Tuesday 28 March

A new group of 14 EU trade associations including the providers of high-quality wood-based products, fibre-based, paper and board products and packaging, and renewable energy solutions, supported by EU forest owners and managers, has today launched a cross-sectoral coalition. The coalition’s aim is to present EU policymakers with an ambitious common vision ahead of 2030 and, going beyond, one leading to a transition towards a circular bioeconomy.

Now, more than ever, is the time to embed into EU policy the circular bioeconomy as a fully integrated, resilient European value chain. The coalition has made publicly available a paper detailing common challenges, needs, and solutions [STRATEGIC DOCUMENT]. It is also supported by a further 6 associations linked to the forestry sector.

This is the broadest coalition yet representing these value chains. Jointly, its members represent 3% of the EU’s GDP, €520 billion in turnover, and 20% of its manufacturing companies. They are an integrated part of the EU bioeconomy, using local renewably-sourced materials, made and recycled in Europe, and using European technology. But their contribution could go much further. They hope to work with the EU institutions towards creating an enabling policy environment for their sectors to collectively reach climate change mitigation equivalent to 30% of EU annual CO2 emissions. In 2019, this figure stood at 20%.

The coalition’s ambition will require consolidating the EU’s global leadership as a provider of sustainable and competitive alternative solutions for today, and innovative opportunities for tomorrow. Europe’s wood and fibre-based value chains are widely considered a laboratory for the future circular bioeconomy.

In order to be climate neutral by 2050, the EU needs to work with the coalition to accelerate the uptake of bio-products, encourage investments in green technologies for production processes and supply chains, and support a shift towards sustainable consumption while putting in place policies to boost the competitiveness of sustainable manufacturing industries.

The competitiveness of the overall European industry has been impacted by the energy crunch and issues related to the supply of strategic raw materials. Wood-based products, fibre-based paper and board products and packaging, and renewable energy solutions offer resilience and ensure European strategic autonomy and competitiveness via the sustainable management of sources of valuable raw materials, and secondary raw materials and related technology.

Download the paper Circular Choices for a competitive EU Bioeconomy here.

As EPF Chairman Martin Brettenthaler stresses: ‘EPF is proud to be part of this coalition using nature-based products to help realise Europe’s goal of net-zero climate neutrality.  Wood-based panels are integral to this journey using sustainable materials for furniture, construction, packaging and in multiple everyday applications. As a European global champion in this field, we urge policy makers to work with us to place industry, especially the circular bioeconomy, at the heart of this social, economic and environmental transition’.

For further information, please contact EPF Administration and Communications Officer:

Mrs Isabelle Henin

info@europanels.org

+32 2 556 25 89

We are delighted to announce Isabelle Henin as the new Administration and Communications Officer at EPF. She took up her new role on Monday, 9th January 2023.

Isabelle is Belgian with an academic background in communications and in political science, with a focus on international relations. Her mother tongue is French, she speaks fluent English and German and she has a working knowledge of Dutch, Portuguese and Italian.

Isabelle joined EPF from the Acolad Group where she was Project Manager for linguistic services.  Prior to that she was Communication and Events Assistant at EESC, the European Economic and Social Committee, a European Union institution.

Previous roles and internships include working in the EPP President’s office and being elected Secretary General of Belgian Youth Diplomacy.

According to the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre¹, in the EU only 45% of EU biomass goes to material use, with 55% used for bioenergy. At EPF we believe that at least 60% of this in-demand resource should be preferred for material applications, such as wood-based panels. In this respect, EPF believes it is of the utmost importance to reinforce the implementation of principles for cascading use of biomass, circularity, and resource efficiency.

The current energy crisis has critically underlined the necessity of scaling up the roll out of renewable energies. Indeed, the negative effects the energy crisis has on the energy prices and market disruptions caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine further increases the pressure on woody biomass. It is of greatest importance that policy makers realise that burning wood is not the solution to Europe’s energy shortages. Providing state aid to support to further biomass energy developments distorts commercial markets and deprives material markets such as wood-based panels, paper industries and others of valuable material. As well as adding value to the wood material uses keep the carbon locked up in wood in some cases for many decades, after which it can either be recycled for another use phase or if not possible the energy can then be recovered. Wood is too valuable to squander by burning in the first instance.

In this respect, EPF calls for the necessity to maintain all references to the cascading principle and the waste hierarchy under Art.3 of the Directive. Enshrining the cascading principle is especially important given current supply chain difficulties and material shortages. The retention of the cascading use of wood in RED III, in line with the EC guiding principles of sustainability, resource efficiency, circularity, new products or markets, and subsidiarity is vital to avoid market distortions and ensure the security of supply of raw materials for the industry.

Furthermore, to meet the objectives of climate neutrality, it is important to enhance the sustainability criteria under Art.29 of the Directive to reduce early energy recovery, restore sustainable carbon cycles and increase carbon removals in circular and climate positive harvested wood products. It is essential that subsidies for bioenergy should not create market distortions for raw materials especially for woody biomass and prevent that high quality wood is diverted to energy markets, with associated negative impacts on resource efficiency, biodiversity and sustainable carbon sinks.

Therefore, EPF calls upon the negotiators to bear in mind the above when finalising trilogue negotiations. In the words of Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and keynote speaker at the recent NEB Into The Woods conference held in the presence of EC President Mrs Ursula von der Leyen: “Currently in Europe we are burning 50% of the wood that is harvested. Wood is too precious to be burned. We are burning the book of life before we have studied it”.

7 December 2022

1 https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC128384

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