The two-day summit on March 8-9 involves EU decision makers in Brussels debating the European Commission’s ambitious plans to triple the EU share of renewable energies to a mandatory 20% of the union’s consumption by 2020.
“The current hype about bioenergy sees forests only as a fuel source,” said FFIF.
The federation said the possibilities wood processing provides for helping to alleviate climate change as well as for the creation of jobs must be pointed out at the summit.
It said a recent study showed that the forest industry in Central Europe created 13 times more employment and eight times more value-added input by processing wood and generating bioenergy than if the wood was just burned for energy.
FFIF believes decisions on renewable energy should be done on a national rather than a European level.
The UK and Germany are set to support the European Commission proposals but France is thought to be against.
