“Bioenergy marketing is pure greenwashing, these pictures prove it at the latest”, says an environmental campaign

Press release 3.12.2024

The Ei polteta tulevaisuutta (Don’t Burn the Future) -campaign visited energy wood terminals and bioenergy plants in Satakunta, Ostrobothnia, and South and Central Ostrobothnia in late November. According to the campaign, ample evidence was found at each site that the bioenergy companies’ marketing speeches are largely greenwashing.

The Ei polteta tulevaisuutta environmental campaign has continued inspecting and photographing the Finnish energy wood terminals and bioenergy plants that it began last year. In late November 2024, the campaign visited nine new sites near the west coast.

“Our observations from all of these sites contradict what bioenergy companies publicly say about the environmental impacts of their operations,” says Varpu Sairinen, coordinator of the campaign.

Each site contained large amounts of industrial roundwood, i.e. wood suitable for processing, which could have been used for example in the pulp industry.

“This contradicts the story that many bioenergy companies and their lobby organization The Bioenergy Association of Finland have told. In their marketing, they claim that forests in Finland are not cut down specifically for energy use. According to them, wood fuels are ‘sidestreams and residues’ of the forest industry, such as sawdust, logging residues and waste wood,” Sairinen explains.

“Yet most of the wood that we have seen in the last two years at a total of more than 30 sites we have inspected has been anything but sawdust and twigs,” Sairinen states.

Aspen was found in the burn piles of most sites, which is a significant tree species for biodiversity and which, according to the forest industry’s own rules, should not be cut down. Aspen serves as a nesting and food tree for numerous bird, mammal and insect species, as well as a growth medium for plants and fungi.

Large piles of stumps and rhizomes were found at the Kumeko terminal in Pori and the EPM Metsä terminal in Mustasaari.

“From a climate perspective, especially the harvesting of rhizomes from the logging area is very harmful, because as a result, the carbon bound in the soil is released back into the atmosphere,” Sairinen points out.

Increasing energy use of wood increases emissions

According to the Flows of wood material 2023 statistics published by the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) last week, 61 percent of the dry matter of wood ended up as energy last year. The share has increased by one percent every year since 2019. According to Luke, a record 11 million cubic meters of forest chips, i.e. wood biomass harvested directly from the forest for energy use, were burned last year, eight percent more than the previous year.

Sairinen finds these figures worrying in many ways.

“Finnish forests have turned from a sink for greenhouse emissions to a source of them, because we have cut down our forests faster than they can regenerate. More and more Finnish species have become endangered, thanks to over-logging. Logging of old forests in particular endangers both biodiversity and carbon sinks.”

According to Sairinen, burning is the worst thing that can be done with felled wood from an environmental perspective. Wood fuels have higher carbon dioxide emissions than most fossil fuels, such as coal.

Jaakko Kilpeläinen, press officer for the Ei polteta tulevaisuutta -campaign, says that the marketing of most of the companies involved in the November inspections gives the opposite picture of the environmental impacts of bioenergy than the statistics and studies.

“The companies on the West Coast where the wood we photographed was going to be burned advertise bioenergy as, among other things, ‘environmentally friendly’, ‘carbon neutral’ or ‘CO2-free’. Almost all of these companies would have been well suited for the greenwashing complaint that we made to the Consumer Ombudsman in October,” Kilpeläinen states.

Free to use images of the sites inspected by the campaign in November 2024 can be found in this folder. Published news images should be credited for Ei polteta tulevaisuutta.

More information:

Varpu Sairinen

Campaign Coordinator, Ei polteta tulevaisuutta

0400 907 133

info@eipoltetatulevaisuutta.fi 

Pictures and information from the sites visited in November: 

All locations the campaign has visiter: https://eipoltetatulevaisuutta.fi/mita-suomessa-poltetaan-energiaksi/ 

Free to use images of all the sites inspected by the campaign: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ausJE2MyCIvyZx7gG45ZBIwqUpedTRhq  (please credit the pictures for Ei polteta tulevaisuutta)