"Kalev Järvik stands on a bald patch of land in the heart of Estonia's Haanja nature reserve’s and remembers when he could walk straight from one side of the reserve to the other under a canopy of trees.
This relaxation of the logging rules came as international demand for Estonian wood soared – not just for furniture or construction, but because of an unlikely culprit: Europe’s renewable energy policies.
... wood pellets which are burned on an industrial scale as biomass for heat and light in many of Europe’s former coal-fired power stations.
...“There is clear evidence that the intensification of logging is at least partly driven by higher demand for biomass for heat and power,” says a report co-authored by Kuresoo for the ELF and the Latvian Ornithological Society.
“Given that over half of Estonia’s and Latvia’s wood pellet exports in 2019 went to Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK, ‘green energy’ use in those three countries contributes directly to increased logging in the two Baltic states.”
... Across Estonia, between 2001 and 2019, Natura 2000 areas lost more than 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of forest cover, an area more than twice the size of Manhattan.
The last five years account for 80% of that loss. Further alterations to rules in other Estonian national parks are planned.
... In a country where the overwhelming majority of people say they regard nature as sacred, logging has led to protests or what the Estonian media calls the “forest war”.
... A switch to burning wood in the form of pellets appears to offer a simple and in theory carbon-neutral alternative to coal-fired power stations because trees take up carbon dioxide from the air as they grow.
As long as the burned trees are replaced with new plantings, there is no net addition to the stock of carbon in the atmosphere.
However, that process of carbon take-up can take many decades. And in the furnace, burning wood releases more carbon diozide per unit of energy tha burning gas., oil, or even coal.
... electricity production from wood pellets would not be financially sustainable without public subsidies ...
... “Biomass only exists at the scale that it does because of subsidies,” says Duncan Brack, associate fellow at the London-based thinktank Chatham House.
“We’re effectively paying to increase carbon emissions in the atmosphere, which is an absurd use of public money.”
It takes decades or even centuries for whole trees, unlike corn or other biomass crops, to regrow, says Massimiliano Patierno, an environmental engineer at the International Institute of Law and Environment.
“If we count a period of, say, 40 years, in which the new trees have cancelled the carbon debt, then yes, that biomass can be seen as carbon-neutral,” he says. “But if we consider a very short period of time, it is likely that the carbon debt will not be cancelled.”