Europe Is Sacrificing Its Historic Forests for Power

Governments wager billions on burning timber for inexperienced energy. The Occasions went deep into one of many continent’s oldest woodlands to trace the hidden price.

By Sarah Hurtes and Weiyi Cai
Pictures by Andreea Campeanu September 7, 2022

Burning wooden was by no means speculated to be the cornerstone of the European Union’s inexperienced power technique.

When the bloc started subsidizing wooden burning over a decade in the past, it was seen as a fast enhance for renewable gas and an incentive to maneuver properties and energy vegetation away from coal and fuel. Chips and pellets had been marketed as a technique to flip sawdust waste into inexperienced energy.

These subsidies gave rise to a booming market, to the purpose that wooden is now Europe’s largest renewable power supply, far forward of wind and photo voltaic.

However in the present day, as demand surges amid a Russian power crunch, entire bushes are being harvested for energy. And proof is mounting that Europe’s wager on wooden to handle local weather change has not paid off.

Forests in Finland and Estonia, for instance, as soon as seen as key property for decreasing carbon from the air, are actually the supply of a lot logging that authorities scientists think about them carbon emitters. In Hungary, the federal government waived conservation guidelines final month to permit elevated logging in old-growth forests.

And whereas European nations can depend wooden energy towards their clean-energy targets, the E.U. scientific analysis company mentioned final 12 months that burning wooden launched extra carbon dioxide than would have been emitted had that power come from fossil fuels.

“Individuals purchase wooden pellets pondering they’re the sustainable selection, however in actuality, they’re driving the destruction of Europe’s final wild forests,” mentioned David Gehl of the Environmental Investigation Company, a Washington-based advocacy group that has studied wooden use in Central Europe.

The business has turn into so large that researchers can not preserve monitor of it. E.U. official analysis couldn’t establish the supply of 120 million metric tons of wooden used throughout the continent final 12 months — a spot greater than the scale of Finland’s complete timber business. Researchers say most of that in all probability was burned for heating and electrical energy.

Subsequent week, the European Parliament is scheduled to vote on a invoice that may remove most business subsidies and prohibit international locations from burning entire bushes to fulfill their clear power targets. Solely power from wooden waste like sawdust would qualify as renewable, and thus be eligible for subsidies.

However a number of European governments say that now’s no time to meddle with an essential power business, with provides of Russian fuel and oil in jeopardy. Within the Czech Republic, protesters have mobbed the streets, livid with rising power prices, and the French authorities have warned of rolling blackouts this winter.

Inner paperwork present that Central European and Nordic international locations, particularly, are pushing laborious to maintain the wooden subsidies alive.

The controversy is an acute instance of one of many key challenges that governments face in preventing local weather change: how you can steadiness the urgency of a warming planet in opposition to the rapid want for jobs, power and financial stability. The European Union has been a pacesetter in setting inexperienced insurance policies, however additionally it is racing to search out power sources as Russia throttles again its provide of pure fuel.

In paperwork circulated amongst lawmakers in regards to the proposed rule change, Latvia warned of a “attainable adverse affect on funding and companies.” Denmark argued that these choices must be left to nationwide governments. A winter with out dependable Russian fuel looms over the talk.

Scientists have warned of this second for years.

To have an opportunity of preventing local weather change, international locations should scale back the quantity of carbon dioxide they launch into the air. That may require a shift away from fossil fuels. The European Union has required international locations to fulfill aggressive renewable-energy targets. Wooden qualifies as renewable power, on the logic that bushes in the end develop again.

In 2018, the final time the subsidies got here up for a vote, practically 800 scientists signed a letter urging lawmakers to cease treating logged bushes as a inexperienced supply of power. Whereas bushes might be replanted, it may well take generations for a rising forest to reabsorb the carbon dioxide from burned wooden.

“Utilizing wooden intentionally harvested for burning will enhance carbon within the ambiance and warming for many years to centuries,” the scientists wrote.

One of many authors of that letter, Tim Searchinger, a Princeton environmental science scholar, mentioned European lawmakers had been understandably keen to search out inexperienced power, however they incorrectly lumped all renewable sources collectively. “I’m unsure folks had been pondering a lot about wooden in any respect once they handed these legal guidelines,” he mentioned.

Even one of many godfathers of the coverage, the previous European Union environmental official Jorgen Henningsen, went to his loss of life mattress final 12 months regretting pushing so aggressively for wooden power.

Immediately, as the talk intensifies, environmental advocacy teams are utilizing new instruments to argue that it’s time to change course.

Consultants with the Environmental Investigation Company, working with a free community of forestry conservationists, have spent practically a 12 months mountain climbing into a number of the continent’s oldest forests and attaching monitoring units to bushes. They’ve scraped authorities truck-location information and tracked bushes from pure parks and conservation areas to wooden mills. They’ve linked loggers to firms advertising and marketing wooden pellets as carbon-neutral gas.

They discovered that pillaging Europe’s final standing wild forests to make pellets has turn into a widespread observe in Central Europe.

The New York Occasions supplemented the group’s information with publicly obtainable information. A reporter and photographer spent 4 days mountain climbing via Romania’s forests, which signify two-thirds of the European Union’s virgin woodlands. There, they documented clearcutting and adopted vans from ecologically delicate forests.

Though logging will not be forbidden in Europe’s protected forests, governments are required to conduct environmental assessments to make sure the land is being conserved. However specialists say that such assessments are uncommon. Final 12 months, the European Courtroom of Auditors raised the alarm on these supposedly protected forests, discovering a lot of them in “dangerous or poor conservation standing.”

Immediately, after a 2,200-foot hike up Ceahlau Mountain in Romania, a path of wood carcasses is seen under, a scar throughout one in all Europe’s final old-growth forests the place 200-year-old bushes as soon as stood.

Additional down the mountain, logs had been loaded on a truck branded for Ameco, one in all Romania’s greatest pellet producers. “Pellet manufacturing gives the likelihood to make use of waste from agriculture and forestry,” the corporate says on its web site. Its pellet baggage are labeled as coming completely from sawdust and wooden chips.

Occasions journalists noticed bushes from Romania’s protected forests being fed into Ameco grinders.

The corporate additionally says its product doesn’t emit greenhouse fuel when burned. Scientists have calculated that, per unit of power, burning wooden really releases extra greenhouse fuel emissions than burning fuel, oil, and even coal.

Ameco declined interview requests. In an electronic mail, an Ameco gross sales supervisor denied that the corporate logged from ecologically delicate forests. When The Occasions replied that reporters had witnessed six truckloads from these websites, and that Ameco’s personal delivery information confirmed tons of extra, a second firm consultant responded, acknowledging the shipments however saying they had been all authorized.

In keeping with the Environmental Investigation Company’s information, most main pellet vegetation in Romania have obtained entire logs from protected forests. The group calculated that a few third of wooden shipments to those factories originated in protected areas.

“As soon as you narrow down these previous bushes, you degrade ecosystems that took centuries to kind with little human intervention,” mentioned Dan-Catalin Turiga, a forest engineer who accompanied Occasions reporters. Mr. Turiga can also be an investigator with an environmental group known as Agent Inexperienced, which collaborated on the tree-tracking initiative.

Mr. Turiga pointed to logging roads lower on very steep slopes, inflicting erosion and runoff into waterways. “Planting new bushes received’t restore the biodiversity that existed,” he mentioned.

Forest homeowners, state or personal, are supposed to exchange lower bushes with new ones inside two years to assist steadiness the carbon cycle. However environmental teams have proven through the years that this isn’t all the time carried out. Occasions journalists noticed large swaths of land that had been registered as logged years in the past, but no replanting was carried out. In some instances, saplings died, probably due to the degraded soil.

Reporters additionally noticed an unregistered truck hauling wooden, the kind of logging that helps clarify why European researchers are unable to establish the supply of a lot timber. The Environmental Investigation Company discovered repeated examples of unregistered shipments. In some instances, shipments had been understated or equivalent load weights had been recorded a number of days in a row.

This might qualify as unlawful logging in Romania. The nation’s environmental ministry didn’t reply to written questions on these shipments, the proposed legislation change and the pellet business generally.

The Environmental Investigation Company tracked logs from ecologically important forests to 10 pellet mills and three energy vegetation in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Poland.

Bioenergy Europe, a commerce affiliation, mentioned issues had been uncommon. When harvested accurately and sustainably, wooden stays essential at a time when Europe is determined to search out home, renewable sources of power, mentioned Irene di Padua, the group’s coverage director.

“We nonetheless can enhance capability in Europe in a sustainable manner,” she mentioned.

The affiliation opposes slicing subsidies or altering the way in which clear power is outlined. If the European Union now not considers power from burnt wooden to be carbon-neutral, it will instantly throw many international locations off monitor to hit renewable-energy targets.

That might have main penalties for international locations like Italy, the continent’s largest client of wooden pellets. Greater than a 3rd of its renewable power comes from burning plant materials. For years, the Italian authorities has supplied tax deductions to encourage shopping for pellet stoves.

Comparable tax breaks are in place in different international locations, together with monetary incentives for wooden producers. These incentives might be illegal if the brand new proposal comes into drive.

Even when the European Parliament endorses a change, nevertheless, the small print should be labored out in negotiations with nationwide governments.

The governments of Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg have signaled assist for ending the subsidies. Different international locations have stayed largely silent.

Whereas environmental teams are nonetheless optimistic, even probably the most strident supporters of the rule change acknowledge that the Russian power disaster has made the politics difficult. Pure fuel costs have elevated tenfold over the previous 12 months, and plenty of Europeans worry being unable to afford to warmth their properties this winter.

“We’d like extra home renewable power and self-sufficiency, not much less,” Antti Kurvinen, the Finnish minister for agriculture and forestry, wrote on Twitter in Might. “I’ll absolutely promote forest power.”