Global demand for forest biomass is surging, but the financial incentives offered to projects that burn wood for electricity are under fire on the international stage in Cali, Colombia.
In many countries, including Canada, biomass electricity generation is included in the sustainable, clean energy toolbox, because forests can regrow over time and sequester carbon dioxide while the trees are alive. However, biomass critics say this logic is flawed and point out that most of the world’s forests are already being over-logged and ravaged by fire. Canada’s forests now emit more carbon than they can absorb.
Harvesting wood for pellets to be burned risks intensifying and expanding industrial logging, which can result in deforestation and degradation of forest ecosystems. This runs counter to science that says preserving forest ecosystems is key for both climate and biodiversity.
Activists at the ongoing United Nations biodiversity negotiations urged world leaders to make ending subsidies for biomass supply and power generation a priority.
Canada doesn’t generate much electricity from biomass but it is the world’s third largest exporter of wood pellets, mainly shipping them to the U.K. and Japan to be burned. Natural Resources Canada considers forest biomass a renewable feedstock for energy production as long as it comes from a sustainably managed forest and the rate of regeneration exceeds the rate of consumption. This stance is shared by G7 governments, including the U.S., EU Member states and U.K.
Proponents of biomass say only low-value, waste wood (like sawdust and scraps from logging operations) is burned for power, but U.K. biomass giant Drax was under fire earlier this month when internal emails revealed it likely sourced its wood from B.C.'s critical primary forests, according to reporting by the Financial Times. The U.K. power company and wood pellet producer has been the subject of much scrutiny, with numerous reports pointing to its continued sourcing from B.C.’s old-growth forests.
The last round of United Nations nature protection negotiations in Montreal resulted in an historic agreement to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. Now, leaders need to follow through on those commitments.
One of the key targets is to end or reform incentives that harm biodiversity by reducing them by USD$500 billion per year, starting with the most harmful incentives, from the New Year till 2030.
Activists at COP16 say financial support for biomass needs to be first on the chopping block because of its dual impacts to biodiversity and the climate.
The Biomass Action Network is calling on leaders to label direct and indirect subsidies to forest biomass as the “most harmful incentives to biodiversity” and phase them out by the 2030 deadline.
“Subsidies to forest biomass energy have to be eliminated with urgency as they rely on broadscale clearcutting of natural forests and the wholesale conversion of natural ecosystems to monoculture plantations. Both practices involve massive destruction of biodiversity,” said Peg Putt, campaign coordinator of the Biomass Action Network, in a press release.
One recent study by Earth Track estimates environmentally harmful subsidies are at least $2.6 trillion a year, or 2.5 per cent of global GDP. Subsidies that harm nature are wide ranging and include direct and indirect support for fossil fuel consumption, resource extraction, overfishing, pollution and more. For example, some agricultural subsidies drive deforestation and promote monocultures, which accelerates biodiversity loss.
It is unknown exactly how much the federal government and provinces are subsidizing biomass. The federal government’s $1.5 billion Clean Fuels Fund has a funding stream specifically for biomass supply chain projects and budget 2024 proposed expanding the Clean Technology and Clean Electricity investment tax credits to support using waste biomass (like bark, twigs roots and lumber offcuts) to generate heat and electricity. Biomass for heat or energy and pellet manufacturing are among the eligible projects for the federal government’s Indigenous Forestry Initiative and Investment in Forest Industry Transformation programs. Several other programs aren’t specifically aimed at bioenergy, but projects could be eligible if they meet all the program criteria. Ontario invested $60 million in a forest biomass program in March 2024.
In 2021, the CCPA looked at subsidies in B.C. and estimated at least $37 million in public dollars went directly to wood pellet mills, pulp mills or companies bringing lower-quality logs into mill towns.
A 2023 study published in the international journal Renewable Energy found burning wood and wood residues release approximately as much CO2 as coal and “significantly more” than natural gas. The air pollution from burning wood and pellet production also poses a health concern for communities living near these facilities.
Drax received more than £500 million in public subsidies from the U.K. in the last financial year and more than £7 billion since it converted its coal power plant to run on biomass back in 2012, The Guardian reported in August.
Natasha Bulowski / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
Comments
Cutting trees in order to burn them does not make much sense and is very wasteful. Wood has more value when used for fabrication of durable goods, like furniture and houses, that have a long lifetime and will not release its carbon for many years. However, when such durable goods reach their end of life, such as when a house is demolished, the wood must be recuperated and can be used for heat at that time. There should be regulations about wood recuperation.