Europeans are cutting down U.S. forests for so-called 'sustainable' energy
European nations, including the UK, are making a grave accounting error that will result in the emissions of more planet-warming greenhouse gases, according to a new report from an independent London think tank.
By counting the burning of wood pellets from felled forests in the U.S., Canada and Russia as a "renewable" or "sustainable" form of energy, nations in the European Union are masking their full impact on the environment, the report warns.
The study, from Chatham House, comes as European officials debate policies that favor particular energy sources, including biomass energy such as wood pellets, as a way to cut planet-warming carbon dioxide.
The report warns that contrary to what many policy makers have been saying, bioenergy involves about as much carbon emissions as coal. In fact, if wood is burned to make steam for electricity, this practice may be 50 percent more carbon intensive than coal per unit of electricity produced.
Bioenergy policy may seem like an issue buried in the weeds (so to speak) of climate policy, but scientists say the future severity of global warming is at stake in determining the European Union's (EU) policies toward biomass burning.
If the wrong policies remain in place, the EU may inadvertently torpedo the globe's chances to live up to the commitments made under the Paris Climate Agreement.
“The Paris temperature goal is in peril because of the way we’re dealing with bioenergy,” William Moomaw, a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said in an interview.
The EU is the world’s biggest user of biomass for electricity generation, with its use growing quickly.
With the Trump administration wavering on its support for the climate pact, the policies adopted by other nations and groups of countries have taken on an increased importance.
According to the report, emissions from the burning of wood pellets are never truly accounted for, either at the point of combustion or when trees are cut down to make the pellets.
To put that another way, European nations are currently allowed to burn wood pellets from trees that have been chopped down in the Southeast U.S., and no one -- neither the U.S. nor the European countries -- ever marks down the emissions on their carbon checking account.
The study found that despite being responsible for several million tons of carbon emissions in 2016, the UK did not log any emissions from burning wood pellets because of accounting loopholes.
The report recommends that emissions be tallied from the point when forests are cut all the way through combustion. This is critical, since trees are a huge absorber of atmospheric carbon, known to climate policy specialists and scientists as a carbon "sink."
European governments are working to eliminate subsidies for fossil fuels, but they have been maintaining financial support for bioenergy, encouraging the clear cutting of swaths of forests in the southeastern U.S. to produce wood pellets that are shipped to power plants across the Atlantic Ocean.
In other words, loggers are chopping down huge swaths of forests in the Southeast to produce wood pellets that are shipped to Europe, where they’re burned in power plants.
The Chatham House report found that burning wood for energy is far less efficient compared to using solar panels to do the same thing.
"Burning wood converts solar energy into electricity with an efficiency of only one-quarter of one percent compared to 20 percent for solar panels that release no emissions during operations," Moomaw said.
The bioenergy issue is causing us to skirt along a “knife’s edge” when it comes to our future, Moomaw said.
“If we do it the other way and actually protect and restore degraded forests and other degraded terrestrial lands we actually can pull far more out of the atmosphere than people realize,” he added, noting that’s “a system of negative emissions that’s been working for 300 million years. We know it works.”
Regarding the accounting rules that are incentivizing bioenergy without fully accounting for the carbon emissions, Moomaw said: “Somebody has to stand up and tell the kids there is no Santa Claus.”
Andrew Freedman is Mashable's Senior Editor for Science and Special Projects. Prior to working at Mashable, Freedman was a Senior Science writer for Climate Central. He has also worked as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly and Greenwire/E&E Daily. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, online at The Weather Channel, and washingtonpost.com, where he wrote a weekly climate science column for the "Capital Weather Gang" blog. He has provided commentary on climate science and policy for Sky News, CBC Radio, NPR, Al Jazeera, Sirius XM Radio, PBS NewsHour, and other national and international outlets. He holds a Masters in Climate and Society from Columbia University, and a Masters in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
