The EU is burning the planet thanks to its burning of wood for biomass fuel

A new report published on International Day of Forests (21 March) by Biofuelwatch and the Environmental Paper Network International, with the support of eight national-level environmental groups, exposes the extent to which the EU’s major wood pulp producers generate and sell energy produced by burning wood sourced directly from forestry operations.

The EU’s obsession with biomass

In the largest pulp-producing countries, the report estimates that over a fifth of the wood sourced directly from forestry operations that is burned for energy can be attributed to the pulp industry with, on average, one cubic metre being burned for every tonne of pulp produced.

The report looks at the EU’s top five pulp-producing countries – Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Germany and Spain – and finds that in all but the case of Germany, the pulp and paper industry is the dominant force in the biomass energy sector.

The authors of the report estimate that at the EU scale the pulp industry could be directly or indirectly responsible for burning 45 million cubic metres of wood sourced directly from forests and plantations each year. This is equivalent to 17% of all of the primary woody biomass burned for energy in the EU in 2021.

Biofuelwatch co-director Almuth Ernsting said:

Rather than being a sustainable, low-carbon and efficient use of biomass, increasing biomass energy capacity at pulp mills throughout the EU is resulting in more and more wood being extracted from forests and plantations. This means more carbon emissions, not less, and it is contributing to the alarming rate at which the EU’s forest carbon sink is disappearing.

Changes are needed

The report makes three main recommendations for EU policy-makers. These are 1) ending subsidies, incentives and public finance for biomass energy, 2) increasing transparency and information disclosure about supply chains and biomass feedstocks linked to pulp producers and 3) tackling the vast energy demand of the industry by focusing on reducing production rather than increasing biomass energy generation.

Mateus Carvalho, with the Environmental Paper Network International, said:

Selling electricity to the public grid at subsidised rates is an important driver of biomass burning at pulp mills, but even if subsidies were to end, the production of pulp and paper products would still require enormous amounts of electricity and heat. Drastically reducing production levels, particularly of short-lived products such as disposable packaging, is the most efficient way of reducing the pulp industry’s demand for energy, and therefore the amount of biomass they remove from forests and burn.

The EU’s two largest pulp producers by far are Sweden and Finland, and extensive case studies in the report document the scale and impacts of biomass burning associated with the industry.

Biomass is NOT renewable

Lina Burnelius from Skydda Skogen (Protect the Forest) in Sweden said:

The ongoing forestry model that underpins the use of wood from forestry areas for energy generation is resulting in the decimation of the country’s last remaining highly-biodiverse forests, and systematically disrespects Indigenous Sámi peoples’ rights. The impacts of the biomass harvested for energy cannot be separate from the impacts of wood sourcing for pulp production.

Varpu Sairinen, campaign coordinator of Ei polteta tulevaisuutta (Let’s not Burn the Future) in Finland, said:

Wood harvested directly from forests is the fastest-growing source of biomass energy in the country, and the excessive logging linked to the increase in biomass burning in Finland’s heat and power plants has resulted in Finland’s forests, and the land-use sector as a whole, becoming a source of emissions rather than a sink. The millions of cubic metres of wood that the pulp industry burns each year are a major contributing factor to the loss of the forest carbon sink, which the country had been relying on to meet its climate targets.

Featured image via Marcus Westberg