By Sini Er\u00e4j\u00e4\u00e4,\u00a0EU bioenergy policy officer at BirdLife Europe & Central Asia<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Last February, the high profile independent British think thank Chatham House published a report<\/a> on \u2018The Impacts of the Demand for Woody Biomass for Power and Heat\u2019 making a thorough assessment of the environmental and climate impacts of growing wood use for energy. One of the key recommendations of the report concludes that only the use of waste and residue wood should be supported as renewable energy if emission reductions are to be ensured.<\/p>\n Few days later the BBC wrote that \u2018Burning wood for energy ignites fierce academic row<\/a>\u2019 referring to the report. What is the fuzz about?<\/p>\n Debates are obviously a fundamental part of science and research but it seems that the Chatham House report hit some particularly sensitive spots. The report prompted a response<\/a> by \u201c125 academic signatories from both sides of the Atlantic\u201d that collaborate under the International Energy Agency\u2019s Bioenergy Technology Collaboration Programme (<\/em>IEA Bioenergy<\/a>) stating that the whole report is misleading. Must have been a powerful report if it got over hundred academics moving? <\/em><\/p>\n The IEA Bioenergy is a group established to \u201cimprove international co-operation and information exchange between national bioenergy research, development and demonstration programmes\u201d and is funded by national governments whose representatives make up the executive committee<\/a> of the group. The European Commission is also represented. The relation between IEA Bioenergy and the response criticising Chatham House is however not that clear as actually only a couple of the representatives of the executive committee supported it.<\/p>\n It seems that the letter has, however, been very successful in representing the views and concerns of the bioenergy industry whose business case depends on the idea of sustainability of bioenergy, as well as of forest produces, with more than 30 signatories<\/a> from these groups. The academics supporting the letter are overwhelmingly from the fields of bioenergy and forestry rather than energy, climate or environment.<\/p>\n In any case, all of them sound very upset by the report – but why is that? Their response points to various arguments the signatories feel have not been taken into account by the Chatham House report. A quick look at the report however shows that many of the issues actually have been discussed quite explicitly \u2013 perhaps just not in a way the signatories would have liked to.<\/p>\n For example the response identifies the following \u2018flaw\u2019 in the Chatham House report:<\/p>\n \u201cInaccurate interpretation of impact of harvest on forest carbon stock: The large fluctuations observed at the stand level, from net carbon sequestration to net carbon emissions at harvest, are not observed at the landscape level due to staggered harvest, which delivers a constant supply of timber while maintaining or increasing wood volume in the forest. Impacts of bioenergy on forest carbon stock should be assessed as impact on long-term average forest carbon stocks at a landscape scale.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n As a matter of fact the report explicitly discussed this argument, even referring to earlier similar statements made by publications of the IEA Bioenergy. A letter by the Chatham House with a detailed response<\/a> by the author to the IEA Bioenergy critique lays this out in detail. For example:<\/p>\n \u201cThis argument, which is addressed on pages 24\u201327 of the paper, is unsound, because one cannot assume that these other parts of the forest would have stopped growing in the absence of extraction of wood for bioenergy from one or more stands. The fact that \u2018large fluctuations [in carbon stock] observed at the stand level \u2026 are not observed at the landscape level\u2019 does not, as the letter and supporting document appear to imply, mean that those impacts have somehow disappeared. Unless the harvest of trees causes trees elsewhere to grow faster, the net effect of the harvest is to reduce stored carbon in the forest, and also to lose future carbon sequestration from the harvested trees.<\/em>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n