There are increasing and competing demands for using biomass in the EU, using it for bio-based products in sectors such as construction, energy, transport, furniture and textile industries, but also reserving it for nature conservation and carbon sequestration. The European Environment Agency (EEA) report, published recently, stresses that there is an urgent need to prioritise the biomass uses due to different roles foreseen for biomass in the European Green Deal and due to potential shortage of biomass supply in the future.
Urgent need to consider how to best use biomass in Europe
The EEA report ‘The European biomass puzzle – Challenges, opportunities and trade-offs around biomass production and use in the EU’ looks at how biomass can help us reach our climate and environmental objectives, and how climate change might affect the EU’s biomass production in agriculture and forest sectors. The report also discusses key synergies and trade-offs in the use of biomass for different policy objectives.
The key challenge highlighted by the EEA report is that EU policy objectives have competing demands for European biomass that comes from agriculture and forestry, while its supply remains limited by land area, vegetation growth, changing climate and global trade.
The EEA report stresses that there is an urgent need to make decisions on biomass management in Europe to meet environment and climate goals by 2030 and 2050. Decisions are needed to reverse the negative trends in the health of ecosystems as well to increase carbon sinks to meet climate objectives. To achieve results by 2030 and 2050, policy interventions on land management, especially those affecting forests and agriculture, are needed already now.
Immediate policy responses raised by the EEA report include specifying how nature protection and carbon sequestration can be combined with biomass production, ensuring that increasing use of biomass does not lead to unsustainable practices in the EU and abroad, and improving a more circular and cascading use of biomass. What biomass feedstocks and products are to be prioritised, and for which purposes, needs to be carefully evaluated against the economic and societal costs and against environment and climate impacts.
External link
Energy in Demand - Sustainable Energy - Rod Janssen 
It is obvious that this report has been written almost entirely from the standpoint that increasing the proportion of forestry based biomass should be incentivised to grow. It contains scant consideration of the overarching need to establish reliable sustainability criteria as to whether such inputs do genuinely end up reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Even if the forests from which millions of tonnes of trees burned every year are all replanted – and there is much evidence that they are not- the “carbon debt” incurred by such burning today will NOT be repaid by uptake of CO2 via the new growth for many years. This grotesque state of affairs is resulting in the emission of substantially more CO2 atmosphere globally now and for years into the future, than had plants now burning forestry biomass remained as burners of solid fossil fuel.
Thanks Andrew, you make some excellent points. I’m trying to figure out who I can notify at EEA about this.
The Press Association reports: “The UK government is facing a legal challenge over its reliance on burning trees for green energy in its climate plans.” It explains: “The case alleges that the government’s biomass strategy – a key part of its transition plans – is unlawful and will undermine the UK’s ability to achieve net-zero by 2050.”
This is a very interesting development. Thanks.
And in last weekend’s London Sunday Times, one article reports: “Drax is facing questions over biomass supplies for its Yorkshire power plant [in northeast England] after one of its biggest suppliers warned that its future was in doubt.”
I checked out Sunday Times article and here is link (behind paywall) if anyone interested – https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/biomass-burners-supplier-may-fizzle-stc6bn6mn
Interestingly the supplier in trouble is from the US. “Enviva, the world’s biggest producer of wood pellets for electricity generation, on Thursday said there was “substantial doubt” over its ability to continue as a going concern.” About 15 per cent of Drax’s supplies come from Enviva. So, this definitely is an important issue. Thanks.