Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo and his Swedish counterpart Ulf Kristersson have urged Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to let the countries benefit from flexibilities under the bloc’s rules on forests to protect the countries' advanced bioenergy industries.
Under EU rules, forest biomass — which includes woodchips used for energy — may count as renewable and sustainable if the member state shows that overall forest harvesting is sustainable. But Finland and Sweden’s heavy harvesting as well as the impact of forest fires that ravaged the Nordic countries in recent years endanger them qualifying as "sustainable".
