criteria;
providing accurate data on greenhouse gas (GHG) emission savings;
complying with the criteria for certification of low indirect land-use change (ILUC)*-risk biofuels, bioliquids and biomass fuels.

KEY POINTS

Promoting renewable forms of energy is one of the goals of EU energy policy. In 2019, the EU overhauled its energy policy framework to move away from fossil fuels towards cleaner energy and, more specifically, to deliver on the EU’s Paris Agreement commitments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The ‘Clean energy for all Europeans’ package, adopted in 2019, will help to decarbonise the EU’s energy system. The package included a revised directive on promoting the use of energy from renewable sources, Directive (EU) 2018/2001 (see summary).

Voluntary schemes

Voluntary certification schemes and national certification schemes of EU Member States help to ensure that biofuels, bioliquids and biomass fuels are sustainably produced, by verifying that they comply with the EU sustainability criteria.
For the certification process, an external auditor verifies that businesses comply with the requirements at each stage of the production chain, from the primary producer (farmer or forester) growing the feedstock to the biofuel producer or trader.
While the schemes are run privately, the European Commission can recognise them for the purposes of verifying that businesses comply with EU sustainability criteria. Their recognition by the European Commission ensures a harmonised market approach through the voluntary and national certification schemes and the mutual recognition of the results of their certification.
EU sustainability criteria are extended to cover biomass for heating and cooling and power generation in Directive (EU) 2018/2001.
Member States were required to transpose the new rules by 30 June 2021, and the voluntary schemes have to adjust the certification approaches to meet the new requirements.

This implementing regulation sets out additional rules for sustainability certification.

General rules

The regulation includes general rules covering:

the governance structure, to ensure that the scheme has sufficient legal and technical capacity and is impartial and independent;
a system to deal with non-conformities in the certification process by the businesses being certified;
the internal monitoring, complaints procedure and documentation management system;
publication of information.

Auditing

To take part in the voluntary scheme, businesses must pass an initial audit. The regulation sets out rules covering:

the audit process and levels of assurance – those found to be low-risk after the initial audit may be subject to limited audits subsequently;
the audit’s scope, which includes compliance with sustainability rules for agricultural and woody biomass along with waste and residues, actual GHG emissions calculations and mass balance systems*;
auditor qualifications; and
supervision by the Commission and Member States.

Specific rules

The regulation also sets out a number of specific rules covering areas including:

the traceability of transactions through the supply chain and an EU database;
the implementation of the mass balance system;
the determining of the GHG emissions of biofuels, biomass fuels and bioliquids;
waste and residues;
compliance with the requirements of low ILUC-risk certification.

Annexes

The annexes set out detailed requirements covering areas including:

data to be transmitted through the whole supply chain and transaction data;
the minimum content of audit reports, summary audit reports or certificates;
information to be reported by voluntary schemes in their annual reports to the Commission;
clarification about some of the materials considered part of Annex IX to the RED II directive on renewable energy;
the minimum requirements for the process and method of certifying low ILUC-risk biomass;
standard values of emission factors.

FROM WHEN DOES THE REGULATION APPLY?

It applies from 30 December 2023.

BACKGROUND

For further information, see:

Energy strategy (European Commission).

KEY TERMS

Indirect land-use change. When biofuels are produced on existing agricultural land, the demand for food and feed crops remains, and may lead to someone producing more food and feed somewhere else. This can cause land-use change (by changing, for example, forest into agricultural land), which results in a substantial amount of CO₂ emissions being released into the atmosphere.

Mass balance systems. Designed to reduce the administrative burden involved in showing compliance with the sustainability and greenhouse gas saving criteria, the systems allow the mixing of raw material and fuels with differing sustainability characteristics and the reassignment of the sustainability characteristics in a flexible manner to consignments withdrawn from such a mixture.

MAIN DOCUMENT

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/996 of 14 June 2022 on rules to verify sustainability and greenhouse gas emissions saving criteria and low indirect land-use change-risk criteria (OJ L 168, 27.6.2022, pp. 1–62).