Dry Weight and Bureaucratic Deadwood: Berlin’s New Biomass Crusade

Leave it to the German government to turn a forest into a crime scene of bureaucratic overreach. In its unceasing quest to turn energy policy into an exercise in micro-management, Berlin has set its sights on biomass. Under the guise of implementing Brussels' latest directive, RED III, the Federal Cabinet has drafted a revision to the Biomass Ordinance that manages to simultaneously threaten municipal heating supplies and choke forestry operators in red tape.

The logic emanating from European central planners dictates a cascade principle: wood must first be sat upon as a chair or built into a house before anyone dares burn it for warmth. To enforce this doctrine, Berlin plans to exclude sawlogs, veneer wood, industrial roundwood, and harvested roots from renewable energy subsidies. Never mind that real-world forestry rarely fits into neat regulatory boxes, or that local market dynamics dictate where timber can actually be sold.

Industry experts made their frustration clear during a recent hearing before the Bundestag Economic Committee. Representatives from the wood and energy sectors pointed out that Berlin is not merely copying EU mandates, but actively exceeding them. While the government claims the economic burden will stay below 100,000 euros, operators face bizarre new accounting rules. Plant operators will now be required to report their precise wood consumption annually by February 28—calculated strictly in dry weight kilograms. In an industry where timber is traded in cubic meters based on natural moisture, this requires converting every log through bureaucratic mathematics. Martin Zühlke of the Agricultural Energy Network in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern characterized the proposal as far-reaching and unsuccessful overregulation.

The timing of this administrative exercise is particularly striking given Germany’s precarious energy state. Solid biomass accounts for 84 percent of the nation’s renewable heat, generating 136 terawatt hours in 2025 alone. Out of roughly 742 operating biomass plants with a total capacity of 1,611 megawatts, around 150 facilities representing over 500 megawatts will see their initial twenty-year subsidy period expire between 2025 and 2028. Forcing these plants to navigate an impossible maze of exceptions just to secure follow-up funding jeopardizes local heating networks. The German Association of Towns and Municipalities explicitly warned against penalizing sustainable wood use when no alternative market exists.

Even within the timber sector, warnings are mounting. Julia Möbus of the German Sawmill and Wood Industry Association criticized the draft for giving explicit preference to specific industrial sectors, such as paper and wood panel manufacturers, thereby creating artificial market distortions. Instead of allowing foresters and energy providers to react to local supply and demand, the state prefers to dictate resource flows from a desk in Berlin. As usual with German energy politics, practical economics comes second to regulatory dogmatism.

Written by Freya Stensrud freya.stensrud@alpineweekly.com