Webinar: The EU Renewable Energy Directive (REDIII) and its impact on Japan: To prevent deforestation caused by biomass energies（May 31, 2024）

In September 2022, the European Parliament passed the revised EU Renewable Energy Directive (REDIII), which subsequently came into effect. Concerns about the potential for increased demand for biomass fuels leading to deforestation prompted significant focus on the treatment of forest-derived biomass fuels during the revision process.

Ultimately, the revised directive included measures such as excluding wood used for timber or logs from being counted as fuel, discontinuing financial support for biomass power plants that solely generate electricity or co-fire biomass, prohibiting direct financial support for energy produced from specific sources like industrial timber, lumber, stumps, and roots, and excluding areas of high biodiversity such as virgin and old-growth forests from biomass fuel harvesting. What kind of impact will EU-REDIII have on international biomass regulations in the future?

With the expansion of biomass power generation in Japan, imports of biomass fuel from overseas are rapidly increasing. However, the regulation guidelines for  forest-derived biomass regulation under the Japanese FIT (Feed-in Tariff) scheme are ambiguous and there is a significant disparity with the regulations outlined in EU-REDIII.

As climate change and biodiversity crises accelerate, what questions do we need to ask ourselves?

In November 2023, the European-based NGO Fern, dedicated to forestry and human rights, and the legal advocacy group ClientEarth, focused on climate and environmental issues, jointly released a report titled “Wiser with Wood: A guide on how to transpose the EU’s revised Renewable Energy Directive to better protect forests, the climate, public health and other wood-using industries”¹.

We would like to welcome Martin Pigeon, a forest, climate change and bioenergy campaigner at Fern who has been following the REDIII discussions, to explain the essence of this report and to discuss the EU’s revised renewable energy. He will talk about the impact of the Directive (REDIII) and the possibilities and challenges facing future legislation in the EU.

1. Fern & ClientEarth, “Wiser with Wood: A guide on how to transpose the EU’s revised Renewable Energy Directive to better protect forests, the climate, public health and other wood-using industries", November 9 2024, https://www.fern.org/publications-insight/wiser-with-wood/ ↩︎