How firewood became the latest economic indicator 

The president of a country supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and weaponization of energy no longer being supplied to Europe, recently had himself filmed chopping firewood. “Europeans won’t be left in the cold,” he said through a smirk. “Let’s help our brothers.”

My mother-in-law was way ahead of him. She’d just bought a wood-burning stove for her house in Prague, and was stockpiling logs to feed it. This wasn't unique or as demoralizing as some people might like. Just a practical response to a difficult situation.

In some ways the spiking demand for firewood in Europe serves as a leading economic indicator. The region’s braced for energy shortages now that a key source of supply, gas piped in from Russia, has run dry amid geopolitical friction over Ukraine – and a lack of immediate alternatives points to an uncertain state of affairs to come.

In Germany, the price of “firewood, wood pellets or the like” was up 86% last month compared with the same period a year earlier. In Bulgaria, the near-doubling of firewood prices fed into a recent decision to stop exporting wood to non-EU countries.

Someone recently told a radio station in Poland that it might now be cheaper there to chop up old furniture and burn it than to buy firewood. In the Netherlands, suppliers were already running out before summer’s end. Even in Switzerland, where the inflation rate has been relatively tame, the price of firewood was up by about 26% last month.

This stockpiling of firewood comes as the region's interest had already grown in the use of wood pellets as a cleaner fuel alternative to coal (pellet consumption hit a new high in the EU last year). Overall supply in that corner of the market was squeezed recently by an EU ban on wood pellets imported from Russia, however.

Logs for heat and pellets for fuel are not the only wood products being impacted by geopolitics. The cost of toilet paper has spiralled in many places, as prices for the energy needed to cook up the required wood pulp have increased; one toilet paper maker in Germany has started trying to use coffee grounds as a pulp alternative.

Wood provides a particularly glaring example of the ongoing cost-of-living crisis impacting much of the world, as supply chain irregularities and conflict distort the value of everything from bread to used cars (the price increase last month for used cars in Switzerland: 16%).

Unusually-high demand for wood is not just an economic issue, however; it also has environmental implications.

In Hungary, a loosening of logging regulations meant to help meet the increased need for firewood sparked protests last month that drew thousands of people – some of them literally hugging trees.

Wood pellets have also been a source of concern. While burning wood as fuel has been touted as carbon-neutral, as long as the trees being used are replanted, serious questions have been raised about how clean and sustainable the practice really is.

Research has shown that burning wood for energy emits more carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour generated than fossil fuels, making the speedy growth of new trees to absorb those emissions imperative.

“Cutting down forests for energy use is neither sustainable, nor does it help with our energy independence,” a German member of the European Parliament was recently quoted as saying.

The thirst for firewood has other implications; the air pollution caused by burning wood can be problematic, and firewood theft has become an issue. Bigger picture, high wood prices can incentivize overharvesting and illegal logging, and any wood that’s burned can’t be used as construction timber able to store carbon for long periods.

Still, a steady supply of wood logs promises to be key for the overall effort to limit energy use this winter, and nudge the region closer to energy independence from Russia (while European businesses have already notched tangible reductions in the use of energy, household habits have proven more difficult to gauge).

In France, for example, the government has called for a 10% reduction in energy use aided by changes in behaviour; as in neighbouring countries, firewood sales are up.

Of course, the country’s been here before, and not so long ago.

In 1974, amid a different sort of energy crisis, French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing tried to set a good example by refusing to heat a frigid Elysée Palace with anything more than firewood – regardless of who was coming over for lunch.

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