Rising policy conflicts in Europe over bioenergy and forestry

Growing concerns over emissions of green-house gases causing climate change as well as energy security concerns have spurred the interest in bioenergy production pushed by EU targets to fulfil the goal of 20per cent renewable energy in 2020, as well as the goal of 10per cent renewable fuels in transport by 2020. Increased bioenergy production is also seen to have political and economic benefits for rural areas and farming regions in Europe and in the developing world. There are, however, conflicting views on the potential benefits of large scale bioenergy production, and recent debates have also drawn attention to a range of environmental and socio-economic issues that may arise in this respect. One of these challenges will be that of accommodating forest uses – including wood for energy, and resulting intensification of forest management – with biodiversity protection in order to meet EU policy goals. We note that the use of biomass and biofuels spans over several economic sector policy areas, which calls for assessing and integrating environmental concerns across forest, agriculture, energy and transport sectors.