Power2X proposes destroying ancient forest for a technology with a record of failure
Click here to download Joint Report by Biofuelwatch and Save Estonia's Forests
[Update: Save Estonia's Forest successfully campaigned against the project and the sale of the forest to Power2X was ruled unlawful by the courts. The project has therefore been cancelled.]
Summary
A Dutch start-up company, Power2X, is proposing to build a large industrial development in the
Estonian town of Pärnu. They are promising to make Pärnu the site of the world’s first large-
scale wood-to-methanol plant, creating 200 permanent jobs directly, as well as 800 jobs
indirectly by investing €1 billion. In a country that has just experienced two years of economic
recession, it is easy to see why such promises sound almost too good to be true. Ministers and
local government representatives have been expressing their strong support. The town council
is looking at selling Power2X the site that the company wants to acquire, most of which is
forested, much of it by ancient, highly biodiverse forest which provides habitat to many
different species.
Amidst the excitement about the economic prospects of siting the world’s first large bio-
methanol plant, national and local policymakers have so far failed to ask whether the project
might be sounding too good to be true because it really is. i.e., they have as yet failed to
examine the likelihood of success of such a scheme.
For forests and climate such a ‘success’ would be bad news: it would mean removing an
additional 1 million cubic metres of wood from forests to turn it into methanol, used in fuel and
chemical products. This in a country where logging has been intensifying, where forest birds
are in steep decline, and where, as a result of over-exploitation, forests now represent a net
source of CO2.
In reality, however, the project is highly unlikely to succeed. Not only do start-up companies in
general have a failure rate of around 90%, but the failure rate of comparable projects stands
at 100%. Comparable projects in this context are projects that involve gasification of biomass
or mixed waste and catalytic conversion of the resultant syngas to different products, including
(but not confined to) methanol. Two such projects, both in the USA, have recently ended in
bankruptcies. Another, in Canada, has closed down, having failed to deliver on its promises
despite having attracted tens of millions of Canadian dollars in public funding. Power2X itself
has no experience with this technology and has, in fact, not so far produced anything (not in
itself surprising because they were only founded in 2020).
Tragically, the ancient, diverse forest on the site which Power2X is asking for will be lost for
good if they get to try to build a plant, however, unsuccessful, there.