C(2023)03513

This delegated regulation supplements Directive (EU) 2018/2001 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources, by specifying the methodology for determining the share of biofuel and biogas for transport resulting from the transformation of biomass and fossil fuels in a single process.

Context

Directive (EU) 2018/2001 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources in the transport sector obliges Member States to ensure that the share of renewable energy in the final consumption of energy in transport is at least 14% by 2030.

Biofuels and biogas are the most common renewable fuels consumed in transport. They can also often be produced in a common process in a refinery by mixing bio-based and fossil-based raw materials. In such cases, and in order to calculate the contribution of biofuels and biogas to the renewable energy target in transport, it is necessary to determine what their proportion is when mixed with fossil fuels.

Content

The delegated act is made pursuant to the Directive, which empowers the Commission to adopt delegated acts specifying the methodology to determine the share of biofuels and biogas for transport resulting from biomass being processed with fossil fuels in a common process.

For the purposes of this delegated regulation, biogas refers to the gas originating from the biomass feedstock, and which is produced from co-processing of that biomass feedstock together with fossil feedstock to convert them into final liquid and gaseous fuels.

In order to achieve a balance between verification costs and accuracy of tests, the delegated act allows economic operators either to use a common harmonised testing method, based on radiocarbon (14C) testing, or to use their own testing methods, which may be company-specific or process-specific. However, to ensure that a common verification method is applied on the market, economic operators using a method other than the radiocarbon (14C) testing as the main testing method should regularly use radiocarbon (14C) testing of the outputs to verify the correctness of the main testing method used.

Furthermore, in order to allow economic operators to get accustomed to the application of the radiocarbon (14C) testing in combination with another testing method as main method, some flexibility about the acceptable percentage of deviation between the results of both main and second verification tests is allowed within the first year of application of this methodology.

This delegated act describes the methodology for determining the share of biofuel and biogas for transport resulting from the transformation of biomass and fossil fuels in a single process. It also deals with the verification of the validity of declarations by economic operators concerning the share of biofuels and biogas for transport resulting from the transformation of biomass with fossil fuels in a common process.

Non-legislative basic document

C(2023)03513