The Environment Council met on 17 March and discussed among other topics the regulation on certain commodities and products associated with deforestation and forest degradation. Minister Barbara Pompili (FR) opened the discussion highlighting the fight against deforestation as one of the French Presidency’s priorities and many of the Member States’ representatives were supportive of the proposal and the ambition.
The AGRI committee held a hearing on 16 March to consider the draft report on the New EU Forest Strategy. The rapporteur, Ulrike Müller (RE, DE), opened the session (17:07:00) highlighting the multifunctionality of forests and the need to empower foresters while recognising sustainable forestry is a dynamic concept.
The ENVI committee published the full list of amendments to rapporteur Eleonora Evi’s (Greens/EFA, IT) draft opinion: 111-335, 336-560, 561-791. The list includes several positive amendments on the replacement of heating systems but also some concerns regarding Art. 23 and the role of forest biomass.
The revision of the REDIII is proceeding in a fast-paced way both in ITRE and ENVI committees, with the first shadow meeting for discussing compromises on the file scheduled for the 21 March and 22 March.
The second call for the EU Innovation Fund’s large-scale projects closed on 3 March 2022. The total amount of applications was 138 and the total funding requested amounts to EUR 12,1 billion. The projects are now being evaluated. A second call for small-scale projects is planned to be launched end of March 2022.
The application for Horizon Europe Projects for Climate, Energy and Mobility topics is still open. Energy-related projects relevant for the sector can be found under Cluster 5 in CL5-2022-D3-01, application deadline is 24 April 2022.
On Tuesday, the ITRE committee discussed about the recently released RePowerEU Communication by the Commission. Committee members welcomed the communication and Commissioner Kadri Simson answered questions regarding an emergency plan if imports from Russia would stop tomorrow and faster permitting. The question why bioenergy was not included as a solution in the communication was left unanswered. For more information, please contact Irene di Padua.
The Agriculture and Rural Development Committee published its draft opinion on the proposal for a regulation on commodities and products associated with deforestation and forest degradation. In the draft opinion, the rapporteur, Mazaly Aguilar (ECR, ES) proposed removing “soya” from the list of relevant commodities and adding “cane sugar, pigmeat and poultry”. She also proposed removing the requirement that in order for wood to be deforestation-free, it must have “been harvested from the forest without inducing forest degradation after December 31, 2020”. Additionally, she proposes reframing the risk categories from standard, low, and high risk to zero, low, and high risk. For more information, please contact Daniel Reinemann.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) prepared A 10-Point Plan to Reduce the European Union’s Reliance on Russian Natural Gas. A series of measures include an encouragement to increase the use of bioenergy in the EU (point 5). The European Commission is also planning to disclose a plan to reduce the import of energy carriers from Russia: oil, gas and coal. Measures related to gas would decrease Russian gas imports by 80%. For more information, please contact Michal Dlugosz.
The Official Journal published Implementing Regulation 2022/388 on 8 March, which amends the Monitoring and Reporting Regulations for the Emissions Trading Scheme. The text states that Member States “may consider as fulfilled the sustainability and GHG emissions saving criteria referred to in that paragraph for biofuels, bioliquids and biomass fuels used for combustion from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2022”. This was done to ensure that biomass can maintain its zero rating in the ETS without the voluntary schemes necessary to verify the sustainability criteria in REDII due to delays in the necessary delegated acts from the Commission. For more information, please contact Daniel Reinemann.
