Energy Biomass and Land Use Change in EU Law

The EU energy policy is an important EU policy whose measures can contribute to the goals of the Green Deal and Sustainable Development Goals. The key measure of the energy policy is the use of renewable sources of energy. One of them is also biomass cultivated on the agricultural and forestland. However, the biomass brings not only the benefits, such as replacement for fossil fuels, mitigation of climate change, reduction of air pollution, development of green infrastructure in municipalities, improving physical and mental human health, improvement of degraded soils and new role for abandoned lands but there is also fear of competition for land and water with crops for food and feed, increasing the market prices of food and land and threat to food security, destruction of forests and biodiversity in order to obtain additional land for growing biomass and releasing carbon from carbon-rich soil into the atmosphere. Therefore, if this biomass should contribute to the sustainable development, it should be grown and used sustainably. These requirements can only be achieved by legal regulation of their growing, processing and use based on sustainable criteria verified by scientific research. The aim of the paper is to examine whether the sustainable criteria for cultivating energy biomass on agricultural and forest land under EU legal regulations are sufficient to prevent threats to biomass cultivation for energy purposes, while also preserving the land and its biodiversity for future generations. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to explore the legislative framework of renewable sources and its development in the EU law. Moreover, it requires an interdisciplinary approach, i.e. knowledge of law and other scientific fields, such as agriculture, forestry, landscape engineering, environment, sustainable development, social science and energy industry. In conclusions, we endeavour to summarize the main problems of sustainability criteria defined in the EU legislation.