Bioenergy Europe joins #KeepTheTarget campaign for an EU renewable energy target for 2040
As the European Union prepares its post-2030 energy and climate framework, maintaining a clear renewable energy target is essential to accelerate the energy transition, provide long-term certainty for investors and strengthen Europe’s competitiveness.
The Renewable Energy Directive (RED) and its binding targets have played an important role in driving the deployment of renewables across Europe. Preserving this approach beyond 2030 will be crucial to keeping the EU on track towards climate neutrality by 2050.
Accelerating Europe’s lagging heat transition
Despite progress in renewable energy deployment, heating remains one of the EU’s biggest decarbonisation challenges. The sector accounts for approximately 46% of final energy consumption, yet 73% of heating still relies on fossil fuels.
This continued dependence highlights the urgent need to accelerate the transition towards renewable heating and cooling. Achieving the EU’s long-term climate objectives will require a comprehensive and technology-inclusive approach that supports all sustainable renewable heating solutions, rather than relying on electrification alone.
Sustainable bioenergy is essential to this transition. As a storable, dispatchable renewable energy source, it can deliver reliable heat for households, district heating networks, and industrial processes, including applications where direct electrification remains challenging. It can also complement heat pumps, solar thermal energy, and other renewable solutions, helping build a more flexible and resilient energy system.
A binding renewable energy target for 2040 would clearly signal the need to accelerate investment in all renewable heating technologies, support the modernisation of outdated heating systems, and ensure the heating sector fully contributes to Europe’s climate ambition.
Strengthening Europe’s energy security through renewables
Accelerating renewable energy deployment is also a strategic priority for Europe’s energy security and competitiveness.
With 85% of the EU’s natural gas consumption covered by imports, continued reliance on fossil fuels leaves European households and industries exposed to external supply disruptions and volatile international energy prices.
Expanding domestic renewable energy production, including sustainable bioenergy, can help reduce this dependence while supporting local value chains and European industry.
By providing a stable, long-term investment framework, a binding 2040 renewable energy target would help Europe strengthen its energy independence and build a more resilient, competitive energy system.
Keeping renewable energy at the heart of the EU’s 2040 ambition
For Bioenergy Europe, the post-2030 energy framework must build on the Renewable Energy Directive’s achievements, ensure regulatory stability and investment certainty, and recognise the contributions of all sustainable renewable energy technologies.
By joining #KeepTheTarget, Bioenergy Europe reinforces its call for an ambitious, binding 2040 renewable energy target that accelerates the transition away from fossil fuels, unlocks the potential of renewable heating, and strengthens Europe’s energy security.
Europe needs a binding and ambitious renewable energy target for 2040.
Discover the campaign and its supporters at www.keepthetarget.eu.
