Petition for rCCU integration in the RED presented to European Commission today

This morning the petition was sent to Ms. Marie Donnelly, Director Renewables, Research and Innovation, Energy Efficiency, European Commission DG Energy; 86 renowned companies and leading universities have already signed

Carbon Capture & Utilization (CCU) technologies will play a crucial role in the future renewable energy system and for climate protection. When being processed with renewable energy, CO₂ is an infinite resource for producing fuels and chemicals with a high potential for climate protection. When speaking about this combination of CCU with renewable energy as the only energy source to reduce CO₂, the term renewable CCU or rCCU has recently been coined.

The most important role of rCCU is the ability to store renewable electricity over a long time without losses and to convert fluctuating renewable electricity into fuels and chemicals. Therefore, rCCU is systemically important for the liberalized electricity market, since it offers the much-needed possibility to increase the flexibility of the grid and by this, to increase the share of renewables in the European electricity mix.

The European Union cannot afford to miss or to delay the deployment of this new option to utilize and store renewable electricity, which is to extend the applications for renewable energy to renewable fuels and sustainable chemistry. The European Union should become the leader in rCCU, not only in research and development, but especially in applying and fully utilizing the potential.

The ongoing development of the 2030 Climate and Energy Framework and a reform of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) is a unique opportunity to establish a regulatory framework in which rCCU is fully integrated. This opportunity should not be missed.
Therefore, the authors of the petition ask DG Energy to include six crucial mechanisms in the legislation of the Renewable Package.

Today, the petition was sent to Ms. Marie Donnelly, Director Renewables, Research and Innovation, Energy Efficiency, European Commission DG Energy. The authors supported by 85 renowned companies and leading research institutes ask the Commission led by DG Energy on this issue to include the following mechanisms in the new legislation on the Renewable Package:

• To fully recognise the increased flexibility of the renewable energy systems enabled by rCCU which allows for a higher share of renewables in the electricity mix, and implement additional incentives for technologies delivering this “flexibility”.
• To include a calculation method / default values accounting for “flexibility” in the methodological parts of the RED and the FQD.
• To make the utilization of CO₂ emissions from biofuels production by rCCU accountable towards the reduction of the GHG emission of the biofuels.
• To further incentivize this by introducing stronger GHG emission reduction targets for biofuels or thresholds for land efficiency in the RED and the FQD. These targets can only be fulfilled by using biowaste as input and/or utilizing CO₂ emissions by rCCU technologies.
• To fully recognise the utilization of green electricity via certificates of origin for rCCU.
• To guarantee that the electricity used by rCCU will be free from extra levies for end consumers or renewables incentives, because the electricity is not consumed but transformed to another usable energy form.

The relevance of the rCCU concept and its potential are not yet fully understood by most of the policy makers and stakeholders. The rCCU sector does not yet have a lobby, which is normal for a new sector consisting only of pilot plants. These are the reasons why we want to give rCCU a strong voice.

You can find the full petition, press releases and signatures here: www.co2-chemistry.eu/CCU-petition

The petition will be presented and discussed at the “5^th Conference on Carbon Dioxide as Feedstock for Fuels, Chemistry and Polymers “, 6-7 December in Cologne, Germany. www.co2-chemistry.eu

Download this press release as PDF file: 16-11-21-pr-petition-for-rccu-presented-to-european-commission

Source: nova-Institut GmbH, press release, 2016-11-21.