The provincial government of Málaga has mobilised 17.2 million euros for a forest biomass strategy that converts woodland debris into fuel for public buildings, with the aim of reducing wildfire risk while lowering municipal energy costs.
The scheme works on a circular economy model: material cleared from the mountains to reduce fire danger is chipped and burned in biomass boilers that heat and cool public facilities, replacing diesel and electricity.
From single town to regional network
The plan launched in 2019 in Yunquera, a town of around 2,900 people, where public buildings switched from oil and electric boilers to biomass heating. A first investment of 6.2 million euros established a heat network that now serves schools, libraries and senior centres across nine municipalities in the Sierra de las Nieves area.
A public collection and treatment centre opened in Yunquera about a month ago, backed by a further 2 million euros. The facility converts into wood chips the 562 tonnes of timber extracted last year from public forests in Yunquera and the nearby town of El Burgo, under a pilot programme combining felling, pruning and thinning operations.
Those residues represent nearly half the fuel the area's biomass boilers require through winter. Between this year and 2028, the Málaga authority intends to invest nearly 9 million euros more to extend the network to 14 municipalities in the Valle del Genal and the Valle del Guadiaro.
Call for national roll-out
Francisco Salado, president of the Diputación de Málaga, said the initiative deserves to be replicated across Spain. He described it as a model that turns accumulated forest residues from a problem into a solution, one that protects the natural environment while generating economic activity and employment.
Salado said no one is safe from the possibility that a major wildfire could undo years of work, and that is precisely why action cannot wait until fire arrives. He called on the central government, Spain's autonomous communities and other provincial authorities to adopt the project, and offered the technical expertise and experience built up over recent years.
Salado also serves as president of the Commission of Diputaciones, Cabildos y Consells Insulares of the FEMP, the federation representing local government, and announced he would bring the project to the body's next major meeting.
He acknowledged that provincial and local authorities can achieve little without financial, bureaucratic and regulatory support from the central government and the autonomous communities. He criticised the bureaucratic tangle he said confronts any institution or private body seeking to remove forest matter from the mountains, and warned that the wildfire problem is worsening and has become a national emergency that only attracts attention in summer.
Depopulation adding to the risk
Aitor Hernández, a technical engineer in the Climate Change Service of the Diputación de Málaga, said depopulation and the decline of traditional activities such as grazing and firewood collection have raised the volume of combustible material accumulating on the hillsides.
The Yunquera centre, inaugurated at the end of June, is the only public facility in Andalusia dedicated to producing wood chips through silviculture, Hernández said. Responsibility for forest management in the region, where most land is publicly owned, rests with the Junta de Andalucía.
Switching to biomass has cut municipal energy bills by up to 65 percent in some cases. Hernández noted that carbon dioxide released by burning biomass is treated as carbon-neutral because it was already present in the atmosphere, unlike petroleum-derived fossil fuels, which release carbon that had been stored underground.
