EU Sued For Climate Impacts of Burning Wood For Energy

 

EU Sued for Climate Impacts of Burning Wood for Energy

Trailer

BURNED: Are Trees the New Coal? is a documentary film that tells the little-known story of the accelerating destruction of our forests for fuel, and probes the policy loopholes, huge subsidies, and blatant greenwashing of the biomass electric power industry. A 30-minute version of the feature-length film will be broadcast and available for free on-demand streaming worldwide on Link TV to coincide with the International Biomass Conference and Expo on March 18-20, 2019 and the UN International Day of Forests on March 21, 2019. This international premiere is being promoted by US and international environmental organizations as part of the BURNED Barnstorming Tour, a grassroots campaign to expose the biomass electric power industry’s destructive forest, energy, and climate practices - Partnership For Policy Integrity

Free Streaming through 12/31/2019

Backup video archive source

__________________________________

Copy (PDF) of Lawsuit on Behalf of Forest Protection Movement, 3/4/2019

__________________________________

Dangerous Delusions: Biomass is Not a Renewable Energy Source

The U.S. is one of the largest suppliers of the staggering 22 million tonnes of wood pellets consumed in the EU each year. Communities in Virginia, Mississippi and North Carolina are already battling to protect forests and to stop the construction of new production plants in socially deprived areas.

EU Biomass Legal Case

Among numerous plaintiffs are two from the US:

1) Dr. Mary S. Booth, director and founder of the US-based NGO Partnership for Policy Integrity, served as Senior Science and Policy Advisor and also provided a witness statement. The Center for Climate Integrity (US) and Fern (EU) have provided support and assistance.

2) Kent Roberson owns thirty acres of forested land in eastern North Carolina that his family has lived on, farmed, hunted and preserved since 1898. The US Southeast is being heavily logged to provide wood pellet fuel to export to the UK and EU. Roberson has witnessed how his now “little island of forest” has been impacted by clearcutting of the once biologically-rich bottomland hardwood forests around him.

EU Sued for Climate Impacts of Burning Wood for Energy

Burning wood for energy—a practice known as biomass— undermines efforts to slow climate change and is no better for the climate than burning fossil fuels, according to a lawsuit filed Monday against the European Union.

The suit, which was filed in the European General Court in Luxembourg, asks the court to prevent EU countries from counting forest wood as a renewable energy source under the 2018 revised Renewable Energy Directive known as RED II. The plaintiffs—individuals and non-governmental organizations from Estonia, France, Ireland, Romania, Slovakia, and the U.S.—allege the practice is harming their health and livelihoods. They point to research that shows wood-burning power plants are worse for the climate than coal-fired plants and result in an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and degradation of forest carbon sinks, which absorb carbon from the atmosphere.

The plaintiffs say energy derived from wood-burning also undermines the goals of the Paris Agreement. The agreement urges countries to protect carbon sinks, including forests and to “take action to implement and support […] activities relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.”

“The EU’s policy relies on the false and reckless assumption that burning forest wood is carbon neutral,” said Dr. Mary S. Booth, director of the U.S.-based Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI) and lead science advisor on the case. “However, scientists from around the world, including the EU’s own science advisors, warned that burning forest wood actually increases emissions relative to fossil fuels.”

Q&A: Advocate says biomass energy is the new coal

Mary Booth is the founder of the Partnership for Policy Integrity, a group that is critical of biomass energy.

How are ratepayers hurt by this?

"Renewable energy credits (RECs) are funded by ratepayers. So when you pay your electricity bill you’re paying extra in RECs and the electric company collects that little bit of extra and reallocates it to all the renewable energy providers in the state. So companies might be collecting millions of dollars a year for energy that we contend is not actually renewable."

Burning wood for power breaches EU treaty, new lawsuit claims

“We are burning up our forest carbon sink and injecting it into the atmosphere,” said Mary Booth, lead science advisor to the case and president of the US-based Partnership for Policy Integrity. “There is forest biomass being shipped thousands of miles to meet biomass demand in the EU. We think that needs to stop.”

____________________________________________

NOTES