The summer of 2025 left us a scar of ash and a lesson that we continue refusing to learn. European forests are burning with unprecedented ferocity, but the answer is not to accumulate more firefighters in August, but to return to inhabit and manage the forest in January. The Copernicus satellite balance from the last summer campaign It was, simply, terrifying: more than 403,000 hectares burned in Spain and over a million in all of Europe. However, the truly disturbing information was provided by the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS): 217 fires were recorded in Spain, less than half of that in 2022 (493). The burned area, however, was dramatically larger.
Fire has not become more frequent; He has become a much more ferocious monster. By the end of 2025, the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) confirmed the disaster: Europe had recorded its highest fire emissions on record in 2003, releasing almost 13 megatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. Faced with this scenario, the institutional response remains stuck in the same loop: more seaplanes, more retardation, more summer troops. An emergency strategy that ignores an incontestable reality: the problem does not begin when the spark ignites, but long before, in the silence of the mountains, throughout the year.
The diagnosis that no one wants to hear. Every year, Spanish forests add 46 million new cubic meters of plant biomass. Of that amount, according to data from Expobiomassonly around 40% is used. The European average is between 65% and 70%. The rest stays on the ground: branches, bushes, dry leaves, weeds. Year after year. Decade after decade. The result is what foresters have long called “fuel loading.” It is not a literary metaphor, it is pure physics: in the face of a heat wave or a dry storm, this accumulation turns an attempt into an uncontrollable inferno. Galicia, Extremadura and Castilla y León already suffered it firsthand last year.
As the Spanish Biomass Association (AVEBIOM) warnsthe origin of this powder magazine is historical. Decades of rural exodus and the abandonment of traditional uses – such as grazing, extensive livestock farming or firewood collection – have left the forests orphaned by the management that, for centuries, kept them safe. Nature didn’t do the dirty work, and we stopped doing it for her.
A proposal that reaches the European Parliament. This week, that diagnosis landed in Brussels with its own name. Bioenergy Europe presented in the European Parliament the documentary Fuel the solution, not the fire —in Spanish, “Feed the solution, not the fire”— with a central message: preventing large forest fires involves acting long before the flames arrive.
The initiative, supported in Spain by AVEBIOM, shows experiences developed in Greece, Italy and Spain that show how the sustainable use of forest biomass can simultaneously contribute to three objectives: reducing the fuel load on the mountains, generating local renewable energy and boosting rural economies. The proposal is not new in the sector. But that it reaches the European Parliament, at the start of a new high-risk season, gives it a political dimension that it did not have before.
The model: from the mountain to the caldera. The idea is, in its structure, simple. When pruning, clearing or forestry treatment is carried out, the remaining plant remains – what was previously abandoned or burned in the forest itself – are collected, crushed and converted into chips or pellets. This material fuels boilers in municipalities, hospitals, sports centers or industries. The mountain is cleaner. The town, hotter. And the energy bill is lower. “Sustainable forest management is part of the response to fires. And bioenergy can help provide an outlet for part of the biomass that needs to be removed from the mountains,” explains Pablo Rodero, head of certifications at AVEBIOM, in statements collected by Energies Renewable.
Rodero insists on an important nuance so as not to confuse the discourse: “It is not about ‘cleaning the forest’. It is about managing the territory better, with technical planning and sustainability. When the remains of pruning, clearing or preventive work are transformed into renewable energy, prevention stops being a cost to generate economic activity, employment and energy savings.” The specific actions defended by AVEBIOM range from forestry treatments and the maintenance of firebreaks to the recovery of extensive livestock farming and the promotion of sustainable forestry exploitation. Active management, all year round, that does not depend on the urgency of summer.
Real numbers on the ground. Beyond the theory, there is concrete data that illustrates the potential. Veolia Biomass In 2024, it transformed more than 300,000 tons of forest biomass—material accumulated in the mountains—into 700 GWh of clean energy. To get an idea: that is equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of more than 200,000 homes.
The company already operates in several Spanish provinces: it works in Moros (Zaragoza) and in the Sierra de la Culebra (Zamora) in the elimination of vegetation on 500 and 400 hectares respectively; carries out thinning and thinning in Mayorga (Valladolid), Barcial, Castropepe and La Hiniesta (Zamora) and Cilloruelo (Salamanca); and has restored 200 hectares in Andalusia affected by the fires of the previous year.
He CRECEMOS report on Forest Fire Managementpublished in May 2025, adds another dimension to the equation: sustainably mobilizing one million tons of forest biomass per year would avoid the emission of 580,000 tons of CO₂. In regions such as the northwest of the peninsula, where biomass potential is still underutilized, this approach would combine fire risk reduction with economic reactivation of currently depopulated areas.
The European lifeline. It is important to put into perspective what is at stake. Bioenergy is neither an experimental technology nor a niche bet: according to the GROW reportrepresents 60% of all renewable energy produced in the European Union. And 96% of this biomass is produced in European territory itself: it is not imported, it does not depend on foreign regimes, it is not exposed to the vagaries of the global gas market.
It is, in other words, the most autonomous renewable energy that Europe has. And its raw materials have been accumulating without use in the continent’s own forests for decades. While electricity and gas continued to be conditioned in 2025 by a turbulent international panorama, biomass demonstrated stability in both prices and supply. A strategic asset that Europe has, literally, at the foot of its trees.
The goal for 2030: 200 new heat networks. AVEBIOM has specific goals. The association plans to build at least 200 new heat networks with forest biomass until 2030, which would mean an installed power of 2,800 MW and would mobilize an additional 1.2 million tons of biomass per year.
The Forests and Climate Change Forum goes further in its projections: If Spain reached a 67% utilization rate—still below the European average—it could mobilize an additional 5 million tons per year already in 2030, and up to 10 million in 2050. The resource is there. You just need to take advantage of it.
Portugal has already taken steps in that direction. According to AVEBIOMthe neighboring country is installing biomass boilers in municipalities with high fire risk to take advantage of forest surpluses and heat public buildings with local and clean energy. A proximity model that generates less dependence and more resilience.
The warnings that the sector has been issuing for decades. Not everything is optimism. The sector has been warning for years about regulatory and political obstacles that are slowing the takeoff of forest management with bioenergy. One of the most relevant is the EU Renewable Energy Directive. According to Expobiomassthe RED III in process could include sustainability criteria for biomass even more restrictive than the current ones, and the Spanish forestry sector considers that some could be counterproductive for the resilience of Iberian forests. If European regulations make it difficult to use forest residues, the forest will continue to accumulate firewood. A bureaucratic paradox that could cost hectares.
There is also a problem of political inertia. As AVEBIOM summarizes with a phrase that leaves no room for ambiguity: “Continuing to trust only in extinction is bread for today and fire for tomorrow.”
The question that remains in the air. The mountains do not wait. Every year that passes without active management is another year of accumulation. Every summer without prior intervention is a summer in which the risk grows. The documentary presented this week in the European Parliament, the figures from the CRECEMOS report, Veolia’s operations in half of Spain and AVEBIOM’s proposals for 2030 all point in the same direction: the tool exists, the resource is in the forests, the technical knowledge has been available for years.
What is missing—and what the sector has been waiting for for decades—is for forestry policy, energy policy and rural development policy to stop going their own way and start, once and for all, talking to each other. Because the next fire season is already underway. And the forests, for now, continue to burn.
Image | Unsplash
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