Report: Tree Plantations in the South to Generate Energy in the North

Report: Tree Plan­ta­tions in the South to Gen­er­ate Ener­gy in the North

-by Rachel Smolker

It is always help­ful to hear the per­spec­tive of peo­ple in the “glob­al south,” espe­cial­ly when it is their land in the trop­ics that is so often tar­get­ed as a source of bio­mass ener­gy for the “north.” World Rain­for­est Move­ment (WRM) has been at the fore­front of oppo­si­tion to indus­tri­al tree plan­ta­tions for decades, so they know full well what the con­se­quences of vast new demands for bio­mass will be.

Their new report, Tree Plan­ta­tions in the South to Gen­er­ate Ener­gy in the North, points out that over two bil­lion peo­ple, most­ly in the south, depend on wood as an ener­gy source for basic cook­ing and heat­ing, yet “poli­cies being pur­sued in Europe, North Amer­i­ca and at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el, for exam­ple, through the Sus­tain­able Ener­gy For All Ini­tia­tive, seek to reduce the use of tra­di­tion­al bioen­er­gy and to replace it, includ­ing with fos­sil fuels, while boost­ing large scale indus­tri­al bioen­er­gy includ­ing wood based elec­tric­i­ty and agrofuels.”

Indeed north­ern ana­lysts have been busi­ly map­ping glob­al bio­mass avail­abil­i­ty as if the world’s lands were free for the tak­ing, while a wave of land grabs—often with vio­lent evic­tions and displacements—has swept around the globe. These land grabs are fueled by investors’ hopes of prof­it­ing from bioen­er­gy crops. With wood bioen­er­gy on the rise, the pres­sure to expand indus­tri­al tree plan­ta­tions is rapid­ly mount­ing. Europe, in par­tic­u­lar, is dri­ving the export/import mar­kets, and for now most pel­lets and chips cur­rent­ly going to Europe are derived from the south­east­ern US and Canada.

But make no mis­take: ener­gy com­pa­nies (RWE, DRAX and E.On among them) are eye­ing Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, Africa and parts of Asia for the future. And oth­er coun­tries (notably Korea, Japan and Chi­na) have their own esca­lat­ing bioen­er­gy plans. The sheer speed with which trees grow in the trop­ics is key. Euca­lyp­tus plan­ta­tions in South Amer­i­ca can pro­duce wood at rates of 20–44 m³/hectare/year, (one hectare equals about 2.5 acres) com­pared to a mere 4–6 m³ in north­ern climates.

The WRM report pro­vides use­ful back­ground on some of the new­ly emerg­ing bio­mass-ded­i­cat­ed projects. They include for exam­ple, Kore­an and Japan­ese com­pa­nies invest­ing in bioen­er­gy tree plan­ta­tions in Cam­bo­dia, Philip­pines and Indone­sia. The pulp giant Suzano Papel e Celu­lose, oper­at­ing in Brazil, has start­ed a new divi­sion ded­i­cat­ed to bioen­er­gy (Suzano Renew­able Ener­gy) which is on track to con­struct 5 pel­let mills to pro­duce 5 mil­lion tons per year on an esti­mat­ed 150,000 hectares (371,000 acres) of land. With an incred­i­bly short 2 year rota­tion of dense­ly plant­ed euca­lyp­tus planned, these bio­mass plan­ta­tions will be more akin to fields of very tall grass. They already have signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing (MOU) with UK ener­gy companies.

In Africa, Nor­we­gian-owned Green Resources is a big play­er, with plan­ta­tions in Mozam­bique, Tan­za­nia, Ugan­da and South Sudan. Bio­mass projects are under­way as well in Liberia and Ghana. Grow­ing demand for bioen­er­gy is square­ly in the glob­al for­est prod­ucts indus­try line of vision. WRM states that “today in the glob­al South there are approx­i­mate­ly 6 mil­lion hectares of land occu­pied by indus­tri­al tree plan­ta­tions… There is not a sin­gle coun­try in the South where indus­tri­al tree plan­ta­tions have been estab­lished and that have not sparked land conflicts.”

The report con­cludes that “the pro­mo­tion of bioen­er­gy based on large scale mono­cul­tures and the attempt to legit­imize this activ­i­ty through cer­ti­fi­ca­tion schemes not only con­fus­es the pub­lic but also comes at an extreme­ly high cost: it even fur­ther delays the adop­tion of the struc­tur­al mea­sures need­ed to tru­ly con­front the social, ener­gy and cli­mate crises.”

Cli­mate ana­lysts have long warned of the threats of civ­il unrest pre­sent­ed by large num­bers of peo­ple dis­placed from their home­lands by the impacts of warm­ing. The fact is that the impacts of mis­guid­ed and down­right idi­ot­ic “renew­able ener­gy” poli­cies are like­wise dis­plac­ing peo­ple from their homelands.