RWE’s Biomass Spree: Felling Forests until there aren’t any Trees Left

Germany’s RWE has a unique strategy for going green: cutting down old-growth forests. In the Netherlands, the company has already switched its Amer coal power plant to biomass. RWE wants convert its other Dutch coal plant, Eemshaven, to biomass by 2030. Biomass energy is produced by burning wood. This wood comes from the clearcutting of forests. Amer and Eemshaven would consume 6 million tons of wood every year. This is equivalent to burning the entire Dutch forest in just 7 years. 

As if bulldozing forests in the midst of a global biodiversity crisis wasn’t bad enough, biomass is dirtier than fossil fuels. Wood has a lower energy density than coal, oil, or gas. Biomass thus emits more CO2 per unit of energy than any fossil fuel,  while the demand for wood is growing every year, leading to deforestation.  While RWE touts its carbon capture technology in its biomass plants, these technologies miss the carbon released by cutting down forests, producing wood pellets and transporting them overseas. The best the company can do is to only bury the emissions it produces in its smokestacks. RWE’s techniques for carbon capture would increase the company’s contribution to climate change, as scientists warned when the same practices were applied in the UK. RWE’s tactic of switching to biomass is not a transition away from fossil fuels, it’s just a way for them to continue polluting. The only thing green in RWE’s transition plan are the leaves they burn.

Most of the trees RWE burns come from the Southeastern US. Companies routinely clearcut mature hardwood forests in a region designated as a global biodiversity hotspot. Many animals who live in these forests don’t live anywhere else in the world. Once bulldozed, the companies replace the old trees with pine monocultures. These plantations are sterile rows of trees devoid of any animals as far as the eye can see. Pine monocultures are prone to droughts and can’t regulate the water cycle in the way forest ecosystems can. These plantations can never store as much carbon as the original forest.

Not only nature and animals are suffering from wood production for biomass, but in places like Southeastern US, communities are too. After felling the trees, huge trucks transport them to processing factories. There, companies shred the trees and press them into wood pellets the size of a cigarette butt. During this process, trees regularly catch fire or explode. People who live around the factories describe wood dust falling onto their communities like winter snow. They constantly breathe in thick smoke and they suffer from burning eyes and respiratory diseases. Companies often build these factories close to marginalized communities. For example, people of color make up 65% of the residents who live around wood processing sites in North Carolina. One quarter of the inhabitants there live below the poverty line.

RWE also buys trees from the Malaysian conglomerate Samling. Samling is active in Sarawak province, a Malaysian state on Borneo. In 1960, Sarawak was a biodiversity hotspot, 90% of the land was primary forest. Today, less than 10% of that forest remains and Samling’s thirst for wood is a primary reason. In the indigenous community of Long Moh, Samling bulldozed trees without consent from the community. The company denied this, although a local employee had already apologized and promised compensation. Samling even threatened the community with legal action after they demanded compensation. In 2021, the company showed that this was no empty threat when it sued SAVE Rivers, a local NGO, in order to silence them.

RWE’s dirty power plants drive global warming and violate human rights. While the company now portrays itself as green, nothing has really changed. Their use of biomass has a higher environmental impact than their old coal plants. Instead of using biomass, RWE should transition to renewable energy, which is increasingly outperforming fossil fuels. Until RWE transitions not just away from coal, but also towards renewables, financial institutions should protect their reputations by withholding funding from them.