The European Union will no longer promote the use of wood pellets as a sustainable fuel for power plants. As a result, forestry in densely forested EU countries loses an important source of income, to the dissatisfaction of the European agricultural umbrella organization Copa-Cogeca.
The end of financial support for 'primary biomass' is a blow to thousands of forest owners and bioenergy producers, says Copa-Cogeca. Most Dutch Members of the European Parliament no longer consider co-firing wood as sustainable energy.
For years, power plants in the EU operated solely on oil, gas, or coal. To save fuel costs, wood has increasingly been used in recent years as 'co-firing.' Initially, the EU encouraged this for environmental reasons. A whole wood pellet industry has since emerged, such as in Finland, Sweden, Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Balkans.
However, biomass can still be used as co-firing in the coming years because the restriction is being phased in. The new directive states that in the future no more biomass may be burned in the EU than was the case in the past five years.
The European Parliament decided this week that due to the current energy crisis, the use of fossil energy sources must be reduced as much and as quickly as possible, and that the EU must achieve 45% solar and wind energy within eight years. A proposal from the Greens to expand that share of ‘sustainable energy’ did not succeed.
A proposal from the Christian Democrats to maintain the wood pellet subsidy also failed. Member of the European Parliament Peter van Dalen (Christian Union) is not happy with the compromise for a gradual phase-out over several years, but still agreed because a complete stop was not feasible. For this reason, Anja Hazenkamp (Party for the Animals) voted against.
Van Dalen said that the Netherlands is not doing so badly in this area: “If I look at Eastern Europe, subsidizing biomass could promote deforestation. That can certainly not be the intention.”