The mysterious case of the missing biomass emissions

3 June 2015

SB42 has recently seen the presentation of new LULUCF rules analysis in a forthcoming report on global impacts of biomass. It unfortunately reveals that large quantities of emissions are going missing under the existing accounting system.

Several flaws in the current rules have resulted in instances where no country accounts for the emissions generated by the combustion of trees for energy. The assumption that biomass is carbon neutral has been debunked by an ever-growing body of scientific evidence. But there’s an additional problem: biomass is still assumed to be carbon neutral in the energy sector because of a second persisting assumption that emissions will be accounted for in the land-use sector.

But this is clearly wrong. Under the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, countries can opt for business-as-usual baselines with their forest management. This means any emissions built into their projections, including from biomass harvests, don’t get counted. All that gets counted is what goes above the projected baseline.

Countries that are not part of the KP second commitment period, such as the US, don’t account for any of their land-use change, and this means that biomass wood pellets, let’s say exported from the US to the UK, won’t be accounted for in the US land-use sector nor in the UK energy sector. It’s just nonsensical.

In the UK, imported biomass could result in around 5Mt CO2 emissions going missing, and biomass exported from the US to the EU is 6Mt CO2.

To fix this problem: negotiators should include strong principles for post-2020 LULUCF accounting. There should be a common base year or period as opposed to a business as usual reference level, and in addition the new rules should aim for full transparency and comprehensiveness. ECO advocates the selection of paragraph 152 Option 5 from the Geneva text, with a few small additions, as the best way forward.

Improved principles and rules for LULUCF accounting post-2020 will be essential to avoid more biomass emissions disappearing into an accounting black hole even as they continue to show up in the atmosphere.

The mysterious case of the missing biomass emissions

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