ECO believes it’s obvious that we can’t burn our way out of the climate crisis. Avoiding the worst impacts of the climate crisis and keeping 1.5˙C within reach requires a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels and other carbon-rich fuels, and the parallel protection and restoration of ecosystems —not more extraction.
Burning trees for energy emits carbon instantaneously. In fact, burning forest biomass emits as much – or more – CO2 than fossil fuels at the smokestack and per unit of energy produced (as well as a slew of other pollutants including soot, perpetuating harms in communities near these plants). Co-firing of coal and biomass for energy can also prolong the lives of coal plants.
Proponents love to argue that as long as it’s “sustainable,” forestry can deliver carbon-neutral energy. Biomass feedstock can range from sawdust to agricultural residues or even mature, whole trees that wouldn’t sell for timber. And when trees are harvested, they take a long time to regrow—longer than Paris Agreement’s time frames for emissions reductions.
Like taking out a loan at a bank, this creates a “carbon debt” until all of the ecosystem carbon released during harvest and combustion is recaptured by plant growth. Scientists note that the period of time for regrowth to “payback” the carbon debt often spans decades to centuries. But we can’t wait for emissions reductions to occur decades in the future—our collective mandate is to curb emissions now. What about when disasters or development prevent forests from ever re-growing? And by the way, weren’t we already counting on those very same forests to soak up the lingering fossil fuel emissions from other sectors of our economies? We definitely can’t ask them to do two things at once.
More broadly, land-based energy feedstock and negative-emissions technologies can have even larger carbon impacts: for example, when they lead to indirect changes in land use. Increasing demand for bioenergy could drive conversion of natural forests and other ecosystems to plantations. In the global South, tree plantation expansion is frequently linked to land- and water- grabbing at the expense of local communities, including Indigenous Peoples. There is already huge pressure on a finite amount of land for food, water, biodiversity and other life-supporting ecosystem services.
Making things even worse, under current UNFCCC carbon accounting rules, Parties do not account for smokestack emissions from burning biomass for energy in the same way that they account for those from fossil fuels. In theory, biomass emissions should appear in the land use sector—including emissions coming from countries other than the one claiming to reduce its emissions, when biomass is traded internationally. In practice, notoriously deficient land sector accounting frequently obscures or fails to account for carbon loss from forest harvesting. Don’t get us started on the fact that Parties can include harvesting emissions in their accounting baselines! Countries can claim a win on fossil fuel reductions, without any guarantee of reductions for the atmosphere.
Yet even with benefits so uncertain, many countries are charging ahead on bioenergy build-outs. A massive ramp-up of burning forest wood for “renewable energy” in the EU and UK is driving forest carbon loss and reducing the forest carbon sink. Those policies are now being replicated elsewhere, including in Japan and South Korea.
It’s just so simple: to decarbonize, we need to go beyond burning and transition away from carbon-based fuels. The UNFCCC must make the risks and impacts of bioenergy far more transparent, overhaul contradictory policies that undermine environmental integrity and allow emissions to go unaccounted for, and get real about restoring and protecting nature. A just and nature-sensitive energy transition will result in real emissions reductions and cleaner, safer energy sources that are better for nature and people.