
Harutee Forest, threatened by the proposal, photo Indrek Tammekänd
Power2X proposes destroying ancient forest for a technology with a long record of failure
Click here to download the joint report by Biofuelwatch and Save Estonia’s Forests
Click here to download the report in Estonian
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 policy-makers 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.