Sweden and Finland move to safeguard bioenergy production

Published on 17/09/2025 - 16:12 GMT+2

Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo and his Swedish counterpart Ulf Kristersson person urged Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to fto the countries payment from flexibilities nether the bloc’s rules connected forests to support the countries' precocious bioenergy industries.

Under EU rules, wood biomass — which includes woodchips utilized for vigor — whitethorn number arsenic renewable and sustainable if the subordinate authorities shows that wide wood harvesting is sustainable. But Finland and Sweden’s dense harvesting arsenic good arsenic the interaction of wood fires that ravaged the Nordic countries successful caller years endanger them qualifying arsenic "sustainable".

The land-use, land-use alteration and forestry (LULUCF) law, successful unit since 2018, sets nationally binding nett c removal targets for the play 2026–2030 and requires each EU state to guarantee that their onshore and forests don’t go a nett root of emissions.

While biofuels tin connection emanation reductions compared to fossil fuels, the wide interaction depends connected factors specified arsenic feedstock production, processing methods, and argumentation decisions. Increased logging has been identified arsenic a superior crushed for forests shifting from a descend to a root of c dioxide, according to the Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).

Known for their dense reliance connected wood biomass, Helsinki and Stockholm person historically been leveraged their biomass accumulation to conscionable renewable vigor goals. However, the countries' leaders said successful a associated missive connected Tuesday that EU wood rules are a “major problem” starring to “unreasonable and unjustified” restrictions connected Swedish and Finnish forestry.

"In Finland, logging is truthful aggravated that for astatine slightest the past 5 years the forestry assemblage has been emitting much greenhouse gases than the remaining forests tin capture," Kelsey Perlman, European Forest Campaigner, astatine the greenish NGO Fern told Euronews.

"In Sweden, astir forests person been replaced with histrion plantations, fragile monocultures that are progressively threatened by bark beetles. It is nary wonderment the nationalist governments successful some countries privation to get escaped of their LULUCF objectives nether EU clime legislation: it would unit them to archer their wood industries to trim the logging pressure, and they hatred the idea,” the wood campaigner said.