The future is bleak, the future is burn

In 2022, Switzerland burnt more wood than the entire forestry industry produced that same year and the government’s official policy is to burn even more, despite FOEN’s warning that “strategies that only increase the use of wood as biofuel are not efficient from a CO2 balance perspective”.

Neither is burning more wood good for biodiversity, the climate, wildlife or human health.

But annual wood production will increase because the forests’ sustainable potential for supplying domestic energy and construction wood is apparently “not being fully exploited”, according to the government.

Holzenergie Schweiz claims that an annual harvest of 7.4 million m3 is economically and ecologically possible. This represents an increase in total logging of 36.8%. Just for energy wood.

The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) estimates that Switzerland could double the amount of energy obtained from biomass.

The canton of Bern, which already produces and burns more wood than any other, plans to increase logging for energy wood by up to 1 million m3/annually, from 370,558 m3 in 2022, which represents a 170% increase!

This will have devastating consequences on our forests, particularly on our Mittelland forests which supply 40% of all domestic wood and which are already being logged unsustainably simply because yield exceeds growth (3,283,000 m3/year vs 2,973,000 m3/year). Standing stock is, not surprisingly, also down -11% in the last 20 years on the Mittelland.

Apart from such negative environmental impacts, other risks and challenges of harvesting and burning more energy wood include: limited raw materials, suboptimal use of and more competition for them; high production and logistics costs; depletion of the carbon sink and of course increased emissions, both of carbon dioxide (CO2) and air pollution.   

Yet more and more biomass-fired plants are being built. Taking just the automated systems of >50 kW, the canton of Zurich built 150 in 2022, while Lucern built 82 and Bern built 72, according to SFOE data. Bear in mind that such burners consume approximately 15 kg of wood per hour. And while Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) aren’t always drawn up, contracts for wood deliveries invariably are. This means that the wood to feed these hungry burners must be supplied come what may. 

Our forests, wildlife, biodiversity, climate, health and wellbeing will all suffer as a result.

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