The threat to forests and climate from burning forest biomass

Mobilizing comments to the EU on the 2030 Climate Target Initiative

Webinar

Mary S. Booth

Partnership for Policy Integrity

April 7, 2020

Partnership for Policy Integrity

Mary S. Booth, PhD, Director

Ecosystem scientist by training

Founded PFPI in 2010 to work on biomass energy impacts

PFPI website for information on biomass impacts on forests, the climate, and air quality: www.pfpi.net

Suit filed in EU court to eliminate forest biomass as “zero carbon” renewable energy: www.eubiomasscase.org

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Goal of the EU’s 2030 Climate Target Plan initiative

EU sees itself as global leader on climate change mitigation; wants “climate neutrality” by 2050. (Paris Agreement Article 4: “achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century”)

EU needs ambitious action now to create a glide-path to 2050 target.

Current target: Cut GHG emissions by at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. (Not aggressive enough!) Proposed target now considered: Cut emissions by 50% or 55% below 1990 levels by 2030. Requires “a significant step-up of ambition in the short term”; raising the target “in a responsible way.”

Everything is on the table! EU is revisiting old and new legislation and regulations to ensure they serve a more aggressive target, including those with relevance to bioenergy: • Emissions Trading System Directive (ETS) • Effort Sharing Regulation (ESR); • Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry Regulation (LULUCF regulation); • Renewable Energy Directive (RED)

Action on climate must not come at the expense of forests!

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To avoid climate catastrophe, we need to decrease emissions and increase carbon uptake in forests NOW

Fuss et al, 2015. Betting on Negative Emissions. Nature.

Livable scenarios

when

What a pathway to net zero emissions looks like (“climate neutrality”)

Forest carbon uptake is increasing, meaning it’s getting more negative. Forests are getting bigger

Fossil fuel emissions are decreasing

Net emissions are decreasing

BUT: Wood-fired electricity and heating units emit more CO2 per unit energy output than fossil-fired units

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Electricity power plants

Boilers for heating

All results are for power plants and wood-boilers burning green wood chips for fuel. Green wood is ~50% water by weight, thus inefficient. Requires burning more fuel to generate a given amount of energy.

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Coal: 6,021 kt CO2 ÷ 6.9 TWh = 873 kt CO2 /TWh

Biomass: 11,455 kt CO2 ÷ 12.7 TWh = 902 kt CO2 /TWh (equivalent to kg/MWh)

Burning pellets emits more CO2 than coal per unit energy – data from Drax Power Station, UK

Despite emissions, biomass treated as “zero” CO2 in the Renewable Energy Directive and the Emissions Trading

Scheme

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Power plants that burn wood have “zero” emissions… Households that burn wood have “zero” emissions…

Carbon loss may be counted if forest carbon sequestration shrinks

EU Climate policy already relies too much on bioenergy

EU “solid biofuels” mostly wood; large increase since 1990

Of total wood burned for energy, residential use ~60%*

* Residential wood use and total wood use likely significantly underreported by Eurostat

Total wood burned for energy

Residential wood burned for energy

Residential as % of total

What a pathway to net zero emissions looks like (“climate neutrality”)

Forest carbon uptake is increasing, meaning it’s getting more negative. Forests are getting bigger

Fossil fuel emissions are decreasing

Net emissions are decreasing

Factors that degrade forest carbon sequestration

• Forest harvesting for materials and energy (“biomass”)

• Increased mortality/damage and decreased regeneration from climate stress: heat, drought, ice storms, abrupt changes in temperature

• Insect infestations

• Ozone pollution (damages foliage)

• Other air pollution (nitrogen deposition, metals, acidification)

Forest loss shows up in the forest sink, which is declining

Initiative text: “The EU’s land use sector (agriculture land, forests and other natural land) is presently a net sink of CO2, meaning that it removes more CO2 from the atmosphere than it releases GHGs.” But “balance” implies sources and sinks must be equal in the future. Currently, land sink offsets tiny (and currently decreasing) fraction of emissions.

• Forest carbon sink is declining

• Some countries have seriously degraded their forest carbon sink

• Decline in sink relates to harvesting, including for biomass fuel

EU forests are in trouble! Forest harvesting versus the forest carbon sink (thousand tonnes CO2)

CO2 all wood harvesting CO2 from burning wood CO2 sequestered in forests

EU forests are in trouble! Forest harvesting versus the forest carbon sink (thousand tonnes CO2)

CO2 all wood harvesting CO2 from burning wood CO2 sequestered in forests

Actual biomass use

Gardanne plant, France (coal-to-biomass conversion burning chips)

Drax power station, UK 2019

Burned 7.05 million tonnes wood pellets, 12.795 m tonnes biogenic CO2

Subsidies £861.5 million (£2.36 million per day) 65% wood pellets from USA

Enviva pellet plant, Ahoskie, North Carolina Photo: Dogwood Alliance (www.dogwoodalliance.org)

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Pellet industry harvesting in North Carolina: “Little remains but stumps and puddles in what was once a bottomland hardwood forest”

Joby Warrick, Washington Post 6/2/2015 “How Europe’s climate policies led to more U.S. trees being cut down”

Pacific Bioenergy pellet plant, British Columbia, Canada

The North American forest carbon sink is in trouble

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year

Canada: 30% less carbon sequestered compared to 1990

US: Slight decrease in carbon sequestration since 1990; troubling indications

Data from https://di.unfccc.int/detailed_data_by_party

“Sustainable” harvesting for wood pellets in Estonia

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Estonian wood pellet mill

Biomaxx Pellets from Serbia

German Pellets. German pellets with state-of-the-art technology

GMG Energie HolzPellet. Quality pellets from Austria.

Eco Energ Lemn, from Romania, perhaps the country's largest factory with an annual output of 60,000 tonnes. It is located to the north in a timber-rich area. The material is 90% beech and 10% coniferous.

Forest Enterpises Pellet. Serbian Beech Pellets. The primary materials used are Beech and Pine.

Ahira Pellet. Bulgarian pellets. Production from the Rhodope Mountains.

Biotherm Pellet. Guaranteed pellets from Serbia! This pellet is mainly produced from beech, the dominant wood in the Balkans, but also from a percentage of conifers for flame intensity and better compression.

Ameco.AMECO started operations in 2007 in Romania. The pellet is produced from spruce and contains no bark at all.

Sava Pellet. Sava Pellet is produced in Bosnia by Ensa BH Ltd. The company has two mixes of materials for pellets 70% conifer and 30% beech

Bioenergy Point, Serbia. The material from which it is produced is beech.

Schweighofer. This pellet is known for its good combustion, for its color and for its noble Austrian origin. The company is actually based in Vienna, but its production is in Romania. The wood used is pure Romanian fir.

https://bit.ly/37fiqog

Residential wood pellet trade is booming - examples from one random

website

Firewood processing factory, Spain

Firewood is being shipped all over the EU

Spanish kiln-dried firewood for sale in EU

2-m3 crates of Spanish kiln-dried firewood, selling into UK for € 140/ crate

Logging of 180-yr-old beech forest in Bükk National Park,

Hungary

“According to WWF, the approximately 600 m3 of timber produced is largely suitable only for low market value firewood or fiber due to the very high age of the trees.” https://index.hu/belfold/2019/05/06/bukk_fakivagas_wwf/

Illegal logging, Bükk National Park, Hungary (sign says “strictly protected area,” photographer: Csaba Bojtos

Logging in Poloniny National Park, Slovakia, photograph Tomas Vida

Fagaras Mountains Romania: satellite imagery shows logging is recent

Fagaras Mountains (Romania) logging

Photo: Andrei Ciurcanu, Agent Green

What you can do

Submit comments to the EU telling them we need climate policies that PUT FORESTS FIRST. Instructions next slides. Join the many groups that have signed on to the “Biomass Delusion” statement, at https://environmentalpaper.org/the-biomass-delusion/

Tell policymakers:

The biodiversity crisis is intertwined with the climate crisis. Protecting and restoring forests is essential for addressing both.

Burning forests for fuel is destroying forests and harming the climate. Stopping this practice is FAST MITIGATION – which we desperately need.

We need a climate policy that puts forests first.

• End reliance on burning wood as “zero carbon” renewable energy

• Prioritize and incentivize protection and restoration of natural forests

• The EU spends billions per year on subsidies for cutting and burning wood - they should re-direct that support to restore forests.

Future GHG “reductions” must not come at the expense of forests!

Submit comments to the EU on the 2030 Climate Target Plan

Submit short comments or upload longer documents at https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/12265-2030-Climate-Target-Plan Requires signing up for an account if you don’t have one yet – do this first

Comments are due APRIL 15th

Respond to the EU’s questionnaire

Deadline June 23 https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/12265-2030-Climate-Target-Plan/public-consultation

Some resources for responding to the EU initiative

Many thanks to our colleagues in the Netherlands who have done an amazing job of assembling a comprehensive library of resources on bioenergy!

See their main website here: https://biomassmurder.org/

See videos here: https://biomassmurder.org/videos/index.html

PFPI submissions to previous EU consultations

Comments on revisions to carbon trading scheme and need to include bioenergy emissions

Suggestions for improving tracking of bioenergy impacts in the land sector

Suggestions on reducing forest degradation from bioenergy

Suggestions on reducing illegal logging and role of bioenergy

Suggestions on achieving climate neutrality by 2050 – how bioenergy undermines mitigation

Mary S. Booth

mbooth@pfpi.net

Websites: www.pfpi.net

www.eubiomasscase.org