Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Not seeing the wood for the trees—the EU’s environmental blunder

George Tyler 7th September 2021

Supporting a conversion to wood burning has unwittingly incentivised power plants to increase greenhouse gases.

wood burning,biomass,coal
tchara/Shutterstock.com

The European Union is leading the world in adopting limits on greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, notably via hefty carbon taxes. New policies always experience teething problems but an EU environmental regulation adopted in 2009 has become an embarrassing own goal.

The regulation classified wood burning as environmentally superior to fossil fuels—even carbon-neutral—and exempted it from carbon taxes. That was intuitive perhaps but an untested presumption adopted in a data vacuum. The notion was that harvesting forests for power-plant fuel would establish a virtuous cycle, with tree regrowth offsetting the wood-burning emissions.  

But rigorous subsequent analyses have led experts to debunk the notion of wood as carbon-neutral. In no scenario, even stretching over a century, does replanted forest sequester sufficient carbon. In the most environmentally beneficial scenario, a quarter of a hardwood forest can be harvested for power-plant fuel and, if replanted with hardwood—and the entire forest left untouched and free of fire, drought or infestation during the subsequent century—will sequester all of 66 per cent of the emissions released by the initial burning.

Coal emissions lower

Research since 2009 has moreover revealed a second problem with wood: coal nearly always has lower net emissions, initially and over time.


Become part of our Community of Thought Leaders


Get fresh perspectives delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to receive thought-provoking opinion articles and expert analysis on the most pressing political, economic and social issues of our time. Join our community of engaged readers and be a part of the conversation.

Sign up here

An authoritative analysis by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018 concluded that power-plant emissions from wood burning were 80 per cent greater initially per kilowatt hour (kWh) generated than from coal. Wood has a lower combustion efficiency and its production chain—harvesting, chipping, pellet-forming, drying and shipping thousands of miles—produces greater GHG emissions than coal production.

Replanting trees shrinks this huge carbon deficit over time but very few regrowth/sequestration scenarios are environmentally superior to coal. Power-plant emissions from today’s softwood-pellet production are considerably higher over a century.

That most optimistic wood-burning/replanting scenario, harvesting only a quarter of a hardwood forest, is one of the few superior to coal. A century later, atmospheric GHG concentrations are 38 per cent lower (Figure 1) than had power plants burned coal initially instead. Another superior scenario is clear-cutting the forest and then replanting with hardwood—its atmospheric impact a century hence will still be 14 per cent lower than for coal.

Figure 1: impact on atmospheric GHG concentration after 100 years per unit (EJ) of electricity generated from solar, wood or coal

Picture 1
Source: Sterman, Siegel, Rooney-Varga (2021). EJ = exajoule pulse of generated electricity (annual global coal-generated electricity totals 550EJ). Increase in atmospheric GHG in parts per million. Photovoltaic/wind lifecycle emissions <4 per cent of coal. Natural forest is harvested hardwood (oak/hickory) burned, with forests replanted in hardwoods. Thinning is harvesting ¼ of hardwood forest for burning. Tree farm is hardwood forests clear-cut and burned, forest replanted with softwood (pine). 

But these relatively benign harvesting scenarios are uneconomic and exceedingly rare. The 2009 regulation induced a massive conversion of coal-fired EU power plants to wood pellets, produced across Europe and imported from the United States and Canada. Wood is harvested by clear-cutting hardwood forests, with the denuded land converted to a tree farm by planting faster-growing softwoods such as pine.

Softwoods provide harvesters with the most regrowth volume and profit in the shortest time. (In the southern US, for instance, in recent years old-growth oak and hickory forests have been clear-cut in quantities four times greater than the annual cutting of the Amazonian rain forests and replanted with loblolly pines.) Yet atmospheric GHG concentrations a century hence are 52 per cent greater (.061ppm versus .04ppm) than had the power plant simply burned coal initially instead.

Softwoods absorb only 60 per cent as much carbon dioxide as hardwoods. True, fast-growing softwoods absorb more for two to three decades than hardwoods but absorption tails off so much that it is exceeded thereafter by the CO2 emanating from the tree-farm soils—these now on balance increasing atmospheric GHG concentrations. Hardwood forests sequester carbon more slowly but net absorption continues for hundreds of years.

A third problem with wood revealed since 2009 is its cost. Photovoltaics and wind turbines are both environmentally superior and produce electricity at a slightly lower cost, levelled over  the lifecycle, than polluting coal or natural gas—and at a much lower cost than polluting wood (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Lifecycle-levelled cost of electricity, EU, 2018

Picture 2
Source: European Commission, October 2020. Cost excludes carbon taxes and subsidies.

Especially with carbon taxes, market forces in the EU dictate the abandonment of fossil fuels. And market forces should also be dictating the abandonment of uneconomic wood—owners writing off wood-burning power plants as stranded assets. But the 2009 regulation has turned that calculus on its head. With wood erroneously classified as ‘renewable’, EU members provide power plants $7 billion (€5.9 billion) in annual subsidies to offset the high cost of burning wood.


Support Progressive Ideas: Become a Social Europe Member!


Support independent publishing and progressive ideas by becoming a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month. You can help us create more high-quality articles, podcasts and videos that challenge conventional thinking and foster a more informed and democratic society. Join us in our mission - your support makes all the difference!

Become a Social Europe Member

Global harm

That folly has empowered utilities to temporise rather than making the transition to genuinely renewable generation. Finally, wood burning has accelerated GHG emissions at a critical juncture, as affirmed last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with polar ice sheets threatening irreversibly to melt and permafrost to thaw—global harm which cannot be undone.  

Under scientific pressure, the EU is having second thoughts. It should rectify its wood blunder by adopting reforms to incentivise electricity generation with genuine renewables. Listen to scientists urging that wood be stripped of its carbon-tax exemption and follow the lead of the Netherlands by ending its subsidies. Those reforms should also become components of the ‘Brexit’ negotiations, in light of the UK’s misguided leading role in wood burning.

wood burning,coal,biomass
George Tyler

George Tyler is a former US deputy Treasury assistant secretary and senior official at the World Bank. He is the author of What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class ... And What Other Nations Got Right.

You are here: Home / Ecology / Not seeing the wood for the trees—the EU’s environmental blunder

Most Popular Posts

Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
dissent,social critique,identity,politics,gender Delegitimising social critique and dissent on the leftEszter Kováts
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto
Credit Suisse,CS,UBS,regulation The failure of Credit Suisse—not just a one-offPeter Bofinger
Europe,transition,climate For a just and democratic climate transitionJulia Cagé, Lucas Chancel, Anne-Laure Delatte and 8 more

Most Recent Posts

work,labour market,pandemic,hours,Gen Z How much work is enough?Anne-Marie Slaughter and Autumn McDonald
poverty,Porto,Social Forum When life gives you lemons, make anti-poverty strategiesEstrella Durá Ferrandis and Alba Huertas Ruiz
LGBT+ rigthts,same-sex couples,civil unions,ECHR Landmark European ruling on LGBT+ rightsNausica Palazzo
boredom,work Rust out: boredom at work can be harmfulValerie van Mulukom
Kılıçdaroğlu,Turkey,Erdoğan Turkey: does Kılıçdaroğlu have a path to victory?Halil Karaveli

Other Social Europe Publications

Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The spring issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to Feminist Foreign Policy, to try to gauge its potential but also the risk that it could be perceived as another attempt by the west to impose its vision on the global south.

In this issue, we also look at the human cost of the war in Ukraine, analyse the increasing connection between the centre right and the far right, and explore the difficulties, particularly for women, of finding a good work-life balance and living good working lives.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The four transitions and the missing one

Europe is at a crossroads, painfully navigating four transitions (green, digital, economic and geopolitical) at once but missing the transformative and ambitious social transition it needs. In other words, if the EU is to withstand the storm, we do not have the luxury of abstaining from reflecting on its social foundations, of which intermittent democratic discontent is only one expression. It is against this background that the ETUI/ETUC publishes its annual flagship publication Benchmarking Working Europe 2023, with the support of more than 70 graphs and a special contribution from two guest editors, Professors Kalypso Nikolaidïs and Albena Azmanova.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

New Europe-wide survey on living and working conditions

Eurofound, in partnership with the European Training Foundation, has launched a new online survey to document living and working conditions in Europe and the evolving concerns of citizens, amid the cost-of-living crisis, the war in Ukraine and the broader post-Covid-19 context.

The survey is available in 33 languages and is open to everyone over the age of 16. It asks specific questions on perceptions of quality of life and quality of society, as well as working situation, housing and finances.

Add your voice and contribute to the research.


COMPLETE THE SURVEY HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube