Europe Is Sacrificing Its Historical Forests for Vitality

Governments wager billions on burning timber for inexperienced energy. The Instances 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 alleged to be the cornerstone of the European Union’s inexperienced vitality technique.

When the bloc started subsidizing wooden burning over a decade in the past, it was seen as a fast enhance for renewable gasoline and an incentive to maneuver properties and energy vegetation away from coal and fuel. Chips and pellets had been marketed as a approach 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 vitality supply, far forward of wind and photo voltaic.

However at the moment, as demand surges amid a Russian vitality crunch, entire timber 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 lowering carbon from the air, are actually the supply of a lot logging that authorities scientists take into account 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 vitality come from fossil fuels.

“Folks 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 out to be so massive that researchers can not hold 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 larger than the dimensions of Finland’s whole 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 might remove most business subsidies and prohibit nations from burning entire timber to satisfy their clear vitality targets. Solely vitality 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 vitality business, with provides of Russian fuel and oil in jeopardy. Within the Czech Republic, protesters have mobbed the streets, livid with rising vitality prices, and the French authorities have warned of rolling blackouts this winter.

Inner paperwork present that Central European and Nordic nations, specifically, are pushing arduous to maintain the wooden subsidies alive.

The talk is an acute instance of one of many key challenges that governments face in combating local weather change: how you can steadiness the urgency of a warming planet in opposition to the speedy want for jobs, vitality and financial stability. The European Union has been a pacesetter in setting inexperienced insurance policies, however additionally it is racing to search out vitality 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 “doable adverse influence on funding and companies.” Denmark argued that these selections ought to 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 combating local weather change, nations should scale back the quantity of carbon dioxide they launch into the air. That can require a shift away from fossil fuels. The European Union has required nations to satisfy aggressive renewable-energy targets. Wooden qualifies as renewable vitality, on the logic that timber in the end develop again.

In 2018, the final time the subsidies got here up for a vote, almost 800 scientists signed a letter urging lawmakers to cease treating logged timber as a inexperienced supply of vitality. Whereas timber could be replanted, it could possibly take generations for a rising forest to reabsorb the carbon dioxide from burned wooden.

“Utilizing wooden intentionally harvested for burning will improve carbon within the environment 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 vitality, 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 demise mattress final 12 months regretting pushing so aggressively for wooden vitality.

As we speak, 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 almost a 12 months mountaineering into a few of the continent’s oldest forests and attaching monitoring units to timber. They’ve scraped authorities truck-location knowledge and tracked timber from pure parks and conservation areas to wooden mills. They’ve linked loggers to corporations advertising and marketing wooden pellets as carbon-neutral gasoline.

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

The New York Instances supplemented the group’s knowledge with publicly obtainable information. A reporter and photographer spent 4 days mountaineering by means of 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 shouldn’t be forbidden in Europe’s protected forests, governments are required to conduct environmental assessments to make sure the land is being conserved. However consultants say that such assessments are uncommon. Final 12 months, the European Court docket of Auditors raised the alarm on these supposedly protected forests, discovering lots of them in “unhealthy or poor conservation standing.”

As we speak, after a 2,200-foot hike up Ceahlau Mountain in Romania, a path of picket carcasses is seen beneath, a scar throughout one in every of Europe’s final old-growth forests the place 200-year-old timber as soon as stood.

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

Instances journalists noticed timber 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 vitality, burning wooden truly releases extra greenhouse fuel emissions than burning fuel, oil, and even coal.

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

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

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

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

Forest homeowners, state or personal, are supposed to switch reduce timber with new ones inside two years to assist steadiness the carbon cycle. However environmental teams have proven through the years that this isn’t at all times achieved. Instances journalists noticed large swaths of land that had been registered as logged years in the past, but no replanting was achieved. 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 similar 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 basically.

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 vitality, mentioned Irene di Padua, the group’s coverage director.

“We nonetheless can improve capability in Europe in a sustainable method,” she mentioned.

The affiliation opposes chopping subsidies or altering the way in which clear vitality is outlined. If the European Union not considers vitality from burnt wooden to be carbon-neutral, it could instantly throw many nations off monitor to hit renewable-energy targets.

That will have main penalties for nations like Italy, the continent’s largest client of wooden pellets. Greater than a 3rd of its renewable vitality 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 nations, together with monetary incentives for wooden producers. These incentives may very well be illegal if the brand new proposal comes into power.

Even when the European Parliament endorses a change, nonetheless, the main points 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 nations have stayed largely silent.

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

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