Catalan Industry Drives Biomass Use as European Funds Fuel Investment

Catalonia’s biomass industry is growing, but the forests supplying it remain dangerously under-managed. The region has two million hectares of forest, covering 65% of its territory, and climate change has turned that abundance into a growing challenge. Without proper care, the forests become an inexhaustible source of fuel for wildfires.

Catalonia recorded 314 fires during the summer. The largest, at les Gavarres in Baix Empordà, burned about 2,400 hectares. It was not among the most intense summers on record, but Jordi Tarradas, a forestry engineer and managing director of the federation of Catalan forest owners Boscat, says that cannot make prevention a lower priority. “If you haven’t done your homework, it’s like Russian roulette. You know sooner or later it will be your turn,” he said.

One part of the response has advanced quickly: boilers that process biomass into energy. Industrial investment backed by European funds helped push biomass consumption up 19% in 2025, to 652,500 tonnes a year. Demand for biomass also rose 57% year on year, according to the figures cited in the report.

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If you haven’t done your homework, it’s like Russian roulette. You know sooner or later it will be your turn.

Forest management itself remains far behind. The work includes thinning dense areas, cutting trees and removing the branches, shrubs and undergrowth that accumulate on the forest floor. Current management uses only one-third of the new material produced by trees each year, leaving two-thirds to accumulate. “It’s a time bomb. When we see fires that do not stop and are so voracious, it is because they feed on all this energy,” Tarradas said.

Biomass is the final link in the chain of forest use. Wood should ideally first serve as a material for furniture or other products, keeping the carbon captured by trees out of the atmosphere for longer. But the market has made biomass advance faster than the forest management needed to extract it, with European funds providing an important push.

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It’s a time bomb. When we see fires that do not stop and are so voracious, it is because they feed on all this energy.