Over half a million balsa hardwood trees are being illegally logged in the Amazon rainforest every year to feed the massive demand for wind turbines in many parts of the world. Balsa is a lightweight but strong wood that is commonly used in the core of giant turbine blades. It can make up around 7% of the blade and each set of three can use up to 40 trees.
This discovery is a genuine shock and follows an exclusive investigation by the Daily Sceptic. It adds to the huge ecological toll that the ‘green’ wind turbines are taking on the natural environment. These inefficient, unreliable, unsightly monsters require a large footprint on land and sea, kill millions of bats, decimate raptor populations, sweep the air of quadrillions of insects and alter local ecology on both land and sea. Nobody would install one in a free market, so they require vast financial subsidies to produce expensive electricity.
Given what is known about annual balsa production, the scale of illegal logging and the demands of wind turbine manufactures, it is not difficult to arrive at a possible Amazon forest yearly loss of over half a million trees. Most commercial balsa is exported by Ecuador and it has produced approximately 500,000 cubic metres annually in recent years, or about 80,000 metric tonnes. Around 55% of production is thought to end up in wind turbines and each group of three requires about 10.5m3 a set. Each set requires about 40 trees so annual balsa consumption for wind turbines equates to 1,047,619. Balsa is a relatively fast growing tropical wood and until the soaring demand from turbines kicked in, it was harvested in sustainable plantations. But since the turn of the decade, this sustainable harvest cannot keep up with demand. In a damning survey, the Environment Investigation Agency (EIA) found that exports were boosted by up to 50% following illegal logging in virgin rainforest.
Halve the turbine consumption of 1,047,619 trees and the illegal logging amounts to around 523,810 mature specimens. This figure is likely to be controversial so the Daily Sceptic has shown its workings-out in full. But any substantial annual cull is horrific, and far outstrips the one-off loss of 100,000 tropical rainforest trees logged to build a convenient road for delegates attending the recent ‘save the forest’ COP30 meeting in the Brazilian city of Belém.
Blind eyes are of course turned to the illegal logging, and have been for some time. In 2020, it was reported that 20,000 balsa trees were illegally felled between March and September in the Achuar indigenous territory along Ecuador’s Copataza River. Other reports refer to intense illegal logging, with some estimates noting the removal of 75% of the trees in some areas.
The EIA report that was published in 2024 was damning. Investigators toured many of the illegal logging sites and charged that most, if not all, exporters turned to natural forests as a “convenient and immediate replacement” when plantations were quickly depleted of older trees. The areas under attack were noted to be some of the last intact forest landscapes in the country. They were said to be unique protected areas and emblematic indigenous territories. Traders are said to have told the EIA that the logging of balsa was taking place “from north to south across most of the Amazonian provinces of the country”. It is estimated that at least 50% of production is currently being supplied by these illegal means. Blending of plantation wood with illegal logging is thought to vary between 10% to 70% depending on the exporter.
The EIA report gained little mainstream media or political attention when it was published, although the body is an established NGO, founded in the UK in 1984 with offices in the UK and Europe. For the narrative-driven mainstream, this type of upsetting news is simply too hot to handle.
However there have been attempts by turbine manufactures and supporters to suggest that balsa is being replaced in parts of the turbine core by various synthetic polymer foam substitutes. This is true, but balsa remains in popular use due to its excellent strength-to-weight ratio. Hybrid designs are said to have become more common, with balsa used in high-shear and other critical areas. In these areas it still holds an advantage over foams. But overall production figures suggest wind turbines are still using a great deal of the wood. Ecuadorean production is said to have spiked around 2020 with a previous sustainable total of 33,000 tonnes rising to 75,000, driven by Chinese turbines manufactures. It is a little difficult to get exact production figures but sources such as the EIA and UN Comtrade suggest exports of 80-100,000 tonnes in 2021, 60-80,000 in 2022, and 50-80,000 in 2023 and 2024.
After the spike, production has stabilised but at levels that can only have been possible by massive looting of the rainforest. It is obvious that a great deal of this is supported by huge increases in Chinese wind turbine manufacture. Overall figures for both domestic and export production are not available in one place, but credible estimate suggest monetary total of $8-12 billion in 2021 has risen to nearly $16 billion in 2024 with the projection for 2025 edging towards $18 billion.
The annual loss of balsa trees in virgin rainforests is unnecessary ecological rape traceable back to ideologues driving a hard-Left Net Zero fantasy. The Daily Septic has attempted to put an annual number on the loss using known figures. Our workings-out are supplied so others, if they wish, can contest our assumptions and maths and arrive at different conclusions. But few will be able to cover up the fact that there are very significant and continuing annual illegal logging balsa losses.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
Yet another reason to ban Green Prayer Wheels.
Bird chopping Eco-crusifixes.
condor cuisinarts
Raptor rotisseries.
Especially when they catch on fire.
Our tax money is subsidizing the destruction of tropical rain forests so that “green” politicians and NGOs can tell us how they are “saving the planet” for future generations. Disgusting!
“However there have been attempts by turbine manufactures and supporters to suggest that balsa is being replaced in parts of the turbine core by various synthetic polymer foam substitutes.”
Synthetic polymer foam?
but.. but… isn’t that made from oil? Nah, they wouldn’t do that! 🙂
Anyone care to estimate how much oil it takes to replace balsa wood content with oil based foam? My gut says 50 million barrels equals 500,000 trees, but I could be off an order of magnitude.
From The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management:
https://www.boem.gov/sites/default/files/documents/renewable-energy/state-activities/OCW01_COP%20Volume%20I_20220614.pdf
Table 8.1-1 shows the maximum requirements for oils and fluids in a single offshore wind turbine. The spill containment strategy for each WTG is comprised of preventive, detective and containment measures.
Tables 8.1-2 through 8.1-3 show the maximum anticipated requirements for a single offshore substation and onshore substation.
Table 8.1-1. Summary of maximum potential volumes oils, fuels, and lubricants per WTG.
WTG Bearings and yaw pinions Grease 187 gallons
Hydraulic Pumping Unit, Hydraulic Pitch Actuators, Hydraulic Pitch Accumulators Hydraulic Oil 40 gallons
Drive Train Gearbox (if applicable), Yaw Drives Gearbox Gear Oil 106 gallons
Transformer Dielectric Fluid 1,585 gallons
Emergency Generator Diesel Fuel 793 gallons
Switchgear Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6) 243 lbs
Transformer and Converter Cooling System Propylene Glycol 357 gallons
Converter Primary Cooling Ethylene Glycol 48 gallons
Approximately 26 gal to 40 gal (100 L to 150 L) per large bearing.
Table 8.1-2. Summary of maximum volumes oils, fuels, and lubricants per offshore substation.
Transformers and Reactors Transformer oil 79,252 gallons
Generators Diesel Fuel 52,834 gallons
High-Voltage & Medium-Voltage
Gas- insulated Switchgear
Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6) 4,950 lbs
Crane Hydraulic Oil 317 gallons
All so we can, erm, stop.. using.. fossil fuels?
3, 2, 1 until someone discovers that the “transformer dielectric fluid” in Chinese-manufactured turbines contains PCBs.
PCBs are bad stuff. General Electric Company once had a transformer factory in Pittsfield, MA. The PCBs ended up in the soil- seems that they just dumped a lot of it- so much that it severely poisoned the Housatonic River and much of the soil in the Pittsfield area. In the ’80s, bladder cancer skyrocketed in the area and it was concluded that it was due to the PCBs. Not sure how but that’s what they said. The EPA then made GE dredge much of the river. Then they moved much of that material to another town in the area. I believe the same happened in another of their factories in the Albany, NY area- polluting the Hudson River.
“All so we can, erm, stop.. using.. fossil fuels?”
They’d be only half crazy if they said “we should cut back substantially on fossil fuels”. But when they say NET ZERO– that makes them fully bonkers.
Allowing the use of “fossil fuels”” one still has to note that none of those listed are natural gas or coal.
Your point is valid. “Just stop oil” stops the bird hackers from being built or operated.
Earth is cooler with the atmosphere/water vapor/30% albedo not warmer. Near Earth outer space is 394 K, 121 C, 250 F. 288 K w – 255 K w/o = 33 C cooler -18 C Earth is just flat wrong. Dividing 1,368 by 4 to average 342 over Spherical ToA is wrong.
Ubiquitous GHE heat balance graphics don’t balance and violate LoT. Refer to TFK_bams09.
Solar balance 1: 160 in = 17 + 80 + 63 out. Balance complete.
Calculated balance 2: 396 S-B BB at 16 C / 333 “back” radiation cold to warm w/o work violates Lot 2. 63 LWIR net duplicates balance 1 violating GAAP.
Kinetic heat transfer processes of contiguous atmospheric molecules render surface BB impossible. By definition all energy entering and leaving a BB must do so by radiation. Entering: 30% albedo = not BB. OLR: 17sensible & 80 latent = not BB. TFK_bams09: 97 out of 160 leave by kinetic processes, 63 by LWIR = not BB. As demonstrated by experiment, the gold standard of classical science.
For the experimental write up see:
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
Search: Bruges group “boiling water pot” Schroeder
RGHE theory is as much a failure as caloric, phlogiston, luminiferous ether, spontaneous generation and several others.
When GHE fails the entire CAGW house of cards implodes like the Titan submersible.
Questionable statements:
“Kinetic heat transfer processes of contiguous atmospheric molecules render surface BB impossible. By definition all energy entering and leaving a BB must do so by radiation.”
While I agree the BB math is misapplied in many cases, materials science tests and measurements demonstrate that a surface will radiate EM energy with only thermal energy input. I use this in my thermal management designs for electronic systems.
There’s never a Lorax around when you need one.
Who could know how far out the unintended consequences would reach??
I bet we’ll run out of balsa wood before we run out of oil and coal.
We’re probably approaching Peak Balsa given the state of illegal harvesting
Kids just won’t know the wonder of Balsa Wood Wind-up Rubberband Airplanes and Gliders
Kids today wouldn’t appreciate those.
If it doesn’t have a potentially explosive lithium-ion battery in it, it’s just not worth playing with. /sarc
And gas. Not to mention uranium!
Ignorant question: why do wind turbines have three blades? Do any have two, or four, or more? Why is three so common?
I know why airplane propellers went from two to three to four to more blades; more thrust without the blades hitting the ground or going supersonic. You can only make landing gear so tall. Well, doesn’t that apply to wind turbines too? Wouldn’t it be better to have shorter wind turbines with more blades, at some point?
re: “You can only make landing gear so tall.”
The Osprey (US designation V-22) enters the chat …
The Corsair (F4U) had a mighty tall tail wheel.
But that’s a wheel of another tale
It had the gull-wing not for any speed or lift advantage but to shorten the front landing gear height.
Gull wings helped with prop clearance on those. Hell of an aircraft, though it had some visibility challenges for takeoff and (in particular carrier) landing.
I have seen modern 2 bladed wind turbines, but they are usually really small. The Dutch built theirs with 4 blades, but didn’t generate electricity. Some brilliant engineer must have figured out that three blades are optimal.
Answer: Various reasons
With respect to the number of blades, the power extracted from the wind depends more on the diameter of the turbine than the number of blades. At some point, the extra extraction by adding a blade will be overcome by the additional air drag. Economics enters in as well – it is likely cheaper to have a slightly larger 3 blade turbine than a 4 blade turbine that extracts the same power.
Why do car wheels use, commonly, 5 lug nuts?
Balancing?
never mind – leftists are inflicted with tunnel vision –
The Green Loonies were on a toot not so long ago about switching to screw-capped wine bottles instead of corks to save the trees.
Excellent choice. Sparkling muscatel, one of the finest wines of Idaho. Would monsieur like to sniff the cap?
Growing Balsa takes carbon out of the atmosphere. After windmill blades full of balsa have ended their useful life, they are buried taking all that carbon with them — never to return to the atmosphere.
Problem solved.
The old blades are buried … aren’t they?
A large number end up in landfill.. further degrading the environment.
Isn’t this luvly…. and environmental !
To give some idea of the scale, those are building on the top left and right
Why not retrieve the balsa from the blades and make really expensive toy airplanes? 😎
(I loved those balsa wood planes when I was a kid. I remember building a biplanes version and attaching a small plastic tube under. After a few test throws to get the balance with the tube right, I’d break the stick off a bottle rocket and put it in the tube (I did block the forward end.). I never got it fly straight and level but it would do a number of really fast loops!)
I was going to add a picture of a toy balsa wood biplane but apparently Guillow doesn’t make them anymore. Bummer. Now that I have a grandson, I was thinking of trying it again!
https://www.vintagemodelcompany.com/
Thanks for the link but this wasn’t a model, it was a toy.
You could buy a regular one for about 10 cents or so. The biplane was about 15 to 25 cents. This was back in the 60’s.
We strapped CO2 cartridges to the “fuselage” of balsa gliders and punctured the neck seal (also called the cartridge seal) to zoom them up to surprisingly high altitudes. Much higher than the rubber band props.
Sounds like fun but there’d be no fuse to light. 😎
You should have placed the thrust line of the tube in line with the centre of pressure of the craft. Less loops that way.
Of course, you probably also had a positive angle of attack on the main wing, (relative to the tail surface), so any increase in velocity would also cause the nose to climb.
I suppose that’s why RC became more fun, you could balance the flight lines for the varying throttle settings.
I remember the 70’s no proportional RC, (well not on my budget anyway). The things we did for fun before women were invented.
Ah, the memories.
They’ll probably rot after burial, and thereby release CO2 into the soil, from which it will be returned to the atmosphere.
Not to mention the burial will be done by machines made of METAL that comes from COAL fires powered by DIESEL FUEL that comes from OIL and manufactured in factories that get most of their electricity from GAS and COAL and their heating from GAS or OIL.
Only idiots think they’re changing the world by building and using this crap!
“Only idiots think they’re changing the world by building and using this crap!”
Except they are changing the world…. for the WORSE!
“they are buried taking all that carbon with them — never to return to the atmosphere.”
Cute. What about decomposition?
So…Millions of Balsa trees illegally harvested to provide turbine blades for 400,000 global wind turbines. How many will be illegally harvested to supply 100 times as many wind turbines just to replace 50 FF powered generating plants?
More like just to ATTEMPT TO REPLACE 50 ZFF plants, which they will fail to do.
“We have to destroy the environment in order to save the planet”.
From an IMPROVING climate!
Need a “smack my head” emoji!
Might want to fix that.
That’s what they get for spelling it with a c instead of k.
Yet another thing to add to the massive environmental damage caused by wind turbines and solar estates.
Over their pitifully short life time, wind and solar are by far the most environmentally destructive form of electricity pseudo-supply ever conceived.
The very opposite of “clean energy”.
So what is the life expectancy of a wind mill blade? Is there any effort to recover the balsa and recycle or reuse it or is it considered a onetime use and disposed of? The renewable energy scam has no redeeming value.
One time use.
Reliability calculations for WTGs demonstrate an estimated mean time between failures of 4.2 years with 50% of the failures requiring major component replacements.
There are WTGs all over with broken blades. Some get repaired. Some are left to rot in the sun.