In its current form, the EU’s renewable energy directives encourage the use of primary woody biomass from forests as an energy source. However, the directive gives a completely wrong picture of the associated greenhouse gas emissions, write a group of academics. The debate around using wood from forests, so-called primary woody biomass, as a substitute for fossil fuels is a heated one but turns, essentially, on an obvious question: are the greenhouse gas emissions associated with either burning primary woody biomass as a source of fuel less than the emissions avoided by not using fossil fuels? …The problem is that the methodology currently used by REDII for judging greenhouse gas balances is far too narrow to provide an accurate answer and, as such, often gives the wrong answer, encouraging the harvesting of forest wood instead of the protection of forests (which would better serve the EU’s climate goals).