A coalition of nine environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including Carbon Market Watch, WWF EU, and Fern, has submitted a formal request for an internal review to the European Commission under the Aarhus Regulation. The filing legally challenges the Commission’s newly adopted methodologies for biogenic emissions capture with carbon storage (Bio-CCS) and biochar under the Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) Regulation.
The legal challenge argues that the current delegated legislation ignores established scientific consensus and international accounting standards regarding carbon quantification, downstream ecosystem monitoring, and supply-chain sustainability. The groups warn that by incentivising the logging and burning of wood biomass without considering whole-lifecycle emissions, the current guidelines risk certifying projects that increase net atmospheric CO2 emissions. This could undermine EU climate targets, particularly if these credits are integrated as offsets within the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS).
Under Article 10(3) of the Aarhus Regulation, the European Commission has up to 22 weeks to issue a reasoned response accepting or rejecting the administrative review. Should the Commission refuse to alter the methodology, the coalition is eligible to bring an action for annulment directly before the EU General Court. Legal and technical coordination for the filing was managed by the Forest Litigation Collaborative, drawing on counsel from 11KBW and Baldon Avocats.
Marlène Ramón Hernández, Policy Expert in Carbon Removals at Carbon Market Watch, stated, “The Commission took a different approach, leaving us with flawed methodologies that do not even comply with the original CRCF mandate.”
Elsie Blackshaw-Crosby, Director of Legal at The Lifescape Project, commented, “By filing this Request, the claimants are holding the Commission to account by challenging an approach that risks enabling the very greenwashing the Regulation was intended to prevent.”
Sofia Ghezzi, Climate and Land Use Policy Officer at WWF EU, added, “By ignoring their broader impact on forests and ecosystems, these rules might effectively certify activities which undermine climate, biodiversity, clean air, and water.”
Martin Pigeon, Forest and Climate Campaigner at Fern, noted, “Rewarding the burying of some CO2 emissions from wood burning, or charcoal, without looking at what the additional wood demand is doing to forests or rewarding the application of charcoal to soils without subsequent monitoring, is likely to worsen, not improve, the climate crisis.”
Mary Booth, PhD, Director at the Partnership for Policy Integrity, concluded, “The Commission’s own studies recognise that burning trees and storing the carbon belowground removes carbon from forests, not the atmosphere.”
