The biomassacre report – or the truth in campaigning

In the article “FORESTRY TASMANIA’S BIOMASS PUSH FOR NATIVE FORESTS COURTS CONTROVERSY & ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE“ (Tasmanian Times, 20.06.13, Here) Peg Putt, CEO of Markets For Change states “Claims of carbon neutrality are so far wrong they are laughable. They arise from flawed European carbon accounting rules that failed to include emissions for logging and then burning forest products – now recognized as an important loophole” and then advocates the biomassacre report as the correct source of information.

Being a forestry professor from Europe currently working in Tasmania I would like

a) to comment on the “flawed European accounting rules” and

b) to undertake a scientific review of the Biomassacre report.

a) According to the information I received from Markets For Change (a series of publications titled “Climate Change – Call For Truth In Targets, www.hsi.org.au”) the term “flawed European Accounting rules” refers to the accounting rules of “land use, land use change and forestry” (LULUCF) within the first term of the Kyoto protocol. These rules have been established under the leadership of the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat, which operates within the United Nations Convention. They were designed to account for emissions of the land use sector (there are several others sectors like energy or transport) within the Kyoto protocol, an international agreement aiming at the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto protocol has been ratified by all industrialized countries except USA (Canada withdrew in 2012). Certainly, the Kyoto protocol is the result of political negotiations rather than solely based on science and insufficient from a climate change point of view. The European Community supported the Kyoto protocol from the beginning and signed the treaty in 2002 (Australia in 2007). Europe was strongly involved in the development of implementation rules because Europe represents about three quarters of the 39 Annex B countries committing to compulsory emission targets.

The “LULUCF Good Practice Guidelines” of the first Kyoto period were again the result of a political negotiation process and are imperfect from a scientific point of view. One example is not differentiating between forest types (leaving the loophole of hiding old-growth harvesting within secondary forest management), another is omitting the storage of carbon in forest products (this omission would finally lead to the wrong conclusion that no tree should be harvested from a carbon perspective). For the second commitment period these aspects will be addressed, the exact procedures are still being negotiated. Despite all the problems with accounting rules, the LULUCF allowed a correct assessment of greenhouse gas effects in forest ecosystems. In Germany a comprehensive report (Treibhausgasinventurstudie Wald “greenhouse gas inventory forests”, http://literatur.vti.bund.de/digbib_extern/dn048141.pdf) presents the results based on the current scientific knowledge and the available data. Similar reports are available for many other European countries, based on the intensive work of many scientists.

I would recommend reading these reports before alluding that European carbon accounting is generally flawed.

b) Biomassacre report:

The Biomassacre report generally uses the term “native forests”. Unfortunately the report makes the same error as found in the carbon accounting rules, i.e. not differentiating between native forests types. Native forests consist of increasingly rare old-growth forests (and there are many good arguments to preserve them) and secondary native forests which must be assessed differently. In most cases continuing harvesting secondary forests is beneficial compared to growing them onto old-growth forests, at least as long as you want to use wood. Although Australia (fortunately) still has a relatively large area of mature old-growth forests, most native forest in Australia are secondary native forests influenced by logging, roading, fire and other human activities.

The aim of the biomassacre report is to stop all native forest logging by documenting that logging for bioenergy “harms the climate, wildlife, and people”. This view is supported by any means, truth being secondary. Just a few examples, I could have added many more:

(citations from the Biomassacre report are in bold)

“we warn electricity and fuel retailers, customers and households that proposals to use Australian native forest biomass for bioenergy are not a good idea. They seriously threaten our surviving forest heritage and actually exacerbate climate change”.

Nearly all of the arguments in the Biomassacre reports are derived from big electricity-only plants. However, this is not the reality of bioenergy use: In Europe total electricity production from solid biomass (mostly wood) is about 8%, a lot of this electricity of it produced in very efficient combined heat and power plants and electricity-only is small. The bulk of forest biomass is used for heat which is also efficient. Nearly all plants are small or medium size. Currently there are more than 7000 biomass plants operating in Europe, most of them using between 1000 and 10,000 tonnes of biomass per year. Three years ago the biggest biomass plant in Europe was in Vienna, using about 200,000 tonnes per year (the Tasmanian pulpmill was planned to use 4 M tons per year).

Currently big electricity-only plants using pellets (mostly sourced from plantations in the USA) have been built in the UK. However, producing electricity-only from biomass is relatively inefficient and some countries have combined renewable energy credits with efficiency criteria(which is sensible from my point of view and practically stops bioelectricity-only plants).

“Industrial scale logging and combustion of these forests releases carbon to the atmosphere with an adverse impact on climate change” and “In many circumstances, forest biomass combustion emits more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels per unit of energy produced3.”

The quotation 3 refers to the study of the Manomet Center of Conservation Sciences from 2010. This comprehensive (182 pp) and sound study addresses a wide array of scientific, economic and technological issues related to the use of forest biomass for generating energy in Massachusetts, USA. The study correctly states that generating electricity from biomass generates more carbon in the production process than other fossil fuels. For a correct comparison of fossil fuels and forest biomass the carbon storage effects in the forests must be considered, which the study does. It comes to the conclusion that the outcome strongly depends on how biomass is produced and what it is used for. Biomassacre could have also quoted the Manomet study with “these carbon dividends can become substantial, reducing GHGs by up to 85% in some scenarios relative to continued fossil fuel use” (page 113) or “Thus, all bioenergy technologies—even biomass electric power compared to natural gas electricity—look favourable when biomass “wastewood” is compared to fossil fuel alternatives” (page 110)

If you read the study without bias you will come to the conclusion, that using forest residues and low quality timber for heat or combined heat/power certainly has positive benefits for climate change mitigation while harvesting forests only for big electricity-only plants has not.

“Large amounts of energy are also needed to extract, transform, dry and transport biomass, thus adding to the overall climate footprint”

In scientific terms these emissions are referred to as “indirect emissions”. The authors of Biomassacre could just have quoted the Manomet Study they used for “proving” the high emission of carbon by burning biomass. This study also quantifies the emissions from biomass harvest, processing and transportation: “Indirect CO2 emissions make a very small contribution to the overall life-cycle emissions from biomass energy production generally of the order of 2%” (page 103).

Several other studies estimated similar figures.

“Retaining the current carbon stocks of the 14.5 million ha of natural eucalypt forest in south-eastern Australia would equal 25.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. This is equivalent to avoiding emissions of 460 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year for the next century. Such a quantity constitutes almost 80% of Australia’s net greenhouse gas emissions for 2008”.

This statement suggests that not harvesting native forest could actually counteract greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately the reality is not this easy and the statement confuses stocks and fluxes. Forest ecosystems store a high amount of carbon, especially mature old-growth forests. However, ultimately respiration equals assimilation in mature old-growth forests and the net carbon flux over time is zero, which means that they cannot offset emissions.

Certainly it important to maintain carbon stocks in forests in order to avoid additional carbon emissions. This means both maintaining carbon dense mature old-growth forests and harvesting below increment in secondary native or plantation forests.

“Native forest biomass-based energy production is a low value-added, high volume industry”

As shown above the reality is different. The bulk of bioenergy takes place on a small to medium scale and adds significant value to the rural communities. Scientific studies from Germany estimated the value adding of bioenergy is similar to the first step in other wood processing activities like sawmilling. The German Institute of Ecological Economic Research documented that one biomass plant using about 10,000 tonnes per year generates about 45 full time jobs in the region. Studies from Switzerland documented that about 50% of bioenergy income was generated directly in the local community, while most of fossil fuel income was generated abroad.

“Biomass is a dirty fuel” and “burning hundreds of thousands of tonnes of native forest may generate dangerous emissions of toxic substances and fine particulates”

The first question is why burning of native forest biomass should be different from burning plantation biomass. For emissions the origin of the wood is not really important since the physical process is the same. Like all other solid or liquid fuels, burning wood emits particle matter. The amount depends on the combustion process, the less complete the combustion the higher the emissions. Burning in the open (wildfire, prescribed burn) has the highest emissions followed by old firewood stoves. Modern stoves, especially pellet stoves produce much lower emission and bigger particles which are less toxic. Modern biomass plants have the smallest emissions and all modern systems fulfil the strict air quality standards of Sweden, Germany, Austria or Switzerland.

Conclusion:

It is certainly legitimate to draw different conclusions from scientific literature and to have different opinions on bioenergy.

However “cherry picking” and distorting information from scientific literature is not legitimate. The deliberate manipulation of the truth in order to influence other peoples’ opinion makes a fair and democratic discussion impossible.

The mission of Markets for Change is “to drive responsible industry and business practices through an informed public” and some of its publications were titled “Climate Change – Call For Truth In Targets”

It would really help to start with the truth in its own publications.

P.S. Energy from forest biomass certainly is no panacea and has like all other renewable energies its pros and cons. Its sound use (e.g. no biomass from oldgrowth forests, only using residues and low quality log-grades, consideration of biodiversity and soil fertility, using biomass in efficient small and medium size plants) can make a significant contribution to global change mitigation and to local economy. Forest biomass is still the most important renewable energy worldwide. Countries with a big forest resource like Sweden or Finland produce about 30% of total energy from biomass.