EU climate plan sacrifices carbon storage and biodiversity for bioenergy

Searchinger, Timothy D.; James, Oliver; Dumas, Patrice; Kastner, Thomas; Wirsenius, Stefan

doi:10.1038/d41586-022-04133-1

Cited by 17 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Economists predict that the demand for wood products will increase by 19% in the coming decade 1, 2 , especially with the shift towards using harvested wood products to store carbon as a natural climate solution 3, 4 . Harvest of wood from plantations and secondary and primary forests must rise to meet this demand 2, 5 , but may have unintended consequences for carbon sequestration.…”

Section: Mainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Logging disrupts the ecology of molecules in headwater streams

Freeman

Emilson

Webster

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Global demand for wood products is increasing forest harvest. One understudied consequence of logging is that it accelerates mobilization of dissolved organic matter (DOM) from soils to aquatic ecosystems. Here, we tested how logging changed DOM in headwaters of hardwood-dominated catchments in northern Ontario, Canada. We apply a before-after control-impact experiment across four catchments for three years. DOM concentration in streams from logged catchments quadrupled, on average, after the first year post-harvest, but resulting changes to the molecular composition of DOM persisted for at least two-years. Ultrahigh-resolution mass spectrometry revealed that DOM within logged catchments was more energy-rich and chemically diverse than in controls, with novel highly unsaturated polyphenols, carboxylic-rich alicyclic, and nitrogen-containing formulae. The molecular composition of stream DOM measured fortnightly post-harvest was most strongly associated with DOM composition within intermediate and deeper layers of contributing soils, likely due to increased hydrological connectivity post-harvest. We estimate logging increased the total annual flux of dissolved organic carbon in streams by 6.4% of extracted wood carbon, and this carbon was more likely to be released into the atmosphere. Carbon accounting of forestry, including as a natural climate solution, must now consider the transport and fate of DOM from land into water.

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Section: Mainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Logging disrupts the ecology of molecules in headwater streams

Freeman

Emilson

Webster

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…This displacement is global in nature: two-thirds of the cropland required to satisfy the EU's nonfood biomass consumption is located in other world regions, mainly in China, the US, and tropical countries in the Global South [14,15]. The impacts of European bioenergy usage have been estimated to include a 10% increase in European food prices (and a 2.5% increase globally [16]), and substantial negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services worldwide have been suggested in some studies [12,[17][18][19].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bioenergy in Europe is unlikely to make a timely contribution to climate change targets

Seo,

Brown,

Lee

et al. 2024

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Increasing bioenergy production is a significant component of European efforts to mitigate climate change, but has contested potential for reducing emissions. We use an integrated land system model to explore the effects of large-scale bioenergy production within the European Union on carbon balances. We find that increased bioenergy crop production is likely to cause substantial deforestation and a commensurate loss of associated carbon stocks largely due to displacement of food production from other areas. Deforestation would occur either within the EU if European forests were not protected, or in other parts of the world arising from indirect land use change if European forests were protected. The net carbon benefit of bioenergy production is largely negative, or uncertain, even under the most optimistic levels of fossil fuel replacement, and will not offset initial carbon losses over the coming 50 years. The growth of intensive agriculture required to satisfy the demand for bioenergy and food will have negative impacts on crucial ecosystem services. Overall, we identify substantial disadvantages to increasing bioenergy production relative to freeing land for natural succession. At best, large-scale bioenergy production is likely to be irrelevant to time-sensitive climate targets.

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“…Dornburg et al, 2010; Kalt et al, 2020; Vera et al, 2022). In addition, the urgent climate crisis requires an increase in carbon stocks both short term and long term, why forests may have a larger role in carbon sequestration and storage, rather than fossil fuel substitution (Searchinger et al, 2022; Soimakallio et al, 2022). This suggests that agricultural biomass is crucial for fossil fuel substitution in the coming decades (Searchinger et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, the urgent climate crisis requires an increase in carbon stocks both short term and long term, why forests may have a larger role in carbon sequestration and storage, rather than fossil fuel substitution (Searchinger et al, 2022; Soimakallio et al, 2022). This suggests that agricultural biomass is crucial for fossil fuel substitution in the coming decades (Searchinger et al, 2022). To mitigate the negative consequences that could arise from agricultural bioenergy production, attention has been turned to the crop choices, management, land‐use conversions and landscape dynamics involved in biomass cultivation (Bourke et al, 2014; Dale et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bioenergy crops, biodiversity and ecosystem services in temperate agricultural landscapes—A review of synergies and trade‐offs

Winberg,

Smith,

Ekroos

2023

GCB Bioenergy

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The Paris agreement on climate change requires rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. One important mitigation strategy, at least in the intermediate future, is the substitution of fossil fuels with bioenergy. However, using agriculture‐ and forest‐derived biomass for energy has sparked controversy regarding both the climate mitigation potential and conflicts with biodiversity conservation. The urgency of the climate crisis calls for using forests for carbon sequestration and storage rather than for bioenergy, making agricultural biomass an attractive alternative for fossil energy substitution. However, this calls for comprehensive assessments of its sustainability in terms of consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem services. In this review, we provide a first holistic overview of the impacts on ecosystems of land‐use changes from bioenergy crop production in temperate climates, by synthesizing results on both biodiversity and ecosystem service impacts. We found that bioenergy‐related land‐use changes can have both positive and negative effects on ecosystems, with original land use, bioenergy crop type and scale of bioenergy production being important moderators of impacts. Despite the risk of opportunity cost for food production, perennial crop cultivation on arable land had the lowest occurrence of negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Growing biomass for bioenergy on surplus land has been suggested as a way to alleviate competition with food production and biodiversity conservation, but our results demonstrate that utilizing marginal or abandoned land for bioenergy crop production cannot fully resolve these trade‐offs. Furthermore, there is a lack of empirical studies of the biodiversity value of marginal and abandoned land, limiting our understanding of the sustainability implications of biomass cultivation on surplus land. We argue that future research and policies for bioenergy production must explicitly consider biodiversity and ecosystem services in combination to avoid potential trade‐offs between the two and to ensure sustainable bioenergy production.

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EU climate plan sacrifices carbon storage and biodiversity for bioenergy

Cited by 17 publications

References 10 publications

Logging disrupts the ecology of molecules in headwater streams

Logging disrupts the ecology of molecules in headwater streams

Bioenergy in Europe is unlikely to make a timely contribution to climate change targets

Bioenergy crops, biodiversity and ecosystem services in temperate agricultural landscapes—A review of synergies and trade‐offs

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