Setting the agenda in research

Comment
GUSTAVO BASSO/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY

Burnt land in Pará state, Brazil, where wide tracts of the Amazon rainforest have been cleared for soya-bean production.

EU climate plan boosts bioenergy but

sacrifices carbon storage and biodiversity
Timothy D. Searchinger, Oliver James, Patrice Dumas, Thomas Kastner & Stefan Wirsenius

put the world on track to require 40–60%
Incoming policies will cause more crops and 70% more milk and meat in
the European Union to 2050 than in 2010 (ref. 1). Even factoring in
harvest more wood, shift higher yields, models project that cropland
will expand by 100 million to 400 million hec-
one-fifth of cropland to tares (Mha) globally over this period1,2. Indeed,
bioenergy and outsource remote sensing of recent growth rates3 puts
deforestation, analysis shows. the world’s cropland on track to consume
450 million more hectares over this period,
to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 55% by
2030, relative to 1990 levels. New energy laws
are at its centre: a revised directive to increase
renewable energy to 40–45% by 2030, tighter
caps on emissions from factories and power
plants, and requirements that aviation and ship-
ping industries shift to alternative fuels. The EU
is also finalizing laws that it says will increase
land-based carbon storage and biodiversity in

N
early all strategies to meet climate
targets or preserve global biodiver-
sity require the world’s agricultural
land area to be held at current levels
or reduced. More precisely, the world
must decrease its ‘land carbon footprint’,
which is the quantity of carbon lost from native
habitats to supply agricultural products and
wood. But rising populations and incomes
an area 1.5 times the size of India.
To meet the challenge, countries must do
more to maintain or reduce their land carbon
footprints. They can do so by boosting crop
and livestock yields and by reducing demand,
particularly for products that require a lot of
land to produce, such as meat.
The world must also rapidly reduce its
fossil-fuel emissions, with the European Union
playing a key part. The bloc is on the cusp of
enacting its ambitious ‘Fit for 55’ plan, designed
Europe and reduce deforestation abroad.
Unfortunately, although other parts of the
plan should reduce emissions, the broad rules
assigning climate benefits to bioenergy will
undermine carbon storage and biodiversity
both in Europe and globally, by expanding
Europe’s outsourcing of agricultural produc-
tion to other countries. By treating biomass
as ‘carbon neutral’, the rules create incentives
to harvest wood and to divert cropland to
energy crops, regardless of the consequences

Nature | Vol 612 | 1 December 2022 | 27

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Comment
for land-based carbon storage.
The threats to food supply from the war in
Ukraine highlight how land-use choices mat-
ter. We calculate that cutting 85% of Europe’s
use of biodiesel and half of US and European
grain ethanol could free up enough crops to
replace all Ukraine’s vegetable oil and grain
exports (see Supplementary information,
which includes data, methodology and further
references for all our calculations).
Here we analyse these trade-offs and
describe how Europe can, with reforms, take
a more environmentally friendly path.
Reducing Europe’s footprint
Recent environmental improvements might
give the impression that Europe has ‘spare’
land available for growing more bioenergy
crops. However, that is a misperception cre-
ated by Europe’s vast historical land carbon
footprint. Although the area of European
farmland has declined enough for forest
cover to increase from 25% of land in 1900 to
35% today (according to the HILDA model4),
still more than half of Europe’s past forests are
gone. And most today are managed to produce
wood rather than to provide natural carbon
storage or biodiversity. Yet the reasons behind
this forest recovery are instructive for how to
reduce land carbon footprints. They include
boosting crop and livestock yields and slowing
population growth. The decline in traditional
bioenergy from reductions in the numbers of
working animals has also reduced the need to
devote vast areas to pasture and feeds.
Climate strategies require that Europe
decrease its currently large land carbon foot-
print. This is feasible. Europe’s population is
likely to remain stable or decline over the next
decade and beyond, and meat consumption
has probably peaked (see go.nature.com/
3j5vxsd). Because yields should continue to
grow, the same models that project vast crop-
land expansion globally in 2010–50 typically
project that the area of European cropland will
reduce by 10 Mha to 50 Mha. Without European
reductions, global cropland is therefore likely
to expand even more.
To stop this expansion, Europe must reduce
its land carbon footprint even more by reduc-
Land carbon opportunity cost† (MtCO2e)
between 1990 and 2014, the region’s agricul-
tural imports led to an estimated 11 Mha of
deforestation outside Europe, mainly in the
tropics6. Another study7 found that deforest-
ation emissions account for one-sixth of the
emissions of the average European diet.
Although these studies trace Europe’s
imports directly to recent deforestation, a
fuller measure of Europe’s footprint should
take into account foreign agricultural land
used to supply the continent (regardless of
its conversion date), all of which contributes to
a reduction in carbon storage and biodiversity.
And the calculations should credit Europe for
land ‘saved’ abroad by its food exports.
Combined, we find that Europe appropri-
ates 1 hectare of cropland abroad for each
4 hectares of cropland in Europe.
To estimate the carbon costs of this out-
sourcing, we apply ‘carbon opportunity costs’
to European imports and exports. These esti-
mate the quantity of carbon lost per year to
generate one tonne of each different crop or
livestock product, divided (or ‘amortized’) by
roughly 35 years8. They indicate how much car-
bon could be stored globally, on average, if the
world consumed one less tonne of that product.
Between 2012 and 2020, we find that Europe
has run a large ‘land-carbon trade deficit’ of
around 400 million tonnes of carbon diox-
ide equivalent (MtCO2e) per year (see ‘EU’s
land-carbon trade deficit’).
This deficit exceeds the roughly 300 MtCO2e
of annual carbon sequestration that the EU
claims from its domestic forests (after fac-
toring in 100 MtCO2e of losses, mostly from
degrading peatlands). According to the princi-
ples of the Kyoto Protocol, Europe should not
take credit for most of this ‘forest carbon sink’
anyway; it mainly reflects the fertilizing effects
EU’S LAND-CARBON TRADE DEFICIT
Net EU agricultural imports cost about 400 million tonnes
of CO2e* per year. Increasing crop yields and producing
less meat and milk could eliminate that and free up to
30% of cropland for biodiversity and carbon storage, but
not if Europe devotes more farmland to bioenergy.
200
+191 Exports
(including pork, dairy, wheat)
Imports
of higher CO2, warmer weather and regrowth
of forests established before 1990, all of which
are independent of mitigation efforts.
Thus, rather than Europe having spare land
or wood to supply additional bioenergy or
other consumption, climate strategies require
the bloc to ‘give back’ land and carbon either
to nature or to supply others.
The opportunity
Fortunately, Europe can achieve a more envi-
ronmentally friendly land future. We estimate
(using the Globagri model1) that Europe could
free up around 17 Mha of cropland by 2050 while
nearly eliminating its land-carbon trade deficit.
To do so, Europe must maintain yield gain trends
(see Table S1) and modestly reduce biofuel con-
sumption to 2010 levels (see Figures S2 and S3).
If Europe also reduced its per capita con-
sumption of animal products by 17% — its equi-
table share of a 10% global reduction — it could
free up almost 30% (28 Mha) of its cropland, an
area nearly the size of Poland (see Figures S2
and S3). Europe could use this land to benefit
climate and biodiversity in three ways.
First, Europe could grow more food, export
more or import less, and turn its land-carbon
trade deficit into a surplus. Owing to higher
yields, global exports from European coun-
tries require less land and sacrifice less carbon
storage than does production in most other
countries. Likewise, each hectare saved in the
tropics generally has more carbon and biodi-
versity than does a hectare restored in Europe.
Second, the EU could store more carbon in
Europe. Rewetting the region’s drained peat-
lands is a priority, because they emit at least 100
MtCO2e per year — possibly twice that amount.
Preserving older forests from harvest is another
priority for both carbon and biodiversity. Plant-
ing fast-growing trees on agricultural lands
could replace the foregone wood supply.
Third, Europe could restore habitats.
Approximately 30–70% of assessed popu-
lations of most major European taxa have a
conservation status of ‘poor’ or worse (see
Table S2). Biodiversity priorities include
buffering the remnant habitats on which rare
species survive, and preserving the 20 Mha to
30 Mha of diverse, semi-natural grasslands.

(including soya beans,

ing its meat and milk consumption2,5. The 0 coffee, cocoa, vegetable oils) Europe could reasonably choose a mix of
average European consumes four times more these goals for its land future, but they all
meat and milk than does the average person in require a smaller footprint.
poorer countries, which will hold 60% of the
global population in 2050 (ref. 1). Milk and Bioenergy and land
–200
meat have large footprints, and consumption Although the European Commission says
SOURCE: ANALYSIS BY T. SEARCHINGER ET AL.

in these countries is likely to grow. Reductions
in Europe are necessary to compensate for this
growth elsewhere.
Outsourcing and carbon costs
Europe’s outsourcing of agricultural land
might also contribute to this misconception
of spare land at home. Although EU nations
expanded their own forests by 13 Mha
otherwise, its Fit for 55 plan sacrifices car-
bon storage and biodiversity for extensive
Net deficit = 393 MtCO2e
–400 per year (imports minus bioenergy. Its own modelling predicts that
exports) yearly use of bioenergy will more than dou-
ble between 2015 and 2050, from 152 million
–584 to 336 million tonnes of oil equivalent. That
–600 requires a quantity of biomass each year that
*Carbon dioxide equivalent. †Annual global average of terrestrial carbon
lost to produce a tonne of agricultural product (2012–20).
is twice Europe’s present annual wood harvest,
and eight times the portion of that harvest

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 from most of the world’s forests still count as
carbon neutral.
The commission says that strengthened
climate rules on land use compensate for this
problem. These rules require that countries
modestly expand their forest carbon sinks
and correct some accounting abuses. If bio-
energy growth leads to more wood harvest in
Europe, the commission argues correctly, the
emissions should be reported somewhere in
Europe’s land-sector balance sheet.
But distorted incentives persist for the sim-
ple reason that biomass remains carbon neu-
tral to energy users. Factories, power plants,
airlines and ships will receive climate credit
for replacing fossil fuels with biomass regard-
less of the real effect on carbon storage, either
in Europe or abroad. If a Danish power plant
imports and burns Romanian wood, the rules
could require Romania to make more mitiga-
tion efforts to compensate for the reduced
IMAGEBROKER/SHUTTERSTOCK

carbon storage. Regardless, the Danish power

Semi-natural grassland in northwestern Germany.
used for bioenergy today.
Modelling by the commission also projects
large effects on forests and land use: by 2050,
Europe will devote 22 Mha of cropland to
energy crops, or roughly 20% of cropland, and
import four times as much wood for bioenergy.
It will also lose 17 Mha of cropland for food and
feed. Roughly half of Europe’s semi-natural
grasslands will disappear to generate energy
crops or host intensively managed forests. The
commission probably underestimates these
effects on land and forest felling by stating
that bioenergy will use 2.5 times the maximum
available forest residues estimated by other
sources. Overall, the plan means less habitat
and carbon storage in Europe, and continued
or greater outsourcing of Europe’s footprint.
A proposed EU anti-deforestation law will
not halt these effects. This law will prohibit
imports of some commodities (such as soya
beans and beef) produced on newly defor-
ested land. But as long as Europe’s use of
existing agricultural land in other countries is
maintained or grows, global agricultural lands
must expand unless other countries reduce
their footprints by even more to compensate.
Nor can a proposed nature-restoration law
shore up Europe’s biodiversity without even
more outsourcing, if expansion of bioenergy
leaves no land to restore as native habitats.
Other bioenergy effects are also harmful.
Although energy crops provide more habitat
for common species than do annual crops, the
loss of semi-natural grasslands means less hab-
itat for many rare plants, butterflies and birds.
Removal of almost all wood-harvest residues
from forests contradicts the priority to leave
more dead wood for many rare species.
Carbon accounting error
Driving the push for bioenergy is the belief
that it will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions
by replacing fossil fuels. But the EU’s carbon
accounting ignores the consequences of
increased land use because the energy laws
treat bioenergy as ‘carbon neutral’. Although
greenhouse gases from the fossil fuels used to
produce biofuels count as emissions, carbon
stored in the biomass and emitted by burning
or refining it does not.
Crucially, this assumption ignores the
opportunity costs of agricultural land and
wood. The typical justification is that the car-
bon emitted by burning biomass is offset by
the carbon absorbed by growing the plants.
But land is required to grow plants. Using
cropland for energy crops means this land
cannot produce food, which helps the climate
by reducing the need to convert other lands.
More wood for bioenergy means less carbon
in forests. Land is not ‘free’.
Fit for 55 proposes some restrictions on
biomass production. It caps biofuels from
food and feed crops at near 2020 levels and
excludes them from shipping and aviation fuel
targets. Biomass loses its carbon-neutral sta-
tus if it is produced on land gained from newly
cleared forests or is harvested from some
primary forests. But energy crops grown on
existing agricultural land and wood harvested
plant still has incentives to do so, despite
increasing carbon in the atmosphere. And if
new land-use rules lead Romania and other
EU countries to restrict wood harvesting to
preserve their carbon stocks, the bioenergy
rules will drive even more outsourcing.
Although bioenergy can reduce net emis-
sions over long time frames, the consequence
either of harvesting more wood or diverting
cropland to bioenergy is likely to be increased
carbon in the air for decades. The commis-
sion’s published Forest Strategy, in a single
sentence buried in the middle of a long doc-
ument, agrees with the overwhelming litera-
ture that harvesting stem wood for bioenergy
increases atmospheric carbon for decades,
even when factoring in reduced fossil-fuel
use9. Diverting a hectare of European crop-
land to energy crops is also likely to increase
carbon in the air for decades when compared
with either saving one hectare of forest or
savanna abroad, or even reforesting a hectare
in Europe10.
Lessons and solutions
A climate planning process such as the Fit for
55 strategy highlights the error of treating bio-
mass as carbon neutral and therefore land as
free. The plan allocates resources, including
land, among competing uses to reduce emis-
sions. Ignoring land’s alternative ‘carbon value’
when diverting land to bioenergy guarantees
its inefficient use.
The simplest solution is for the EU to stop
treating biomass from energy crops and wood
harvests as carbon neutral. The European
Parliament adopted an amendment to freeze
the quantity of woody biomass that counts as
‘low carbon’ at each EU country’s 2020 level of
use. If this rule survives negotiations with the
Council of the EU, it could limit the damage.
Unfortunately, the parliament failed to bring
all energy crops under the same cap applied

Nature | Vol 612 | 1 December 2022 | 29

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Comment
to biofuels derived from food and feed crops,
despite their similar effects on food production
and cropland. Unless the EU fixes this problem,
the more it restricts fossil carbon, the more it
will encourage diversion of cropland to energy
crops and outsource its food production.
The best solution is to incorporate the ‘car-
bon opportunity cost’ of land use into the
accounting of emissions from bioenergy in all
climate and energy laws. This cost can be meas-
ured simply as the carbon that could otherwise
be stored by regrowing native vegetation. A
superior approach would use carbon oppor-
tunity costs, as we have done here, to calculate
the average carbon cost to reproduce the same
food elsewhere. This approach does not require
a switch to consumption-based accounting
but recognizes that land use has an opportu-
nity cost, which should be factored into the
life-cycle analyses of bioenergy used by the EU.
Saving terrestrial carbon and biodiversity
starts by reducing, not outsourcing, Europe’s
land carbon footprint. Adapting Europe’s plan
can deliver a more beneficial land future.

The authors

Timothy Searchinger is a senior research

scholar at the Center for Policy Research
on Energy and the Environment, Princeton
University, New Jersey, USA; and technical
director of the Food Program, World
Resources Institute, Washington DC, USA.
Oliver James is a professional specialist at the
Center for Policy Research on Energy and the
Environment, Princeton University, New Jersey, Dead spruce trees in Schleiden, Germany, as seen at infrared wavelengths.
USA. Patrice Dumas is a senior researcher at

Biodiversity loss and

the French Agricultural Research Centre for
International Development (CIRAD), Paris,
France. Thomas Kastner is a senior scientist

climate extremes —
at Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate
Research Centre, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Stefan Wirsenius is associate professor in

study the feedbacks

environmental and resource assessments
of agriculture at Chalmers University of
Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.
e-mail: tsearchi@princeton.edu

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Enough of silos: develop s humans warm the planet, biodiver-
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The authors declare no competing interests.
Supplementary information accompanies this article as droughts and heatwaves can have devas-
(see go.nature.com/3exdqbn). tating impacts on ecosystems and, in turn,

30 | Nature | Vol 612 | 1 December 2022

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