Another intense year for waste-based and advanced biofuels regulation

Angel Alvarez Alberdi, EWABA’s Secretary General, outlines what he thinks will be the main biofuel trends in the year ahead.
This year will be a particularly consequential year for the waste-based and advanced biofuels industry, if there ever was one.
On the regulatory front one cannot avoid but start by acknowledging the market impact of the obligations set forth in the FuelEU Maritime and ReFuelEU Aviation Regulations, effective as from 1 January, which are each expected to create roughly a million tonnes of extra demand of waste-based and advanced biofuel this year.
That is only the beginning as the mandates (GHG reduction and incorporation of renewable fuels, respectively) will increase on a yearly basis.

These increases of final product will be definitely helped by the proposed revision of Annex IX of the Renewable Energy Directive, which is adding a number of novel feedstocks to the EU eligibility list, most notably intermediate crops, including cover crops, which are particularly promising given the significant potential volumes at stake and their optimal physical properties for the purposes of biofuels production.
The transposition deadline of the Annex IX revision expires on 14 September and for it to properly work and drive additional feedstock volumes to the market, the European Commission is expected to deliver sound regulatory guidance on how to apply the conditionality on cover crops (that is, detailing how cover crops can be grown and harvested for the purposes of RED compliance) and equally importantly, further improving the EU biofuels certification system to, among other issues, meet the inherent challenges of certifying cover crops, which are physically identical as conventional crops.

New legislation



The Commission will deliver on these two topics in a widely awaited implementing act due in the first half of this year.
We expect a draft of this secondary legislation to see the light roughly at the same time as the Commission agrees with member states the final date on which the union database for biofuels (UDB) becomes entirely operational, thus bringing a new layer of transparency and traceability to the market.

This year also marks the beginning in earnest of the second Von der Leyen Commission, whose regulatory output will be somewhat conditioned by the Draghi Report, which dictates that the new European agenda should aim to decarbonize at the same time as reindustrialise.
This dichotomy will have wide-ranging consequences. Most pieces of legislation affecting our industry will be revised before this term ends on 2029, from the REDIII to the maritime and aviation regulations, to the CO2 emission standards for cars, vans and heavy-duty vehicles.
The system of promotion of renewable fuels will be once again up for grabs and our industry has a clear idea of what is needed to end past conceptual mistakes - ambitious targets should be coupled with made in EU provisions.
It simply cannot be no more that the EU system promotes first and foremost third-country production to the detriment of the domestic industry.
Trade defence measures are not enough – we need a fundamental policy change, and its seed is being planted at the moment as preparatory work on legislative revisions is timidly starting.

Speaking about fundamental conceptual shifts, the EU’s approach to the promotion of electromobility will also be readdressed following Draghi’s indications – the industry at large is working hard to prove that carbon-neutral fuels including biodiesel have a major role to play in the decarbonisation of the road transport sector well beyond 2035.
EU institutions will need to display cool-headed pragmatism when revising CO2 emission standards, starting already this year as well, and deliver a truly technologically neutral solution that integrates our decarbonisation potential.

For more information: Visit ewaba.eu