Point of view | Matthias Held: From crisis to carbon – How Germany’s forest transformation could power a bio-based chemical revolution

Germany’s forests are in distress — and that distress is rewriting the rules for both forestry and industry. The drought years since 2018, followed by an unprecedented bark beetle epidemic, have left deep scars across the country’s coniferous landscapes. The fourth National Forest Inventory (BWI4) recorded approximately 100,000 hectares of bare forest land — more than double the figure from the previous inventory a decade earlier. An additional 124,000 hectares were identified as having lost their tree cover between the field surveys and the start of the modelling period. Norway spruce, long the economic backbone of German forestry, was hit hardest.

The consequences are not temporary. According to Germany’s latest forest development and timber projection model, known as WEHAM, spruce is expected to lose approximately 15 per cent of its standing volume over the coming four decades, while Scots pine will shed over 20 per cent. The spruce roundwood potential for the next fifteen years already falls 18 per cent below recent utilisation levels — a direct reflection of calamity-driven losses.

Germany has responded with a decisive push toward Waldumbau — large-scale forest conversion from vulnerable conifer monocultures toward climate-resilient mixed stands. For the first time, the national rejuvenation model explicitly incorporates species of the natural forest community, increasing species diversity as a direct contribution to greater climate resilience. In practice, this means beech and oak areas are projected to expand, while spruce and pine steadily decline.

This creates a fundamental industrial dilemma. Spruce remains the single most productive species in German forests, contributing 41 per cent of total roundwood potential from just 26 per cent of the forest. Its wood feeds the sawmill, construction, pulp, and paper industries. As spruce retreats, the beech species group — a heterogeneous category comprising not only European beech but also ash, maple, birch, alder, and other deciduous species — will provide 31 per cent of the country’s roundwood potential, with volumes well exceeding current utilisation. Yet industrial processing capacity remains overwhelmingly calibrated for softwood. The growing volumes of small-dimension, low-quality hardwood assortments that forest conversion inevitably produces have virtually no established market today, other than energy.

Here lies the paradigm shift. What if these hardwood assortments were viewed not as a burden, but as a feedstock opportunity for one of Europe’s most carbon-needing sectors?

Germany’s chemical industry currently requires approximately 10 million tonnes of carbon per year for the production of basic chemicals — nearly all derived from fossil oil and gas. Across the European Union, the figure is about 31 million tonnes. To reach climate neutrality, this fossil carbon must be replaced by alternative sources: biomass, recycled plastics, and captured CO₂.

Woody biomass is uniquely suited for this transition. Compared to agricultural biomass, it has a lower ash content, a higher calorific value, and a carbon content of around 50 per cent by dry mass — making it particularly appropriate for thermochemical gasification and synthesis gas production and other conversion technologies.  

As highly scientific as it sounds, this is not theoretical. UPM’s biorefinery at the Leuna chemical complex in Saxony-Anhalt — one of the largest investments of its kind in Europe, at 1,3 bn euros — demonstrates precisely what is possible. The facility converts sustainably sourced hardwood, with a particular focus on European beech, into bio-based monoethylene glycol (MEG) and renewable functional fillers based on lignin. MEG is a drop-in replacement for its fossil-derived equivalents and flow directly into the production of textiles, packaging materials, composites, pharmaceuticals, and coolants. Lignin is used for a variety of applications ranging from rubber applications to biostimulants. The plant’s annual capacity of around 220,000 tonnes of bio-based chemicals makes a powerful industrial statement: the very beech wood that Germany’s forest conversion is producing in ever-growing quantities can serve as a molecular building block for a post-fossil chemical industry.

What emerges is a rare convergence of interests. Forest owners gain new markets for timber assortments that currently lack commercial value. The forestry sector can actively manage climate-resilient mixed forests while maintaining economic viability. And the European chemical industry gains a credible pathway away from fossil carbon dependence, strengthening both strategic autonomy and industrial resilience.

The Waldumbau that climate change imposes on Germany is not merely an ecological imperative. It may be the foundation of a new bioeconomy value chain — connecting the forest to the factory at the molecular level. The real question is no longer whether this transition will happen, but how quickly the regulatory, logistical, and industrial frameworks can align to capture its full potential. For those of us working at the interface of forests and industry, that question deserves our full attention — now.