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Global demand for woody biomass for energy is driving intense logging and clearcutting of some of the planet’s most important forests, with devastating climate and biodiversity consequences. Biomass, often falsely labeled as “clean energy,” is in fact an emissive, wasteful and inefficient energy source, requiring the conversion of forests into chips and wood pellets that are burned for heat and electricity.

Climate and energy policies, mostly in Europe and Asia, facilitate forest destruction by labeling biomass “carbon neutral” based on the faulty premise that trees regrow, so logging for biomass does not impact a forest’s ability to store carbon. This flawed logic makes the biomass industry eligible for lucrative subsidies. However, trees do not grow back within time frames relevant to mitigating climate change and preserving ecosystem function, instead taking decades and centuries (depending on forest age) to grow enough to sequester the same amount of carbon and serve the same ecosystem functions as the trees they have replaced.

Logging for bioenergy drastically impacts our planet’s biodiversity. While the biomass industry claims it makes wood pellets from the leftovers of logging operations, multiple investigations show that it routinely harvests whole trees using destructive practices like clearcutting in old, ecologically rich, and climate-critical forests, including Canada’s old-growth forests; the North American Coastal Plain Biodiversity Hotspot; and logging in Natura 2000 areas in Europe. Logging for biomass is also indiscriminate, vacuuming up everything in sight and leading to soil carbon depletion, which degrades forest regeneration. For these and other reasons, more than 650 scientists asked Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity to protect biodiversity by ending the use of biomass energy in 2022.

Bioenergy also exacerbates climate change–emitting carbon dioxide throughout the supply chain, from the logging of trees to the production of wood pellets to the shipping of pellets overseas to the burning of pellets in power plants. In fact, burning wood emits more carbon at the smokestack of the power plant than burning an equivalent amount of coal.

As a result of renewable energy subsidies, the worldwide market for wood fuel has increased exponentially and is expected to quadruple by 2050. Already the demand for bioenergy is massive, with UK bioenergy giant Drax alone importing 8.2 million tons of wood pellets in 2022. If demand continues at this pace, it’s questionable whether any forest on the planet will remain untouched.

Disturbingly, some of the tree species sourced for biomass energy are imperiled. According to certificates submitted by bioenergy companies themselves under “sustainability” certification systems, trees deemed threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species have been logged for wood pellets.

Thus far, international assessments and mechanisms focused on the impacts of industry on imperiled tree species have not considered the growing threat of bioenergy. For example, the IUCN Red List has not comprehensively incorporated the threat of forest biomass energy use in the extinction risk assessments.

With scientists estimating that one million species – including 38% of tree species – face extinction, countries must ensure that the use, harvest, and trade of wild trees minimize impacts on ecosystems and do not further endanger already imperiled species.