Balsa Wood Logging for Wind Turbine Blades is a Nasty Scene

I get why the “green” energy narrative appeals to people. We do indeed need to de-carbonize our societies. We should leave fossil fuels in the ground. So people are relieved when presented with the idea that coal, oil and gas can be replaced by ostensibly “clean” alternatives like solar, wind, hydro and geothermal power, and battery storage.[1] For example, since electric vehicles lack tailpipe emissions, they must be a silver bullet.

However, the narrow focus on greenhouse gases paints an incomplete picture of the impacts of all of the above modes of energy production. Carbon is not even the only bad thing about burning fossil fuels, and as I wrote recently: “Emissions are SO not the only problem with cars.”

Crucially, when we look at “green” energy, we find many serious issues, among them:

• Habitat destruction for siting wind farms, solar arrays, transmission lines, reservoirs, etc.
• Child slave labor and other unjust practices implicated in critical material sourcing
• We can now add coups for green energy to wars for oil, as seen in Bolivia.
• Lithium mining for storage batteries for intermittent sources like solar and wind inflicts a host of environmental impacts
• Copper mining, which is essential for transmission lines is totally not green at all (another article by me)
• All the other resource extraction and refining processes needed to manufacture “green” energy components have significant environmental impacts

Wind turbine blades are an example of the last bullet item. I’ve been educating myself about the downsides of “green” energy for a few years now, but I wasn’t too informed about the details of this particular topic until I saw this fact sheet about floating offshore wind energy infrastructure from Protect The Coast PNW. Offshore windmills have been in the news recently because of Trump’s executive order “temporarily halting offshore wind lease sales in federal waters,” a move decried by some “green” energy proponents but which I personally welcomed. Declaring any chunk of nature off-limits to any form of resource extraction is an environmental win in my book. That’s not Trump’s intention obviously, or to his credit at all, but it is the inadvertently positive result.

Wind turbine blades are made of composite materials. That is, several to many different materials are combined, which can include fiberglass, carbon fiber, polymeric resins (epoxies and such used to hold everything together), and balsa wood.

The use of composite materials is why wind turbine blades are so difficult to recycle, and why the majority of them end up in landfills right now or are incinerated. But “they’re working on that” right”? Sure. Ideas include 3-D printing, modular design and even bamboo and mycelium. But so far, no method has been developed that can be effectively scaled up for mass production. So for now, new blades being manufactured for current projects are definitely problematic.

As a tree-hugger, I’m particularly interested in the balsa wood piece of this story.

As a component of wind turbine blades, balsa wood is a minor item, and not all blades use it, but because the wind industry is building out so rapidly right now, led by China, a lot of trees are needed. How many? During a 2020-2021 surge in demand, mature harvestable trees were hard to find in plantations in Ecuador, the world’s leading exporter of balsa wood. To meet this demand,

teams of loggers rushed into national parks and protected indigenous territories in the Ecuadorian Amazon, including the 2.7 million hectare United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Yasuní Biosphere Reserve. EIA investigators also learned that illegal loggers ventured into neighboring Peruvian forests, smuggled balsa logs to Ecuador, and laundered them as “origin Ecuador.”

Circumstances have not apparently improved, with balsa exports from Ecuador being comprised of 10-70% natural vs. plantation lumber. Over-harvested plantations obviously don’t recover in a season, so the pressure on wild stands of balsa will continue for the time-being. The US market for balsa wood is projected to grow 50% by 2033.

Deforestation in the Amazon is increasing so more balsa plantations can be established, worsening a situation already made bad by tree-clearing for palm oil, cattle-grazing, coca-farming, mining and other extractive industries. Ecuador is one of the five most deforested nations in Latin America due to the balsa wood and palm oil industries.

“Entrepreneurial criminal networks” (including “timber mafias”) and “non-state armed groups” are often at the center of organizing, protecting and profiting from extractive activities. The labor is dangerous and underpaid, and some workers are subjected to slavery.

Road building in the Amazon is, according to an indigenous activist interviewed by the Latin American Bureau, arguably the biggest danger to the health of the ecosystem and the intactness of indigenous communities because roads are the necessary vector for introducing people, equipment, pollution, etc. A “fishbone effect” follows every road, when additional roads are built off of them into the surrounding forest, fragmenting the ecosystem.

The temptation to make money is great, though, and some indigenous communities have been divided about whether to profit from balsa wood in their territories or leave it be. Similar splits are common in the US around proposed extractive development. Unfortunately, balsa logging and other extractive industries are socially disruptive, and include sexual assault on women. (See “‘Balsa fever’ brought hope and havoc in the Amazon. What happened next?”) The World Rainforest Movement reports: “Timber extraction is breaking community ties and destroying cultural traditions. Community members spend all their time harvesting wood. They no longer attend assemblies, and they are abandoning the work of community social care.”

Among the places where balsa has been illegally logged is Yasuní National Park, which contains one of the most biodiverse forests in the world, with over 4000 species of plants and 170 of mammals. More than 130 threatened species call the area home. According to the Environmental Investigation Agency, “More than 650 tree and bush species have been identified in just one hectare [which] corresponds to the total number of native tree species in North America.” Wow!

As with any industrial process, many environmental costs are par for the course. Sawmilling pollutes local water sources. Erosion results from clear-cuts. Plantations use herbicides. All the vehicles and machinery used at every step are polluting. The transportation of milled lumber to blade factories produces carbon emissions. The list goes on.

Let’s also keep in mind the very local effects:

Cutting down a large balsa tree affects ecosystems. Its canopy shelters plants that now dry up under the scorching sun of the equator. Birds that feed on balsa flowers no longer sing as they used to; parrots have now gone in search of new homes; tapirs and sajinos (wild boar of the jungle) are now exposed, leading to an increase in illegal hunting.

Fun fact: Balsa is a night-flowering tree pollinated by moths, crickets, katydids and two nocturnal mammals: the Olingo and the Kinkajou!

So next time you hear someone celebrating the growth of wind power, keep all this in mind: the clear-cutting of balsa wood trees in the Amazon, the deforestation of the jungle for balsa plantations, the loss of habitat for wildlife, the fracturing of indigenous communities, the mistreatment of women, the exploitation of labor and the profiteering by criminals. Think about the Olingo and Kinkajous! All this for a blade that will last 25 years tops and then go to a landfill. Is this “green”? Is this “clean”?

Couldn’t we replace balsa wood with something? Yeah and the best candidate is polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Do you want to hear about that? Start here: “PET Plastics Release Hazardous Chemical Pollution at Every Stage of Their Lifecycle.”

I’ll end with the same point I hammer away at over and over: We need to make all efforts possible to reduce our overall energy use rather than seeking new ways to power our increasing levels of consumption. In a best case scenario, we would be shutting down energy generation infrastructure all over the world, rather than building more. By “best case scenario” I mean one in which we have a planet that’s liveable for ourselves and all more-than-human life. The fact that what we must to do to avoid our own extinction is considered impractical is one of the most perverse things about living in these times. Continuing to be ecocidal freaks digging our own graves is “realistic” and “pragmatic.” Survival is “idealistic.” WTAF? <smh>

For a comprehensive report on the environmental and human rights issues with balsa wood production, check out the Environmental Investigation Agency’s report: “Ill Wind: From Amazon forests crimes in Ecuador to Wind Turbines in the U.S. and China.”

For more on the effects of other industries too, see InSight Crime’s report, “Stolen Amazon: The Roots of Environmental Crime in Five Countries.”

[1](Some add “nuclear” to that list, but there’s a split on that issue since many people are very sensibly concerned about the serious downsides of splitting atoms.)