Satellite Analysis Ties Japan's Wood Pellet Imports to Accelerating Deforestation in Indonesia

A new satellite analysis says Japan's appetite for wood pellets is driving a fresh wave of deforestation in Indonesia, undercutting the very climate goals the fuel is supposed to serve.

The research comes from Earth Insight working with Indonesia-based Auriga Nusantara and the Indigenous Peoples' Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), according to reporting by the Associated Press. It builds on an earlier October 2024 study that flagged Japanese and South Korean wood-to-energy demand as a deforestation driver. Two years later, the group says the trend has gotten worse, not better.

The Numbers

Japan accounted for nearly 75% of Indonesia's wood pellet exports in 2025, according to Bioenergy Insight Magazine's reporting on the analysis. Gorontalo province on Sulawesi has become the epicenter, supplying more than 94% of Indonesia's wood pellet exports to Japan and South Korea combined, with 80% of that wood sourced from natural forest rather than plantations.

Timer Manurung, director of Auriga Nusantara, told the Associated Press his organization has tracked at least 45 biomass concessions across Indonesia, covering more than 750,000 hectares of natural forest, even though only a handful of mills are currently operating. "The biomass industry has become a new driver of deforestation in Indonesia," Manurung said. "Most of the biomass product is for export, with Japan as the biggest destination."

The analysis found the industry's reach extends into 347 Indigenous territories covering more than 4.3 million hectares and 43 Key Biodiversity Areas totaling 2.8 million hectares, per Bioenergy Insight. Chip mill haul zones overlap roughly 3 million hectares of orangutan habitat, threatening Sumatran, Tapanuli and Bornean populations.

One case stands out. Forest concessions tied to PT Gorontalo Panel Lestari's wood pellet facility span more than 24,500 hectares of tropical moist forest inhabited by the Polahi people, an Indigenous group living in voluntary isolation whose name means "fugitive" in the local Gorontalo language. Nearly 21% of that area, about 7,800 hectares, has already been cleared, according to the analysis.

The Carbon Math Problem

Earth Insight's analysis says biomass power plants emit 50 to 60% more carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour than modern coal plants. Cutting down a forest to burn it for electricity, then counting that electricity as "renewable," relies on ignoring what happens to the trees.

The report notes that more than 500 scientists and economists warned five years ago that treating biomass as carbon-neutral under climate policy would "create a model that encourages tropical countries to cut more of their forests." The new satellite data suggests that warning was correct.

Biomass isn't automatically bad. The International Energy Agency, cited in the AP's reporting, says biomass can be a legitimate part of the energy mix if it comes from genuine waste streams and crop residue rather than intact forest. Worldwide bioenergy use is up more than 55% between 2015 and 2024, according to the IEA, and in Japan it still makes up less than 6% of electricity generation as of 2024, per the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies.

The defense of the current system, as best it can be reconstructed from these sources, is that Japan is trying to hit carbon targets, biomass co-firing is a cheap retrofit for existing coal plants, and international accounting rules have long treated biomass combustion as carbon-neutral at the point of burning. That accounting convention is precisely what critics like Earth Insight say is the flaw: it shifts the emissions ledger to the forest instead of the smokestack, and nobody is properly counting the loss.

None of the source reporting includes a response from Japan's government or from the wood pellet industry defending the sourcing practices in Gorontalo specifically. The question of whether Japan's subsidy structure for biomass power, which critics say continues to reward imported wood pellets regardless of where the wood came from, gets tightened also remains open. Indonesia's own forestry ministry has not been quoted in this round of reporting either, leaving the permitting side of the story—who approved 45 concessions across 750,000 hectares, and under what conditions—largely unanswered.

Sources

Associated Press (via Local10, Click on Detroit, myMotherLode, WBAL); The Independent; Bioenergy Insight Magazine; International Energy Agency; Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies.