Skip to main content
Knowledge4Policy
Knowledge for policy

Supporting policy with scientific evidence

We mobilise people and resources to create, curate, make sense of and use knowledge to inform policymaking across Europe.

  • Glossary item | Last updated: 04 Jan 2021

Upstream emissions

Upstream emissions for biomass fuels are considered the GHG emissions (usually including all fossil GHG emissions and biomass non-CO2 GHG) occurred during the extraction, processing and transportation of the biofuel to the final user. They are generally associated with the emissions calculated according to the Directive 2009/28/EC and Directive 2009/30 (in Annex V and Annex IV, respectively). They can be associated to the "direct emissions" as described in Section 3.1 of this report. They do not include emissions associated with direct or indirect Land Use change nor include any provision on the possible imbalances between the timing of emission and re-absorption of biogenic C neither any displacement effect on other markets.

JRC, 2015, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, IET,Sustainable Transport Unit, Marelli, L., Padella, M., Edwards, R., Moro, A., Kousoulidou, M., Giuntoli, J., Baxter, D., Vorkapic, V., Agostini, A., O’Connell, A., Lonza, L., 'The impact of Biofuels on transport and environment, and their connection to the agricultural development in Europe'. Report prepared by JRC-IET for the European Parliament (unpublished).

Source category: EC Technical Documents