Biomass Energy, Forests and Climate Library

Study on energy subsidies and other government interventions in the European Union – Final report: 2023 edition

This report documents the work completed for the Directorate General for Energy of the European Commission on the Study on energy subsidies and other government interventions in the EU – 2023 edition. The work was carried out by a two-member consortium: Enerdata, the project lead, and Trinomics.

South-East USA Wood Pellet Plants Exporting to Europe

A printable info-graphic showing the location of South-East USA Wood Pellet Plants Exporting to Europe

Beyond Burning / Narrated by Emma Thompson

Burning trees for energy is anything but clean, just or green. But politicians are subsidizing the forest biomass industry internationally to the tune of billions of dollars a year, and pretending it’s a climate solution.

Watch and share this new Stand.earth video narrated by actress, Emma Thompson, and tell your government the forest is worth more standing.

The video that EU leaders don’t want you to watch

Our forests are disappearing at an alarming rate. Instead of planting forests, Europe is burning them on a grand scale. The EU calls it "green energy" and even pays the industry for it! In 2020, it was a whopping €16 billion. Did you know that more than ⅓ of 'renewable energy' across Europe is produced by burning trees? Although we should be protecting our natural forests right now. One of the world's leading climatologists, Prof. Bill Moomaw, summarizes, "I can't understand how this policy came about unless you realize there was total government capture by the forest products industry."

Intact Forests in the United States: Proforestation Mitigates Climate Change and Serves the Greatest Good

Climate change and loss of biodiversity are widely recognized as the foremost environmental challenges of our time. Forests annually sequester large quantities of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), and store carbon above and below ground for long periods of time. Intact forests—largely free from human intervention except primarily for trails and hazard removals—are the most carbon-dense and biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems, with additional benefits to society and the economy.

EU mitigation potential of harvested wood products

The new rules for the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry sector under the Kyoto Protocol recognized the importance of Harvested Wood Products (HWP) in climate change mitigation. Forests and the forest sector play a relevant role in the carbon (C) cycle and can significantly contribute to the mitigation of global climate change. Specifically, forest-related mitigation options include a change in C stocks - which reflects emissions or removals of CO2 from the atmosphere - and a substitution effect. Changes in C stocks can happen both within the forest pools (living biomass, dead wood, litter and soil) and in the harvested wood products (HWP) pool. Substitution effects can occur when wood products replace materials or energy (e.g., concrete or fossil fuels). Given the trade-offs between the forest sink at large scale, wood products and bioenergy (see for example [6-9]), the most effective forest mitigation strategy is the one that maximizes the sum of various mitigation components.

Brief on the role of the forest-based bioeconomy in mitigating climate change through carbon storage and material substitution

This brief is one out of a series of Knowledge Centre for Bioeconomy's briefs which intend to provide independent evidence for EU policy in this field.

GHG displacement factors of harvested wood products: the myth of substitution

When flaws in the evaluation of wood substitution effects are avoided, one must conclude that increased harvesting and wood utilization may be counter-productive for climate change mitigation objectives, especially when wood is used as a fuel.

Forest Bioenergy Update: BECCS and its role in integrated assessment models

This commentary looks at the latest evidence on the ability of BECCS to deliver net removals of CO2 from the atmosphere and finds that there are substantial risks of it failing to achieve net removals at all, or that any removals are delayed beyond the critical period during which the world is seeking to meet Paris Agreement targets to limit warming to 1.5–2°C. In a world where land is scarce and subject to competing demands, it is important to recognise that the area of land required to generate energy from biomass is 50–100 times larger than for solar and wind and thus land usage for bioenergy is inefficient.