Point of View | Ahti Fagerblom: A tough time ahead for the bioeconomy after Christmas?
The EU’s growing enthusiasm for the bioeconomy is encouraging, but it also raises a nagging sense of unease. The barrel may be full of hopes, but will it soon start to ring hollow?
The European Union has set out its direction for the bioeconomy on three occasions. It first set out its bioeconomy strategy in 2012, revised it in 2018, and, a year ago, the European Commission presented a new framework for a competitive and sustainable bioeconomy.
The forestry sector has viewed these strategies with optimism, and there are good reasons to do so now as well. However, the mere existence of a bioeconomy strategy, and the optimism surrounding it, do not guarantee that the EU will finally recognise the importance of sustainable forestry and the forest industry to Europe’s climate efforts, competitiveness, self-sufficiency and security of supply – or resilience and strategic autonomy, for that matter. These priorities were just as well understood when previous bioeconomy strategies were drawn up.
The latest strategy offers a sound foundation. The Commission aims to expand markets for bio-based materials, secure the availability of sustainable biomass, and accelerate investment and the commercialisation of innovations. The goal is for sustainable bio-based materials to be widely used across the EU by 2040. You might think the bioeconomy’s Christmas is already in the bag. Think again.
Not because anyone has failed to understand that, from a societal perspective, the bioeconomy is above all a means of moving away from a fossil-based economy towards more sustainable development – or, to put it more elegantly, from the fossil carbon cycle towards a biogenic carbon cycle.
If all this has been said, written and repeated so many times before, where does this feeling that absolutely nothing is happening come from? It brings to mind an old Finnish rap song in which the lyrics proclaimed that something so massive was coming it would split the toilets in two. The bioeconomy hasn’t split any toilet yet, despite the endless stream of strategies and declarations. The problem is that directives and regulations have consistently steamrolled over everything the bioeconomy has to offer.
This is what typically happens after a new bioeconomy strategy is announced. The EU revises its Renewable Energy Directive, which, as a side effect, establishes criteria for the sustainable use of wood. But what hangs in the air is almost a promise that the rules of the game will keep changing.
What kind of wood use will be permitted in five years? As the Finnish saying goes, not even Erkki knows. Furthermore, changes may be made to what is perhaps the most beautiful thing in the world: the EU’s Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) Regulation, which governs the accounting of greenhouse gas emissions and removals from land use, including the role of forests as carbon sinks. Its baseline data is shaky, yet its future targets are specified down to the nearest decimal place. These typically overambitious targets are a problem for the forestry sector. Similarly, the emissions trading system has proved “allergic” to biomass.
Caught in the cogs of the legislative machinery, the forest-based bioeconomy risks being ground down to sawdust. Turning the EU’s ambitions into reality will require sustained effort. Over the coming year, Finnish negotiators and other bioeconomy advocates should make it their priority to press EU decision-makers on how the Union’s legislation can better support the sector.
How, for example, could the LULUCF Regulation, sustainability criteria, emissions trading rules, the Biotech Act II and the Public Procurement Act be shaped to unlock the bioeconomy’s full potential?