Study: EU Plan to Rely on Wood for Energy Will Increase Emissions

A plan that the European Union says will almost double its use of renewable energy by 2030 will also significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions and global deforestation, according to a new study.

The report, co-authored by eight scientists in the U.S. and Europe and published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications, takes aim at the European Commission's Renewable energy directive, which gained increased support over the summer. The plan includes a provision that would consider wood – unlike fossil fuels such as oil and coal –to be a "low-carbon fuel," encouraging the practice of cutting down trees to burn them for energy. Other countries, including Indonesia and Brazil, are already following suit, the study says.

A 2 percent increase globally in reliance on wood for energy would double commercial wood harvests around the world, "with harsh effects on forests," said study author Tim Searchinger, a research scholar at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Using wood to produce energy raises emissions by as much as 10 percent – more than fossil fuels due to inefficiencies in harvesting wood and burning it, according to the study. Increased wood use also offsets the directive's goal of reducing emissions by 5 percent through promoting solar and wind energy. The study's authors also fear that harvesting global forests reduces the number of trees available to absorb carbon in the atmosphere.

"Instead of rewarding countries and landowners to preserve forests and the carbon they store, this directive encourages companies to pay them for the carbon in their forests, but only on the condition that they cut the trees down and ship them to Europe to be burned," Tim Beringer, a co-author with Berlin's Humboldt University said in a statement accompanying the study.

Previous agreements governed by the United Nations say that countries must document the effect on carbon emissions by cutting down trees, but allow countries that burn wood for energy to ignore those emissions.

"Treating wood as a carbon-neutral fuel is a simple policy decision with complex cascading effects on forest use, energy systems, wood trade, and biodiversity worldwide," Stanford University's Eric Lambin, another co-author, said in a statement. "Clearly, many of these effects have not received due attention."