10 min. read
Last updated Jun 9, 2025
Key takeaways
A wave of biomass-based decarbonization projects is emerging around Louisiana. The proposed facilities under early development raise concerns about their potential cumulative impacts on forests.
Even if all planned facilities are built, forest carbon stocks in the region are projected to remain stable or increase. Carbon on the landscape will exceed historical trends—even before accounting for carbon removal and emissions reductions.
New biomass demand is likely to push up wood prices and extend forest conversion trends. Rising demand could also drive conversion of natural forests to plantation pine, especially on lands near facilities.
For biomass projects to deliver the most climate benefit, they must use rigorous baseline assumptions and prioritize technologies that make efficient use of feedstocks.
Projects that follow strong biomass procurement standards will be best positioned to reduce natural forest conversion—but formal legal protections and long-term planning for land use remain critical.
Sustainably supplying biomass-based carbon removal
Decarbonization technologies like biomass-based carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) and biofuels use plant material to produce low-carbon or carbon-negative products. These technologies are critical to meeting Paris Agreement targets, which require removing roughly 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually by 2050. A significant portion of these removals depend on deploying BiCRS projects. However, the viability of these solutions depends on the availability of sustainable biomass feedstocks, which are already in high demand for use in bioenergy, paper, and wood products.
As demand for biomass surges, it could outpace sustainable supply by as much as 16 times in decarbonization scenarios that depend heavily on the bioeconomy. Such supply-demand imbalance could lead to ecological degradation, market disruption, and social inequities. Ensuring sustainable biomass sourcing is critical to avoid these risks.
Biomass overdraw is already a conceivable risk in some regions. BiCRS project development is currently concentrated around two regions: Nordic countries (e.g., Denmark and Sweden) and Louisiana. These development hotspots provide an early window into a future where an expanded bioeconomy drives greatly increased biomass demand. To characterize the potential impacts, we collaborated on a research study. We used two forest economics models to forecast market responses to substantial new biomass demand in Louisiana and the surrounding region.
Specifically, we modeled nine biomass-using facilities currently planned and which are technically feasible. These included BiCRS, biofuels, and bioplastics plants, but this blog focuses on BiCRS. If built, these new facilities would collectively represent a 53% increase in regional biomass processing capacity by 2030. These are the types of large facilities required to meet ambitious decarbonization goals, such as billion-tonne-scale carbon removal. Yet, without deliberate safeguards, they have real potential for environmental harm.
Our findings, summarized in detail below, move the conversation beyond net climate impact—where the signal appears broadly positive—and toward a discussion of the broader economic and ecological implications of large-scale biomass build-out. We believe that well-designed carbon projects can limit negative ecological consequences, such as direct displacement of natural forests, by adhering to robust biomass sourcing rules. Still, it is essential to formally protect remaining natural forests and to account for future land-use dynamics, especially as the Southeastern US continues to shift between agriculture, natural forest, and plantation pine.
Read the full paper, produced in collaboration between Carbon Direct, Microsoft, and the Southern Forest Resource Assessment Consortium (SOFAC).
Markets mitigate impacts
Our results show that markets will play a powerful role in reallocating biomass demand across the Southeastern US. Our simulations looked at the wood basket in and around Louisiana, which includes biomass supply from Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. We found that biomass prices would rise by over 50% with the introduction of all nine planned facilities. Our model suggests prices will go up mostly because it takes a large increase in price to get landowners to harvest more. As a result, the shock of adding nine new biomass-using facilities is distributed widely rather than causing severe localized impacts. Elevated prices would push mills to shift their wood procurement further afield. Only one third of the wood required for these facilities is predicted to come from additional local harvests—the rest will come from elsewhere.
The predicted fluidity of biomass markets has clear implications for BiCRS projects: projects may have to expand their sourcing region or pay higher prices. Ultimately, this would help mitigate local impacts. We found that this natural market response would reduce local land conversion impacts by sixfold and reduce local carbon impacts by tenfold. At the same time, these impacts may leak to nearby regions. BiCRS carbon accounting frameworks may need to consider leakage accounting—similar to the leakage accounting found in forest carbon offset protocols—to reflect the fact that impacts are not locally constrained.
These findings highlight the essential role that natural market responses will play in helping moderate the impacts of an expanded biomass economy. Without these mechanisms, the environmental and ecological consequences are expected to be significantly more damaging and prolonged.
Biomass demand amplifies historic land-use change
We found that land-use change is a likely consequence of increased biomass demand. Our study results suggest that biomass demand consistently drives net forest expansion, reducing pressure to convert forests to agricultural use. At the same time, natural forests, such as longleaf pine and upland hardwood forests, are likely to be converted into plantations, posing significant ecological concerns. In our modeled scenarios, 11% of existing natural upland forests are converted to pine plantations if all nine of the planned biomass facilities go forward. Minimizing land-use conversion from natural forests is essential because pine plantations have lower biodiversity and ecosystem services than natural forests.
Land-use conversion isn’t a new phenomenon. Over the past decade, 10% of natural forests were converted to plantations or agriculture in this region. This trend is expected to continue even without increased biomass demand. The historic expansion of plantation forestry, and the associated robust biomass supply, also positions this region for large-scale BiCRS projects. Given the persistent risk of natural forest conversion, it is crucial to establish strong safeguards for biomass sourcing to disincentivize ecologically harmful land-use conversion. Implementing criteria like the following from A Buyer’s Guide to Sustainable Biomass Sourcing for Carbon Dioxide Removal can help mitigate this risk:
Criterion 4.3: Biomass must not be sourced from plantation forests established within the past 20 years unless the previous land use was agricultural (pasture or row crop) for at least ten continuous years, and natural regeneration is highly unlikely.
Implementing such safeguards is vital to ensuring that new biomass facilities do not exacerbate trends of ecological loss.
Evaluating carbon baseline assumptions
Baselines matter. Measuring the climate benefits of BiCRS projects depends squarely on what would have happened in the absence of biomass use. Without a good baseline, it is impossible to know if a project is removing carbon or only moving it around. The most common approach, implied in European Union (EU) law, dictates that if forests are stable or growing, biomass use is carbon neutral. However, in the Southeastern United States, that approach would allow for far higher amounts of biomass harvesting than if alternative accounting approaches were used.
Biogenic carbon (carbon sequestered by plants) is often treated as carbon neutral in carbon accounting for BiCRS and bioenergy projects. In the simplest terms, carbon neutral means the project’s carbon emissions have no net impact on the atmosphere. To envision this basic assumption, picture a corn field: in the span of a year, the corn grows, sequesters carbon, and is harvested. Normally, the corn stalks would then decay in the field, returning carbon sequestered during growth back to the atmosphere, such that the net impact on the atmosphere is neutral. But if a project turns those corn stalks into biochar, the result is a net movement of carbon from the atmosphere into long-term storage as biochar. This represents carbon removal. Conversely, harvesting an old-growth tree from a protected reserve and using it as feedstock for a BiCRS project would simply move carbon from one long-term carbon reservoir to another. This would not represent net carbon removal (at least not on timescales that are relevant to mitigating climate change).
Managed forests fall somewhere between the corn field and the old-growth tree. Projects that source biomass from managed forests have climate impacts that depend entirely on the baseline scenario, or what would have happened to that forest without a new BiCRS facility.
The Southeastern United States is very well-suited for BiCRS deployment. There are extensive, fast-growing forests and a declining paper industry, which leaves a large supply of biomass for new facilities to use. By 2045, forest carbon stocks in this region could increase 50% if these facilities are not built. This is promising for BiCRS deployment, but poses a real challenge for baseline setting.
The EU Renewable Energy Directive, perhaps the most prominent framework for BiCRS, treats biomass as carbon neutral if forest carbon stocks are stable or increasing. This is a simple heuristic for avoiding biomass linked to deforestation or degradation. But if used as a baseline for carbon accounting, it can be quite liberal. For example, in our study region, EU rules would allow implausibly high levels of forest harvest before biomass feedstock would no longer qualify as carbon neutral. This is not an anomaly. In forests across the globe, carbon stocks are increasing significantly due to factors like forest expansion and CO2 fertilization.
Fortunately, there are more tailored approaches. In our study, we modeled a counterfactual baseline to estimate what would happen absent new biomass facilities. This kind of approach is common in academic studies, but hard to implement in practice. We also tested a simple historical baseline based on the last 10 years of data, which landed quite close to the modeled counterfactual baseline. This approach may offer an acceptable balance of accuracy and practicality. Evaluating carbon baseline assumptions for BiCRS projects is a key area for the industry to get right to ensure these projects deliver climate benefits.
Maximizing life cycle carbon benefits
With increasing demand and expected competition for biomass, it is essential for projects to use available biomass efficiently. One measure of efficiency is this simple metric: tonnes carbon benefit per tonne of carbon in biomass feedstock (tC/tC). Using this metric, higher values indicate processes that are more efficient at achieving climate benefits, per unit of valuable biomass.
For example, we found that retrofitting existing paper mills with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology could offer substantial feedstock efficiency (2.13 tC/tC) due to the relatively limited additional biomass required to capture and store a large, pre-existing source of biogenic carbon. Biopower facilities fitted with CCS are also feedstock efficient (1.14 tC/tC), due to their displacement of the relatively carbon-intensive local grid. Conversely, bioplastics facilities are net emitting (-0.17 tC/tC), mostly due to high production emissions from fossil gas heat. This wide range of feedstock efficiency values highlights the differences inherent to biomass-based technologies when it comes to life cycle carbon benefits. Strategically selecting the most efficient biomass pathways with higher carbon storage and substitution potential will drive more rapid climate mitigation.
Recommendations for project developers: look before you leap
Before committing to new biomass projects, developers should carefully consider other announced projects, current market trends, and the long-term availability of biomass. Wood prices are likely to rise substantially, which could have significant implications for the economics and environmental impact of biomass projects.
Secure long-term supply: Project developers who can establish forward-looking relationships with forest managers and wood producers in their wood basket will be in a better position to manage their carbon outcomes, land-use change outcomes, and financial sustainability.
Expand the wood basket: Louisiana is emerging as a hotspot for bioeconomy development. By sourcing biomass from outside this core wood basket, developers can reduce localized ecological, carbon, and economic impacts. Additionally, using sawmill residues and preprocessed wood from chip mills is an efficient and proven way to dramatically increase the size of the wood basket (though wood processing facilities bring additional community health risks that must be considered).
Diversify feedstocks: Explore alternative sources of biomass such as mill residues, in-forest chipping, and especially agricultural residues. These diversified feedstocks can reduce dependency on pulpwood, improve the resilience of biomass supply chains, and make the most efficient use of the total available biomass.
Recommendations for policymakers: plan for a future market
Projects that introduce new biomass capacity could create market conditions that deviate significantly from historical trends. Policymakers should recognize that the past may not always be an accurate predictor of future forest markets.
Permit carefully: When issuing permits for new biomass projects, it is essential to consider the anticipated annual biomass availability and the trajectory of forest carbon stocks. Policymakers should be proactive in planning for these impacts.
Plan for land-use conversion: Large increases in biomass demand will likely lead to the conversion of natural forests into plantation forests. Policymakers should establish clear guidelines to prevent undesirable land-use changes, such as bottomland hardwood forests being converted to plantation forest systems.
Rethink biogenic carbon baselines: Current methods for calculating biogenic carbon baselines, such as following the heuristic of “stable or increasing carbon stocks”, may fail to fully capture the impact of new biomass facilities. Policymakers and carbon standard-setters should consider adopting more nuanced baseline approaches that better reflect the true carbon impact of biomass-based projects.
A safer operating space for BiCRS development
Not all regions are created equal when it comes to sourcing biomass. Due to extensive forest expansion and productive forests, the wood basket in and around Louisiana is primed to produce large volumes of biomass, from both pulpwood and sawmill residues. Meanwhile, the local pulp and paper industry is slowing down. That shift has left large quantities of small-diameter roundwood and sawmill residues sitting on the sidelines—available, underutilized, and ready to be put to work in new ways.
All of this makes the region unusually well-suited to BiCRS. But these enabling conditions don’t exist everywhere. In areas without this combination of land history, surplus fiber, and infrastructure, BiCRS projects could create much sharper impacts on landscapes and local markets. Developers and policy-makers should carefully consider these factors to prevent negative impacts and support biomass as a pillar of global decarbonization.
Read the full paper, produced in collaboration between Carbon Direct, Microsoft, and SOFAC.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those of the study authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any organization affiliated with this study.
