Trees and forests play an important role
On Saturday 21 March, it is the UN International Day of Forests; in DONG Energy, however, they play an important role all year round.
Forests and trees currently cover one third of the Earth. DONG Energy would like to maintain the status quo because trees play a major role in the struggle to reduce the CO2 content in the atmosphere. On Saturday 21 March, the UN focuses on forests, climate changes and sustainable development on the UN International Day of Forests.
In our work on converting our power stations from coal to biomass such as wood chips and wood pellets, it is crucial that we only use wood from sustainable forestry. Therefore, we only use thinning wood and waste wood for our wood pellets. We are imposing demands on our suppliers in terms of replanting and protecting the ecosystem and areas worthy of preservation. In this way, our impact on the Earth's tree resources is as small as possible - this is what we call sustainable biomass.
To ensure that our wood pellets and wood chips are always sustainable, we have founded the association Sustainable Biomass Partnership (SBP) with six other European energy companies. One of the purposes of SBP is to create a set of guidelines enabling our suppliers to document that they meet the strictest and most ambitious requirements in Europe. This is done to protect the forests and to ensure social and work-related rights, including the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
