Technical Standards

Renewable energy Directive (RED) and Fuel quality directives (2009)

Targets: The original 2009 Renewable Energy Directive placed a target that 10% of energy in transport should be from renewable sources by 2020. Renewable energy used in aviation and shipping is eligible to be counted towards national targets under the Directive, even though energy consumed in these modes is not counted towards the overall national 10% targets. The Fuel Quality Directive places a target that the carbon intensity of European road transport fuel should be reduced by 6% by 2020 compared to the baseline.

Sustainability Criteria and GHG Assessment: The Renewable Energy Directive and Fuel Quality Directive impose requirements that biofuels should meet certain sustainability criteria. These criteria also apply to bioliquids for heat and power, but not to other forms of renewable energy such as solid biomass. These cover the greenhouse gas emissions savings from using the fuels, and the types of land that may be converted to biofuels production. There are also conditions on European feedstock production on cross-compliance with agricultural sustainability rules.

The RED and FQD are explicitly targeted to reduce GHG emissions. They set a minimum threshold of 35% greenhouse gas (GHG) savings compared to fossil fuel that must be achieved by a biofuel to be eligible for support under Member State renewable energy policies. This 35% threshold did not apply to facilities that were already in operation by 23 January 2008 until after 1 April 2013. In effect from 1 January 2017 onward, this GHG savings threshold rises to 50%. Beginning on 1 January 2018, installations starting production on or after 1 January 2017 must meet 60% or higher GHG savings compared to fossil fuels, while renewable fuels of non-biological origin have a 70% GHG savings requirement. The Directives define a lifecycle methodology (detailed by Article 7d(1) and Annex IV in the Renewable Energy Directive) to calculate greenhouse gas emissions from biofuel production. Based on the methodology, the European Commission has calculated default emissions for different biofuel production pathways. Regulated entities reporting biofuel under the Directives may in general report that it has the default carbon intensity without providing any additional information to Member States.

The Directives also include values for typical emissions, which are in general lower than default emissions. Regulated entities that can provide additional information about their production processes will be permitted to report based on typical emissions values. The Directive also allows regulated entities to provide process-specific information to generate a different lifecycle emissions intensity value. RED and FQD do not account for indirect land-use change (ILUC) in their lifecycle calculations of GHG savings, which include only direct emissions.

Both Directives restrict production of biofuels on land that had high biodiversity status or high carbon content in or at any point after January 2008; i.e. it restricts the conversion of high biodiversity or high carbon stock land for biofuel production. High biodiversity land is defined to include:

• Wooded land where there is no evidence of human activity and ecological processes have not been disturbed.
• Nationally designated nature protection areas
• Internationally designated conservation areas
• Highly biodiverse grassland, whether or not that biodiversity is maintained by human intervention

High carbon stock land is defined to include:

• Wetlands
• Continuous forests
• Discontinuous forests with greater carbon content than the replacement system
• Peatland where exploitation would involve drainage.

The Directives forbid ‘gold-plating’ – i.e. Member States must offer access to their support schemes for biofuels that meet the requirements laid out by the Directive and cannot add additional sustainability criteria. As well as mandatory sustainability requirements, the Directive asks that the Commission report to the Parliament and Council on measures taken in countries supplying substantial amounts of biofuel feedstock to protect soil, air, and water quality. The Commission must also report on social sustainability, especially in developing countries, and with respect to land rights. This shall include reporting on implementation in third countries of various ILO Conventions (see Article 7, paragraph 7). The Directive requires that Member States should take measures to ensure that information reported by regulated entities is accurate. Information about biofuel sustainability must be tracked using a mass balance chain of custody system. The Directive also gives the Commission the power to adjudge that specific biofuel certification schemes provide adequate assurance of the sustainability of biofuels.

Implementation: The Renewable Energy Directive and Fuel Quality Directive do not apply directly to economic operators, but rather puts an obligation on European Member States to ensure that targets are achieved. It is generally expected that Member States will impose requirements on transport fuel suppliers to support the supply of renewable energy. The availability of market mechanisms such as certificate trading to allow flexibility in meeting requirements will vary from state to state. In 2010, all European Union member states were required to submit a National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) that detailed how each member state intended to meet their contribution to the RED and FQD.

Indirect Land-Use Change Directive

In 2012, the European Commission proposed a Directive to amend RED and FQD which has since been adopted by the Council and Parliament and was published in September 2015. The Directive establishes a requirement for addressing ILUC emissions when assessing the greenhouse gas effect of biofuels and includes provisions for limiting the use of food-based biofuels. The use of food-based biofuels to meet the 10% renewable energy target of the RED was limited to 7%, and member states were also required to set a target for advanced biofuels, with a reference value of 0.5%. To incentivize a further shift away from food-based biofuels, the ILUC directive added a multiplier of 2.5 to renewable energy consumed by electric rail transport and increased the multiplier for electricity from RES consumed by electric road vehicles from 2.5 to 5. While ILUC emissions are not included in the sustainability criteria or GHG calculation methodology of RED or FQD, the ILUC Directive requires fuel suppliers and the European Commission to report on ILUC emissions, where the earlier directives only required that emissions caused by direct land use change by reported. EU member states were obliged to transpose the Directive into national legislation by September 2017.

Renewable Energy Directive II

Targets: The Renewable Energy Directive II raises the overall EU target for Renewable Energy Sources (RES) consumption by 2030 from the originally proposed 27% to 32%. Member states must require fuel suppliers to supply a minimum of 14% of the energy consumed in road and rail transport by 2030 as renewable energy. Within this 14% transport target, there is a sub-target for advanced biofuels produced from feedstocks listed in These fuels must be supplied at a minimum of 0.2% of transport energy in 2022, 1% in 2025, and at least 3.5% by 2030. Advanced biofuels will be double counted toward both the 3.5% target and the overall 14% renewable energy target. Biofuels produced from feedstocks in Part B of Annex IX will be capped at 1.7% in 2030 and will also be double counted towards the 14% target.

The maximum contribution of biofuels produced from food and feed crops will be frozen at 2020 consumption levels plus an additional 1% with a maximum cap of 7% of road and rail transport fuel in each member state. If the total share of conventional biofuels is less than 1% by 2020 in any member state, the cap for those countries will still be 2% in 2030. Further, if the cap on food and feed crops in a member state is less than 7%, the country may reduce the transport target by the same amount (for example, a country with a food and feed crop cap of 5% could set a transport target as low as 12%). “Intermediate crops” such as catch- and-cover crops are exempt from this cap. RED II also identifies fuels produced from feedstocks with “high indirect land-use change-risk” that are subject to a more restrictive cap at the 2019 consumption level, and then gradually phased out to 0% by 2030.

Fuels used in the aviation and maritime sectors are excluded from the 14% obligation, but these sectors can opt to contribute to the target. The contribution of non-food renewable fuels supplied to these sectors will count 1.2 times their energy content.

Sustainability Criteria and GHG Assessment: Like the 2009 RED and FQD, RED II defines a series of sustainability and GHG emission criteria. Some criteria are inherited from the original RED, while others are new or reformulated. RED II introduces sustainability and GHG requirements for solid and gaseous biomass fuels used to produce power, heating, and cooling, “referred to as bioenergy,” in addition to conventional transport biofuels. GHG emissions savings requirements for transport biofuels and bioenergy are listed below.

In addition to the GHG emission criterion, the production of biofuels, bioliquids, and biomass fuels must follow certain land-use requirements. Fuels made from agricultural biomass must not be produced from raw materials that originate from high biodiversity land or land with a high carbon stock. Examples of high carbon stock and high biodiversity land can be found in the Environmental Criteria and Requirements for RED. RED II also introduces new sustainability criteria for biofuels and bioenergy obtained using forested land, mandating that harvest takes place with legal permits, that the harvesting level does not exceed the growth rate of the forest to support forest regeneration.

In addition, biofuels and bioenergy from forest materials must comply with requirements which mirror the principles contained in the EU Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) regulation. Specifically, the country where the biomass feedstock originated must:

• be a signatory of the Paris Agreement;
• have submitted a Nationally Determined Contribution to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) covering emissions and removals from LULUCF sector and showing emissions do not exceed removals;
• have a national system in place for accounting for LULUCF emissions.

Biofuels and bioenergy produced from crop waste or residue listed under parts A and B of Annex IX only need to comply with the greenhouse gas emissions criteria. Nonetheless, operators and national authorities must implement and report management plans to address potential impacts on soil quality and soil carbon for the removal of agricultural residues used for biofuels and bioenergy.

Flexibilities: RED II provides several flexibilities to member states regarding their implementation of the transportation target and sustainability requirements that were not included in RED. According to the Directive, member states:

• can exempt or distinguish between different fuel suppliers and energy carriers when defining their trajectory to achieve the 14% minimum sub-target in the transport sector;
• are free to choose the most suitable form of support for RES in transport, for example volume mandates, energy mandates or GHG emission savings targets;
• can distinguish between different types of conventional biofuels and set different limits for each category (for example, setting a lower cap on oil crops than other types of food and feed crops);
• can set lower limits on food and feed-based biofuels than prescribed in the RED II and may also reduce the 14% renewable energy in transport target by the same.

Implementation: As with RED, the implementation of RED II is left to EU member states to decide rather than individual economic operators. RED II requires member states to adopt its provisions and transpose them into legislation by June 2021.

Fit for 55 PROPOSALS

In July 2021, the European Commission proposed revisions to RED II as a part of its Fit for 55 legislative package to achieve the European Union’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 55% in 2030 compared to 1990 levels. The revisions include a large structural modification to the 2018 RED II, replacing the 14% target for renewable energy in transport with a 13% GHG intensity reduction target for transport for 2030, compared to a liquid fossil fuel baseline GHG intensity. In the 2018 RED II, fuels that meet certain GHG reduction thresholds count equally towards the 14% energy target on an energy basis, but under the revision, fuels would instead be counted towards the 13% reduction target based on their GHG savings. Under this system then, member states are incentivized to use fuels with higher GHG reductions than the conventional alternative. The GHG reduction eligibility thresholds still apply, however, and are unchanged for biofuels and RFNBOs in the proposed RED II revision. A new 70% GHG reduction threshold has also been proposed for RCFs.

As of September 2021, compliance with the 6% GHG reduction target in the FQD necessary by 2020 had not been implemented by all Member States. The proposed RED II revision deletes this target and all related articles in the FQD, as well as the corresponding Council Directive on related calculation methods and reporting requirements.

The revision would lower the advanced biofuels target from 3.5% to 2.2% in 2030 and introduce interim targets of 0.2% in 2022, and 0.5% in 2025. While the proposed value is technically lower than the current target, it is more ambitious because the revision also eliminates most of the multipliers in the 2018 RED II, leaving only the 1.2x multiplier for aviation and maritime fuels. Moreover, the 1.2x multiplier now only covers advanced biofuels and RFNBOs and does not apply to waste oil biofuels and RCFs. Because of these multipliers, the 14% energy target in 2018 RED II could be met with much less than 14% actual energy.

The proposed changes to RED II also introduce an RFNBO target of 2.6% of all energy supplied to transport. Apart from the direct use of renewable hydrogen and renewable e-fuels in transport, this target includes renewable hydrogen used in petroleum refining.