Briefing on the JRC study “The use of woody biomass for energy production in the EU”

In January 2021, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) published an important study on the impacts of burning wood for energy in Europe. The report was commissioned as an output of the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy and aims to guide the possible revision of bioenergy policy, specifically the utilization of forest biomass in the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II). While the report contains a great deal of useful information, much of it is kept out of view, and the report’s executive summary has been articulated in ways that attempt to defuse the gravity of some of the findings. In this briefing we identify some of the report’s key findings and highlight some of its shortcomings.