By P Gosselin
Skyrocketing fossil fuel energy prices are are driving the deforestation of Europe as citizens try to keep warm
It’s easy to argue that the “green” movement is causing much more environmental harm than good. High energy costs are leading to poverty, which in turn leads to less investment in environmental protection and nature conservation.
Biodiversity-rich forests are being cleared away to make room for wind parks and people are increasingly burning wood to stay warm as an alternative to natural gas and heating oil.
Blackout News here reports on how forests in Romania have been falling victim to illegal logging as the energy crisis has propelled the demand for firewood and pellets to rocket speed. “In Romania, entire nature reserves are disappearing as a result.”
“The sharp increase in demand for firewood, wood chips and pellets has also caused prices for these fuels to rise sharply, making them extremely lucrative for the illegal trade,” writes Blackout News. A lack of transparency and traceability are making the problem impossible to manage.
Blackout News cites a 2021 European Commission study showing Europe’s wood industry lacks transparency and that the demand for wood for heating has more than doubled in the past twenty years. Austria alone is reported to have imported approximately 120,000 tons of pellets from Romania last year. Europe’s CO2 reductions through the burning of biomass are costing its biotope dearly. Few are talking about this. What good will reaching zero CO2 emissions be if Europe’s forests end up being sacrificed and barren?
Greenpeace Romania says illegal logging is particularly bad in Romania and that more than half of the wood processed into pellets there comes from illegal logging in Natura 2000 areas. While authorities record an annual logging volume of 18 million cubic meters, “experts assume that another 20 million cubic meters of wood are illegally felled there each year and disappear without any evidence.”
One problem hindering the crackdown on illegal logging in Romania is rampant corruption in control bodies and government agencies. Penalties for the import of illegally logged timber “are also shockingly low”.
As long as Europe continues its efforts to eliminate fossil fuels and create energy shortages, prices will skyrocket and keep boosting the demand for wood as a source of energy.
A lot of people in the UK are installing wood burning stoves to mitigate high energy costs and there is an air pollution problem in London with wood burners.
“”there is an air pollution problem in London with wood burners.””
No there isn’t.
Who says there is? Sadiq Khan?
Oh, “No, there isn’t”.
Oh, yes, there is !!!
( Well, it is the pantomime season !!! )
It’s only a minor 5 & 2.5 um problem IF everybody is only burning clean, well seasoned timber in a properly designed (& constructed stove) with secondary air controls & flue temperatures of ~ 300-350C.
But, in the real world,
due to demand, prices for good logs has shot up, thus people are now burning all sorts of crap in substandard stoves & in open fireplaces … old timber with lead paint, pallets with chemical treatments, plastic bottles & packaging … so there is now an increasing problem of heavy metals & dioxins & fly ash entering the atmosphere.
I don’t know of any householder fitting – bag filters, electrostatic-filters, scrubbers & Powdered Activated Carbon Catalysers to their wood stoves;
So, yes, we do have an increasing problem.
Glad we don’t live in the wicked city any more & have access to several acres of timber !!!
Once heating is restricted low income households will burn anything to keep warm
Perhaps wooden headed politicians would be a good start.
Do you know if the rules in the U.S. allow us to export those to Europe?
No demand, we have plenty here already
Or as we used to say ‘Throw another Art Student on the fire”
Tom,
Are you suggesting that – some – politicians may have a use in the Real World?
If true, astounding!
Write a paper, or tell the BBC!
Auto, not over-enamoured of [UK] politicians since Thursday’s Autumn Communist Manifesto; I thought Loony-Leftie Jeremy LOST the 2019 election . . . .
Like their neighbor’s residence?
Houses in London are mostly equipped with [open] fireplaces – like mine.
Social housing? See Grenfell Tower for details.
I once lived in a top floor flat in Belsize park. It had an open fire and we used to raid the skips for wood. Man that open fire really blazed!
One time we left it blazing to go down the pub. I looked back and the wall was glowing cherry red…no cavity!
In some larger Alaskan communities they were having a real problem because everyone was burning wood in inserts or wood stoves and the smoke was a problem. The answer was requiring the use of catalytic inserts and stoves and it made a great improvement in the outside air quality.
You got a red -1 for your comment. That’s odd.
The State of Washington has programs to improve the quality of wood stoves, or when possible, to switch to gas or electric. About 7 years ago the State gave me $300 (I think) — enough for the sales tax on a modern wood stove. I had to take out the old wood-burner and haul it to a designated site 30 miles away.
There are many models with catalytic burners, but this is the one I now use:
https://www.blazeking.com/products/chinook-20/
Burning anything other than wood can damage the catalytic burner. I grow and harvest my own wood. I might add that WA does get atmospheric inversions that cause noticeable deterioration in air quality.
I still use a 1977 Vermont Castings Vigilant.
If you run a stove hot enough there is hardly any particulate or even smoke. No need for a catalytic convertor, but most people either can’t get seasoned hardwood or be trusted to do the right thing.
I remember when the smogs in Bristol were so bad you couldn’t see across the road. Ah, the good old days, when dioxins and lead paint would be considered clean air.
thus people COULD BE burning all sorts of crap in substandard stoves & in open fireplaces … nice assertion with no evidence … maybe they are burning the expensive good good logs … you don’t cite any proof that they are not …
I very much doubt if any day to day pollution source can compare with the fine particles of tyres in over crowded areas.
Epping blogger? I’m in Epping!
Please provide the data and scientific – and don’t mentioned “settled” – basis to underpin your contention, from people “who know” and have no narrative driven agenda, and I will happily study it.
Lead times for woodburners are out to the middle of next year. Of course people will burn wood if its cheaper.
It’s too bad a lot of UK and EU antique furniture was previously exported to America over past decades. That old wood would likely burn pretty well after busting it up.
It is not deforestation, it is the forests being planted in the 50s and 60s getting to maturity and being harvested, and areas exposed to risk of fire being logged.
Romania has over twice the forests it had in 1905 (34% of the area now, it was under 18% in 1905). With extremely very few exceptions in Romania all the forests are managed and were managed for centuries, they’re not wild or “virgin” forests. The forested areas are still growing (9000 ha in 2019) because of high costs and low prices for food, so former arable lands are planted with commercial trees. Pastures that existed for 600 years are now abandoned to forest because the drop in prices for leather and wool.
The forests are not “sacrificed” and not “left barren”. They are left to grow again, trees are selected and left up to produce seed and repopulate the area.
Half of the biodiversity in EU is in fact in Romania, and that biodiversity survived the 19th century because the forestry methods were sane and numbers for each species were managed, both trees and animals.
Still going to have some kind of impact – probably an increase in the price of lumber, paper, etc.
Unless the price of firewood goes sky high- it should have little impact on the price of other wood products. When trees are cut in a forestry project- the wood is segregated by value. Nobody is going to chop up a fine sawlog.
You dont know Romanians. Or poverty. If you cant sell the sawlog for more than it costs to buy fuel you will burn it.
In that case it’s perfectly smart economics.
If the forests are allowed to grow old and degrade there will be indeed a wood scarcity in 40-50 years.
In 2015 I saw a “protected” forest in the Western Carpathians/Munții Apuseni, and about one in 20 trees was attacked by bugs and yellowing, and there was a lot of fallen trees on the ground. I grew up near managed forests (Bucovina, in North Eastern Romania, on the other side of the country) and I have not seen such a mess before because sick trees were harvested. In that “protected” area the spruce and the fir were dying down, and seemed to be replaced naturally by beech. The “protected” forests are catching fire regularly, and of course the tourists and the locals are blamed.
Wood is already scarce because of the harvesting restrictions, and the paper mills closed down more than 10 years ago.
Romania has more than 6 million hectares of managed forests, if all of that is harvested in 60 years cycles 100000 hectares would need to be harvested each year just to keep up.
Greenpeace and their friends are so ignorant it should be painful. A few years ago they were “protecting” urban trees from trimming while the forests in Europe were not “wild” and were managed for 8000 years https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-18646-7.
Glad to see someone here with favorable views of forestry. As a forester for 50 years, I think it’s a great thing. Too often, proper mgt. of forests is called deforestation.
My late father in law was a UN Forester from the 50’s to the 80’s. He pointed out to the green nutters exactly what you said, responsible forestry manages woodlands as responsible farmers manage their crops.
What he also pointed out though, was that without illegal loggers in many places there would be no source of energy for many householders including city dwellers. Were it not for illegally harvested timber there would be little to no fuel because coal mining has been banned in many of these regions.
Whilst politicians make a lot of noise about prosecuting the ‘illegal’ loggers in truth they understand they can’t do without them.
Even that illegal logging isn’t likely to be deforestation. It’s land conversion to industry, homes, farming and giant solar “farms” that is the real deforestation. Unfortunately, even much of legal logging is poorly done. My battle here in Massachusetts has always been against such poor quality legal logging. Even with poor quality legal logging- the forests do grow back. But if done right, the future forests will be much nicer- with more diversity and much higher value. I think it’s the poor quality logging that pisses off the enviros- and their solution is to stop all logging. I keep trying to tell them that properly done logging is a different thing but they refuse to listen.
Legal or illegal, properly done or improperly done, killing a forest is hard, foresters 100 years ago before powered tools became available had trouble to prevent the forests from spreading. Clearing an established forest for good was an effort that took years even in temperate climates, but in warm and wet climates it is a permanent effort that only bulldozers and chemicals make possible, for a while.
Improper logging only leads to the species of trees that you don’t want spreading, instead of what you want. Under the canopy of a forest that is about to be razed are a lot more seedlings than mature trees, and they take advantage instantly.
If somebody thinks nature is fragile they have not seen poplar roots breaking through 10 cm of concrete 50 meters from where the tree grows, and after they break through sending up suckers through another 5 cm of asphalt.
Forestry is an alliance between a few species of trees and humans: the trees get to live and reproduce instead of being killed off by competition and the humans get the wood.
“Forestry is an alliance between a few species of trees and humans”
I like that! That sums it up.
All well and good, as long as the land where trees are being harvested remain open for new tree growth or planting.
If, on the other hand, they clear trees to erect worse-than-useless wind or solar “farms,” then it is deforestation. I’m sure some of that is happening in Europe, after all they have to put the stupid things somewhere if they insist on building them…
You can see it in the photos in the article: the area is already green, there are plenty of seedlings sprouting. The traditional method (still used today) was to let seed trees (sămânțari in Romanian) to repopulate the cut areas if the same species was wanted there, or plant seeds if a new species was wanted.
Anyway, if you want to remove a forest you have to work really hard for several years, or bring in bulldozers to remove the topsoil.
Solar potential is bad if not very bad in most of Romania, and worse than bad in the mountains where the picture was taken, so the area won’t be covered by solar panels: even the photovoltaic scammers love the extra income that some production brings and there are better places in the plains where the natural ecosystem was steppe before agriculture.
Looking at that photo, It’s almost certainly an oil palm plantation. In 10 years time all of that brown area with little rows of green will be solid green
(and some of the current solid green will be brown with little rows of green dots where the existing plams have been replaced after they became too tall to harvest efficiently) 🙂
The repopulation after clear cutting takes at least 40 years.
About 20% of all biomass on an acre is below ground, which will start to decay after clear cut.
If year 1 is the clear cut and burn year, then for about 80 to 100 years the root systems of the clear cut trees will be releasing CO2
If in year 40, there is another clear cut, the roots of the first clear cut will still be emitting CO2 for 40 to 60 years!!
Burning wood is renewable, my foot!!
The re-population happens instantly because in the ground there are seeds just waiting to sprout, and if the machinery going back and forth disturbed them too much then the seed trees are doing their job by the next autumn.
You mean the canopy is back to where it was when 40 years have passed ? That would be correct, and the CO2 emitted when the wood was burned would be back locked in the new trees growing there.
The root systems will be releasing CO2 for 100 years … how about for 5 or 10 years because the fungi will take care of the dead roots long before the 100 years have passed and they will help feed the next generation of trees that grow there. You know what else emits CO2 for hundreds of years ? Topsoil. You should be upset on topsoil too.
I don’t think your members have much to say in the matter, unless you can actually persuade them to show some sources or some more verbose arguments for your exclamations.
Coal saved English forests – for a time
English forests created English coal – for a very long time.
There were humans in England before there were forests … remember the ice cap ? 🙂
Humans were managing forests even during the late ice age, choosing what to spare and what to cut, which trees are allowed to grow etc., same as the “uncontacted” do right now in Amazonia. During the Neolithic European forests were all managed and most of them were coppiced. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-18646-7
Yes, but not in the mesolithic or paleolithic
Leo,
You may be right.
However, I, for one, am continually surprised as new discoveries push the ‘First known’ such and such further back – sometimes much further.
In the last week: –
https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/israel-earliest-cooking-fire/#:~:text=A%20huge%20carp-like%20fish,to%20around%20170%2C000%20years%20ago.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11426447/Prehistoric-BBQ-Oldest-evidence-using-fire-cook-food-780-000-years-ago.html
Same story – findings were published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-022-01910-z
Auto
If they want to burn wood and claim that is “green”, then I’d rather have the EU and UK burn their own trees, rather than burning American trees (wood pellets from the US shipped to the UK and EU)
But they are shipped using tall sailing vessels so that is carbon neutral.
The diesel shortage may put paid to importing American wood pellets. That’d be sort of ironic…
“It’s easy to argue that the “green” movement is causing much more environmental harm than good.”
What I believe people across the pond call a ‘slam dunk’.
[Not so] Smart came for the misanthropic Attenborough in a Michelin star eaterie, and now they’ve come for Gordon – expletives deleted – Ramsay:
“Gordon Ramsay’s Chelsea restaurant forced to close for the night as climate change activists take over tables
They held mock menus on green paper outlining the environmental costs of items served on the restaurant’s menu, including steak and veal. In a statement, the group said that they are campaigning for a plant-based food system and the creation of a mass-rewilding programme…”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11448197/Gordon-Ramsays-Chelsea-restaurant-forced-close-climate-change-activists-tables.html
All the things we know endanger humans, like undredged and overgrown rivers and all that fuel for fires etc left in place to burn…
Politicians, education and the media. That’s where I place most of the ‘attributable’ blame.
Gordon’s best strategy would be to put ‘climate change activist’ on the menu.
Given how scrawny they are, nouvelle cuisine seems the best option.
What do they teach in school these days? When I was at school we were taught the carbon cycle and humanity’s place in it, which is pretty much the same for all life on the planet whether it is animal or vegetable. We are all constructed from carbon compounds that were once in the air as CO2 and will be again once we are gone. Plants have just as much of an “environmental cost” as the animals that live on them. No animal can make more carbon from a plant than it absorbed from the atmosphere in order to grow.
They don’t teach anymore. They indoctrinate.
“We are all constructed from carbon compounds that were once in the air as CO2 and will be again once we are gone.” Especially if you opt for cremation.
Greenpiss campaigning for a plant-based food system
We already have a completely plant-based food system …
Some of it is pre-processed by – animals, birds & fish before we eat it.
Why don’t these clowns start their own restaurant? Vegetarian restaurants do exist!
Greenpeace has butter all over its face. The desperation that drives people to the woods for timber is a direct consequence of the successful demonisation of coal and nuclear by greenies.
What US? Us do something?
burning green wood and pine..going to be some smoky cold people and some ripper chimney blockage/fires
Wood heat is one of the best forms of heat. It warms a home very quick and dehumidifies the air. It’s also renewable if they are replanting what they cut. Also, it sequesters carbon, as trees grow they consume carbon above and below ground. When cut the below ground carbon rots and is trapped in the soil. Of course, to the environmental movement this means it’s evil.
Wood tends to burn quickly. This is why I prefer to use coal rather than just wood.
Less sulphur and tars in wood.
And wood is here, free.
Don’t reveal where here is. It will quickly be swamped it word gets out.
You don’t even need to replant in many forests. The ground in most forests is loaded with seeds just waiting for the over story to be removed or thinned. And nearby trees can produce vast numbers of seeds.
I’ll bet you can burn trees faster than you can grow them, though. Therein lies the problem. And therein lies the need for fossil fuels for heating, unless you want your landscapes to look like Haiti.
Madness, it seems, is contagious. Have you heard Alok Sharma’s looney tunes just delivered at COPout27?!
Don’t forget the used wood furniture and paper products. Get what you can before the next COP giveaway.
Someone stole my username
There’s the old saying – “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” Looking back in recent and even ancient history, it is plain to see that when people are hard pressed (seeking food, water, shelter) they will take whatever they can find. Desperation doesn’t inspire care and stewardship for the environment.
This is why poaching and illegal logging are for the most part seen in very poor countries. Such crimes are rare in industrialized countries where most people have no need to resort to desperate measures in order to eke out a living.
So, policies that make it harder for the poor (and middle class, soon to be poor) to survive will only foster more environmental damage. The disasters the greens fear, some of which will actually take place – but not because of climate variations!
The law of unintended consequences strikes again. Or was it intended?
Those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it. Easter island was once covered with forest however over population and the need for fuel/food resulted in the island becoming cleared of anything much larger than a bush. Today we use propaganda but the results will be the same. Hopefully we can deal with this madness before it has the same results as Easter island of a massive population reduction.
Let’s take a moment to review the situation. Americans are expected to clear cut their forests for EU/UK Green wood pellet burning and keep up the pace on fracking natural gas for LNG export to a more desperate EU/UK energy market. This is in addition to providing the bulk of global defense spending for freedom from aligned dictatorships.
This is mostly to make up for lack of clear cutting in UK/EU, effective fracking bans there for gas, and fragmented defense efforts like the euro fighter.
Ask not what you can reasonably do for yourselves and your country, but what you can waste or tax for your dysfunctional trade wall neighbors and their energy policy misadventures.
Irrespective if forests are managed or not, any timber that is removed is also removing the nutrients that each tree took up from the soil and unless that is replaced with each new planting the soil will eventually become depleted and barren.
People who grow vegetables in their backyard will be well aware of the need to replenish the essential nutrients when planting a new crop, as are farmers. Each truck load of produce that goes out their farm gate, be it in the form of animals or grain must be replaced.
Forests are no different other than perhaps 50 years worth of nutrients may be disappearing in one truckload.
If there are no trees, then let them burn cake!
We have way too much Western Juniper here in Central and Eastern Oregon and would like to get rid of a lot of it. It burns like crazy, and will, and it sucks way too much water out of the ground, to the detriment of our grasslands. Bring your chain saws. Haul the damn stuff off.
But, but, but:
Joint media release: Renewables cheapest source of electricity
11 July 2022
The Hon Chris Bowen MP, Minister for Climate Change and Energy
The Hon Ed Husic MP, Minister for Industry and Science
CSIRO and AEMO’s GenCost 2021-22 report released today confirmed that wind and solar are the cheapest source of electricity generation and storage in Australia.
The report confirmed renewable energy sources will continue to be the cheapest sources of new electricity generation in Australia, although cost reductions could be impacted over the next 12 months due to inflationary pressures.
The report concluded that after the current inflationary cycle ends that wind, solar and batteries are all projected to keep getting cheaper still.
These findings from globally renowned CSIRO and Australia’s national energy market operator confirm that the Albanese Government is on the right track with its Powering Australia plan that will support the transformation to a renewable grid.
The best way to put downward pressure on energy prices for households and businesses is to help ramp up investment in renewables and that is exactly what this government doing.
This Government has a long-term plan for the energy transformation underway and this will deliver the certainty that investors in the energy sector have been lacking for so long.
The report considers a range of future scenarios to understand the mix of technologies that may be adopted and costs for each of these possible scenarios.
The status of nuclear energy has not changed in this year’s report. After extensive consultation it concludes there is no prospect of any domestic nuclear projects this decade, given the technology’s commercial immaturity and high cost.
I wonder, does Greenpeace Romania, realise their contribution to pushing those unscrupulous people into said illegal logging?