MONTHLY NEWSLETTER APRIL 2018
Woods Hole Research Center Burning wood for energy is not “carbon neutral” Dr. Philip B. Duffy President & Executive Director On Earth Day, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a policy that incentivizes the destruction of US forests, in the name of fighting climate change. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt decreed that burning wood for energy will be treated as “carbon neutral,” meaning that it adds no CO2 to the atmosphere and falls into the same category of energy sources as solar and wind. EPA justifies this action by citing compliance with a 2018 Congressional act that directed EPA and other Federal agencies “to establish policies that reflect the carbon neutrality of forest biomass for energy production.” Problem is, it ain’t so. Here are the facts about “forest bioenergy:”
Burning wood to generate energy puts more CO2 into the atmosphere than burning fossil fuels to create the same amount of energy, because wood has a lower energy density. Under ideal conditions, most of that CO2 can eventually be reclaimed, if the forest is allowed to regrow. That takes decades, however, during which atmospheric CO2 is higher than it would be otherwise. This creates harms from climate change, including some that are irreversible, like ice-sheet melt and permafrost thaw. But emissions from burning wood are only partially reclaimed by forest regrowth, because: •
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harvesting trees results in release of CO2 from soils, which continues for decades;
burning natural hardwood forest and replacing with fastgrowing forest plantations (a common practice), permanently elevates atmospheric CO2 because plantations don’t store as much carbon as natural forests;
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cutting and processing wood uses energy, which generally results in CO2 emissions.
And of course, there’s no requirement that forests be permitted to regrow. If they aren’t, climate change is permanently worsened. If all of this sounds a bit complicated, it can be, and in fact the climate effects of burning wood vary a lot depending on location, forest type, management practices, and so on. That underscores how silly it is for the EPA or Congress to make blanket decrees about matters of science, especially those that are complex.
Despite all of this, one might reasonably ask, “Isn’t burning wood better than fossil fuels?” It can be, but that’s not the right question, because being better than fossil fuels isn’t nearly good enough. To meet any reasonable climate goal we need to stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere as rapidly as possible, and simultaneously undertake land management practices that remove CO2 from the atmosphere. This is about more than politicians stepping on the toes of scientists by invading their turf. Treating the burning of wood as carbon neutral when it isn’t creates terrible incentives,
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WHRC is an independent research institute where scientists investigate the causes and effects of climate change to identify and implement opportunities for conservation, restoration and economic development around the world. In June 2017, WHRC was ranked as the top independent climate change think tank in the world for the fourth year in a row. Learn more at www.whrc.org.