Energy expert: ‘There is a fundamental issue with biomass counting in energy statistics’

EU member states that have a very high share of renewable heat tend to be the countries that burn a lot of biomass. And if they burn it inefficiently, it’s even better for them because they get more credit under the EU’s renewable energy directive, says Jan Rosenow.

Jan Rosenow is director of European programmes at the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), a clean energy think-tank.

How efficient is biomass as a source of energy for domestic heating? Is there an average figure we can put on this? And how does it compare with other sources of heating?

The worst way to burn biomass is to do it in an open fire. You would get an efficiency of maybe 30% – so 30% of the energy contained in the biomass would be usable heat, while the other 70% just goes up your chimney.

A really efficient biomass boiler might have an efficiency of about 90%. But I don’t know how many boilers have an efficiency that high.

Now, compared to other renewable heating technologies, like heat pumps or district heating driven by renewables, you can get nominal efficiencies of 300%, maybe even 400%. So it’s a huge difference.

400%?

Yes, if you put in one unit of renewable electricity into a heat pump, you get about three or four units of heat out of that. Whereas if you put in one unit of biomass, you will always get less than one unit of heat because you have the inefficiencies associated with burning.

But the way it’s being treated under the renewable energy directive is that the more biomass you burn, the better it is for your target. It really makes no sense but that’s the way the statistics are being done.

So EU countries that have a very high share of renewable heat tend to be the countries that burn a lot of biomass. And if they burn it inefficiently, it’s even better because they get more credit.

This is down to the way energy is counted in the statistics, right? So for biomass, statistics would look at primary energy – the theoretical energy contained in a wood log, for example – whereas for other sources of energy, you would count the energy output, or useful energy, correct?

Correct. A much better metric for biomass would be to consider the useful heat that you’ve actually delivered rather than just looking at how much you’ve burned. Because if you use an open stove fire, where 70% of the energy is just lost, that 70% is still counted towards renewable heating targets.

And that’s completely the wrong way around. What matters is the amount of useful heat that users can actually take advantage of, which is 30%. But they count 100%, which is completely counterintuitive. We illustrated that with a graphic in a recent report we published.

Another thing we identified is that, under the renewable energy directive, EU countries cannot count the renewable electricity used to run a heat pump towards their target. The European Parliament now wants to include renewable electricity used for heating in devices that are more than 100% efficient. That would be first step. But it still does not address the fundamental issue of biomass counting in energy statistics.

Why not use the same metrics to report in the statistics? Because the way things are done now, it means we’re not comparing apples with apples…

Indeed, we’re not comparing apples with apples. I think the reason for this is that there are not enough data points at the moment. At the moment, it’s simply easier to count the amount of fuel burned rather than trying to recalculate the figures in a different way. But you would then need to have more information about the technologies that are being used to burn the biomass.

From all I hear, there has also been a lot of resistance from countries that use a lot of biomass – mainly the Nordic countries and Austria – to make any substantial changes to the methodology.

Because, you know, it would basically make them look a lot worse. And this is a major stumbling block in this discussion.

A recent briefing by the Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI) reckons that burning solid biomass accounted for about 40% of energy counted toward the EU’s renewables target in 2020. Meanwhile, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) says biomass represents 60% of all renewable energy consumption in the EU. That 60% figure is therefore probably exaggerated, right?

Yes, biomass is counted in primary energy terms, not useful energy. If you used useful energy excluding energy waste, it would probably be a lot less.

Another report from the Commission’s Joint Research Centre, from 2018, found that 81% of all renewable heating and cooling came from biomass. They also looked at the National Energy and Climate Plans submitted by EU member states for reaching their 2030 climate targets.

And the projections based on those plans showed that roughly about two thirds of renewable heating would still be biomass-based by 2030. And that’s because it’s convenient to use biomass since you get so many credits towards your renewable energy target.

That’s the other thing: EU countries get a lot of credit for doing something – wood burning for heating – that causes environmental issues with regard to CO2 emissions and air pollution. And that, in turn, encourages wood harvesting for biomass use so EU countries can count this towards their renewable energy target…

Yes, I would agree. And even if biomass was perfectly sustainable, which we know it’s not, you would still have an incentive to be as inefficient as possible.

Because the more you use, the better it is for your target. And that’s wasteful, in my view. It’s not a good incentive.

Exposed: How EU countries use firewood to bloat their renewable energy stats

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has acknowledged “weaknesses” in how biomass energy is counted in national statistics after several EU countries reported a sudden increase in residential wood burning to meet their 2020 renewable energy goals.