Back to the future: the European biocircular economy

The bioeconomy has always been a backbone for Europe. Food and agriculture, of course, but also the forest-based sector, which for millennia has provided housing materials, energy, and trade opportunities.

Wood also fuelled early industrial development, particularly in the mining and metals industries, and made European trade and exploration possible through shipbuilding. 

Over the past couple of centuries, fossil-based solutions have increasingly taken over the economy, with serious consequences for the global climate.

Europeans have benefited enormously from the developments, but at the expense of the environment.

It is now time to revive and evolve renewable bioeconomy solutions for the benefit of current and future generations.

Promoting the forest-based economy

In my country, Sweden, this transformation is already underway.

Swedish forests provide an ever-increasing and sustainable wood supply for resource-efficient and integrated value chains. Harvested biomass is utilised to its highest value across a wide range of solid wood and paper products, while residuals are used for renewable energy.

Recycling is growing rapidly, providing additional opportunities.

As a result, Sweden is a world-leading provider of wood-based products, and, at the same time, bioenergy is Sweden's largest energy category accounting for 40 percent of domestic energy production.

The forthcoming EU Bioeconomy Strategy can offer important opportunities to expand and promote the forest-based bioeconomy across the Union.

This will contribute to economic prosperity, increased self-sufficiency and large-scale climate solutions that help phase out fossil dependence. Politically acceptable pathways toward a low-emission European society must make use of solutions offered by the wood-based economy, as pointed out previously.

However, there is a risk that the European Commission is underplaying these opportunities.

In three areas, its work must accelerate considerably to avoid a bioeconomy strategy that is irrelevant — or worse:

First, the strategy must embrace the bioeconomy as a whole. Current thinking appears exclude aspects covered in other EU regulations, such as food, beverages, bioenergy, pharmaceuticals and personal care.

By omitting these major dimensions of the bioeconomy, what remains becomes an incomplete patchwork of biochemicals, textiles, and construction materials. This risks reinforcing an already fragmented regulatory landscape that will not stimulate innovation, investment or integrated value chains. 

Isolated bioeconomy components will be vulnerable to over-bureaucratisation and to competition from unsustainable alternatives from outside and inside the EU. 

Second, the bioeconomy strategy should not express any ambition to reduce wood harvesting in the Union. Increasing recycling and reuse is, of course, a key goal that should be promoted, but it must not be framed as a replacement of primary biomass.

The task of replacing fossil-based carbon is enormous and requires a significant expansion of the entire wood-based bioeconomy.

Setting wood-based recycling against sustainable wood harvesting creates a false dichotomy that works directly against the Green Deal vision.

Instead, investments in improved forest management and increased, sustainable wood supply should be central to the bioeconomy strategy.

Third, the concept of the "circular economy" must be upgraded to fully encompass the bioeconomy.

The prevailing framework tends to exclude harvested biomass, on the grounds that it is a virgin raw material and therefore outside the circular economy. 

This does not make sense. 

Valuing the wood-based value chain

By its very nature, biomass originates from a circular system.

Biological growth captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into biomass and through decomposition and oxidation the carbon eventually returns to the atmosphere. Using part of this biomass for the benefit of society — the bioeconomy — is simply part of that circularity.

Excluding harvested biomass from the circular economy undermines the EU's overall climate and growth objectives and creates confusion in policy along the wood-based value chain.

Calls for reduced wood harvesting are a clear example of this confusion. The bioeconomy strategy provides an opportunity to correct course by expanding the European definition of "circular economy" to fully and formally include the bioeconomy.

The bioeconomy strategy should address each of these issues. 

If not, we may need a high-level EU initiative to develop an overarching vision for strengthening all uses of circular biomass for economic development, prosperity and self-sufficiency, thus laying the foundation for a prosperous, secure and low-emission European society. 

Such a "biocircular economy" defined Europe's historical development. It must also be a fundamental part of our future.