The global biomass energy industry is set to triple by 2030, driving carbon emissions, deforestation, and biodiversity loss, according to a new analysis released on Monday.
The sector, which contributes 60% of the world’s renewable energy supply, receives substantial subsidies despite disproven carbon neutrality claims and flawed carbon accounting that underestimates emissions, according to a report by the Biomass Action Network of US-based Environmental Paper Network (EPN) International.
Woody biomass supply for energy is projected to triple between 2021 and 2030, requiring a 13-fold increase in wood sourced from monoculture plantations to meet demand, the report said.
This follows a 50% rise in supply between 2010 and 2021, during which global wood pellet production surged by 250%, reaching 47.5 million tonnes in 2022.
Logging woody biomass for energy depletes the EU’s forest carbon sink, drives global deforestation and forest degradation, and causes human rights violations, including land grabs and health impacts in the Global South, the analysis said.
“We are literally burning up the biosphere as industry and governments greenwash forest destruction, increased carbon pollution, harms to human health, and land grabbing for massive plantation expansions as climate action,” said Peg Putt, a coordinator of EPN’s Biomass Action Network and a co-author of the report.
“Far from being renewable, it’s reprehensible,” she added.
Flawed biomass carbon accounting rules under the UNFCCC and IPCC frameworks should be overhauled, the report said. Large-scale biomass energy should be excluded from climate targets, and co-firing with coal should not be considered a viable emissions reduction strategy, it added.
“Plans to triple large-scale biomass burning within the decade, and for an energy plantation planting spree that would increase monoculture plantations by 13 times, are shocking,” Putt said.
“Subsidising this is pulling support away from genuine low emissions renewables, but redirecting them into positive climate action would assist with finding sorely needed financing.”
The expansion of monoculture plantations is already driving deforestation and rainforest conversion in Indonesia, the report said. Plans for large-scale bioenergy projects in the Southeast Asian country could see up to 10 mln hectares of forest converted into energy plantations.
By Dimana Doneva – dimana@carbon-pulse.com
