EPN Reports & Publications

Modernizing ERISA Health Plan Disclosure Rules for the Digital Age

A new EPN analysis finds that modernizing outdated ERISA health plan disclosure rules by allowing electronic delivery by default, while preserving consumers’ right to receive paper communications, could save the equivalent of 366,000 tons of wood (more than 2 million trees) every year, reduce more than 1 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions, conserve over 2 billion gallons of water, and save employers and health plans $19.5 billion over the next decade.

Ensuring alignment between bio-based plastics policy and EU circular economy objectives for packaging

Letter to DG Environment:
To strengthen alignment between future bio-based plastics policy and existing EU circular economy, climate, and pollution objectives, we encourage the Commission to consider our recommendations when preparing its next steps under the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation.

Bioenergy: A Roadmap to Forest Destruction

As world leaders wrapped up COP30 in Belém last year, a new climate roadmap was unveiled: one to transition away from fossil fuels, and another to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030. These goals are meant to work hand in hand. But there’s a growing problem: the rise of forest bioenergy threatens to undermine both efforts, putting forests and the climate at risk. Members of the Biomass Action Network are currently in Bonn for the UN’s mid-year climate meetings, to raise the alarm that bioenergy is nothing but a roadmap to destruction.

The Human Rights Impacts of Large-scale ‘Modern’ Biomass Energy

This briefing examines the human rights impacts of large-scale (‘modern’) biomass energy that burns wood in centralized heat and power generators. As the industry rapidly expands, growing evidence highlights serious human rights concerns throughout the biomass supply chain. The following examples illustrate negative impacts occurring worldwide – impacts that are likely to intensify unless robust action is taken to halt the biomass industry.

This briefing includes case studies from Chile, Brazil, the USA, Sweden, Ghana, Mozambique, Uganda, Indonesia, Nepal and Thailand.

Open Letter to the European Commission: A better use of wood and public funds

The global Biomass Action Network (BAN) of EPN joined other NGOs in sending an open letter to the European Commission with an important message: wood burning incentives in EU legislation need to be removed as soon as possible. Woody biomass must be excluded from the EU Renewable Energy Directive’s (RED) list of renewable energy sources, and the zero-rating of its considerable CO2 emissions on the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) must end.

Letter to APRIL: Don’t Suspend Your Own Sustainable Forest Management Policy

Joint letter of EPN with EarthSight, Forest Watch Indonesia, Greenpeace Indonesia, Save Our Borneo, and 18 other civil society organisations for APRIL Group on their suspension of their own Sustainable Forest Management Policy 2.0 (SFMP 2.0).

The False Promise of e-Fuels made using Woody Biomass

A new brief from BAN exposes the flaws in the tempting narrative that simple ‘drop-in’ e-fuel solutions can quickly replace oil-based transport fuels for shipping, aviation, and road transport. Far from always representing a clean, responsible alternative, some e-fuel solutions risk becoming a major new driver of forest destruction and carbon emissions, wreaking havoc during their production and/or combustion.

Pulping Unfair Incentives: Separating EU Policies from Paper Industry Interests

This briefing documents the subsidies flowing to the pulp and paper sector, their social and ecological impacts in Finland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, and offers a credible alternative vision for where that funding should go.

Decarbonisation or dispossession? The extent of industrial-scale biomass energy in Latin America and its impacts on the region

This briefing by the Biomass Action Network’s Latin America Working Group and the Global Forest Coalition exposes the impacts of industrial-scale biomass energy in Latin America. Released during the Brazil COP, this briefing explains how it is driving deforestation, water scarcity, social conflict, and land dispossession, threatening both communities and the climate throughout the region.