Unpacking the legal conundrum of nature-based soil remediation and sustainable biofuels production in the European Union

Abstract

The fight against soil contamination and the development of sustainable fuels constitute major environmental and climate change objectives under the European Green Deal. At the same time, the uptake of nature-based solutions is increasingly advocated in the European Union as viable techniques to enhance soil ecosystem services while addressing the soil vs. food vs. energy conundrum to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the European Green Deal objectives. This contribution deals with unlocking the potential of phytoremediation both a soil remediation technique and a source of sustainable feedstock for advanced biofuels. Phytoremediation consists of the use of plants and their associated microbes to extract, volatilize, stabilize, or degrade soil pollutants. Furthermore, phytoremediation's by-products may be used to develop advanced, low indirect land use change biofuels thus contributing to the EU's climate change mitigation objectives.

The value chain entailed in the deployment of phytoremediation techniques and recovery of phytoremediation's output materials for biofuels production faces an array of legal and policy roadblocks in the European Union. Importantly, such barriers relate both to material legal obstacles, policy fragmentation and lack of a holistic approach towards complex processes. This contribution aims to provide a comprehensive overview of such legal and policy roadblocks with a view to champion the embedding of phytoremediation in the existing EU legal framework also in relation to the development of low-Indirect Land Use Change biofuels.