BRUSSELS, Belgium, March 28, 2007.
Wood should be used as a resource for paper products before it is burned for energy, according to the paper industry in Europe.
Using wood for paper products first and using it as a source of energy only at the end of the product lifecycle “adds four times more added value to the economy and retains six times more jobs than simply burning wood for energy,” explains the Confederation of European Paper Industries in an independent report, ‘A Bio-Solution to Climate Change: Using wood for paper first and for energy last.’ The paper industry is trying to be considered as part of the bio-solution to climate change.
“We have the potential to do even more in the future; we have the experience, technology and supply chain to be part of the renewable energy solution,” it notes. “One of our main raw materials, wood, is biomass, so we can optimise its use in the production process and then go on to generate renewable energy.”
“While wind, hydro and solar are only used as a source of renewable energy, biomass (wood and recovered paper in particular) is a resource that can also be used primarily as a raw material,” it continues. “Measures promoting the demand for renewable energy might be suitable for those renewable sources where supply at any one time is potentially unlimited, but they are not suitable for biomass, as they discriminate against its other possible uses” as a raw material.
Half of the paper industry’s total primary annual energy consumption is based on biomass, and the European pulp and paper industry is the largest single industrial user and producer of renewable energy in the EU today, it claims.
The ‘core’ pulp and paper industry adds value of Euro 27.5 billion when using wood as a raw material first and energy last, compared with Euro 6.3 billion for bioenergy only. Wealth creation in the pulp and paper industry is four times greater than the energy alternative and, when wider effects are considered (upstream suppliers, downstream producers, multiplier effect), “the comparison is even more favourable for the pulp and paper industry” which creates Euro 263 billion in value added while the energy alternative creates Euro 33.8 billion.
“In this wider scenario, the wealth creation in the pulp and paper industry was eight times that of the energy alternative,” it explains. For employment generation, the paper industry creates six jobs for every job created by the energy alternative and, in the wider context of total employment creation, the ratio is 13:1 in favour of the paper industry, it claims.
In absolute terms, the pulp and paper industry creates 264,000 core jobs while the energy sector would create 46,500. When total employment is analysed, the comparable numbers are 2,950,000 for paper and 229 000 for energy.
“Promoting the use of wood first as a raw material to make products, encouraging the recycling of used products, and then recovering energy when recycling is no longer feasible would make a far greater contribution to environmental, social and economic sustainability,” the report concludes. “Importantly, this approach provides significantly more value added to the economy and retains significantly more jobs.”
“The 2007 EU energy package forgets one thing,” CEPI concludes. “Just burning wood is a waste.”
