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Accounting for bioenergy's carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions, as done under the Kyoto Protocol (KP) and European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme, fails to capture the full extent of these emissions. As a consequence, other approaches have been suggested. Both the EU and United States already use value-chain approaches to determine emissions due to biofuels -an approach quite different from that of the KP. Further, both the EU and United States are engaged in consultation processes to determine how emissions connected with use of biomass for heat and power will be handled under regulatory systems. The United States is considering whether CO 2 emissions from biomass should be handled like fossil fuels. In this context, this article reviews and evaluates the three basic bioenergy accounting options.1 CO 2 emissions from bioenergy are not counted at the point of combustion. Instead emissions due to use of biomass are accounted for in the land-use sector as carbon stock losses -a combustion factor (CoF) = 0 approach; 2 CO 2 emissions from bioenergy are accounted for in the energy sector -a CoF = 1 approach; and 3 End users account for all or a specified subset of CO 2 emissions, regardless of where geographically these emissions occur -0 < CoF < 1.Following short descriptions of the basic options, this article discusses variations to these options and uses numerical examples to illustrate the impacts of approaches at a local and international level. Finally, the alternative accounting systems are evaluated against general criteria and for impacts on selected stakeholder goals. General criteria considered are: (a) comprehensiveness, (b) simplicity, and (c) scale independence. Stakeholder goals reviewed are: (a) stimulation of rural economies, (b) food security, (c) GHG reductions, and (d) preservation of forests.

The concept of Positive Energy District is one of the main areas of research and extensive applications of the principles of the clean energy transition within the building sector. In the past years, the most widely accepted definitions have focused specifically on carbon neutrality, while several other aspects regarding all sustainability approaches (including environmental, social and economic perspective) were included qualitatively or to a lesser degree. This paper proposes a discussion on the state of the art of the sustainability assessment of Positive Energy Districts, by investigating environmental, social and economic sustainability applications. The three sustainability dimensions are investigated individually first, while discussing methodological insights, key performance indicators used and quantitative results, as well as in an integrated perspective. Finally, the paper describes research gaps and areas for further development on the topic.

The aim of this paper is to assess opportunities the Clean Energy Package provides for Plus Energy Buildings (PEBs) and Plus Energy Districts (PEDs) regarding their economic optimization and market integration, possibly leading to new use cases and revenue streams. At the same time, insights into regulatory limitations at the national level in transposing the set of EU Clean Energy Package provisions are shown. The paper illustrates that the concepts of PEBs and PEDs are in principle compatible with the EU energy community concepts, as they relate to technical characteristics while energy communities provide a legal and regulatory framework for the organization and governance of a community, at the same time providing new regulatory space for specific activities and market integration. To realize new use cases, innovative ICT approaches are needed for a range of actors actively involved in creating and operating energy communities as presented in the paper. The paper discusses a range of different options to realize PEBs and PEDs as energy communities based on the H2020 EXCESS project. It concludes, however, that currently the transposition of the Clean Energy Package by the EU Member States is incomplete and limiting and as a consequence, in the short term, the full potential of PEBs and PEDs cannot be exploited.