NGOs Call on UN Climate
Conference to Fix Flawed Carbon Accounting Rules: Don’t
let our future go up in smoke!
A
worldwide network of environmental groups take a stand
against large-scale Forest Biomass burning to produce
energy, a False Climate
Solution.
21st October 2022
– Leading up to COP27, a network of more than 190
non-government organisations worldwide will take action
today – the International Day of Action on Biomass – to
highlight the impacts of large-scale biomass energy, a false
solution to climate change that actually emits as much, if
not more, CO2 as burning coal.
In November,
governments will meet in Egypt where they will have the
opportunity to fix the UNFCCC’s broken carbon accounting
system. Currently, anyone looking to quantify emissions from
energy production will not be able to find figures for
burning biomass when they look at Energy Sector accounts,
because, unlike fossil fuels, these very real, substantial
emissions are not counted at the smokestack. Not
surprisingly, this has led to the claim that burning
bioenergy produces zero emissions, a dangerous fallacy that
in turn has resulted in the development of policies that
encourage biomass burning. The UN must also recognize that
throwing wood into a coal-fired power station furnace along
with the coal is not a credible form of emissions abatement
– it extends the life of coal power and actually increases
smokestack carbon emissions.
The proliferation of
biomass energy around the world has come at a high social
and environmental cost. To highlight this, a wave of online
and offline actions and events, organised by the Biomass
Working Group of the Environmental Paper Network (EPN), will
travel around the world today – starting in Australia and
moving to Asia, Africa and Europe, then on to the Americas.
The Biomass Working Group has members in nearly 50
countries, who have all signed The
Biomass Delusion, a position statement that articulates
that burning forest biomass for energy is exacerbating the
climate crisis.
Peg Putt (1), Coordinator of
Policy and Campaigns for the Forests, Climate and Biomass
Energy working group said: “Widespread concern
about this fake “renewable” should be heeded by the UN
climate conference, which can and should fix the root cause
of the problem – the notoriously flawed accounting rules
that enable a false impression of carbon neutrality to be
perpetrated. On the basis of this false claim, many
countries have promoted burning forests for energy at a time
when we should be protecting them to keep carbon out of the
atmosphere and biodiversity safe.
“Inflicting damage
on natural forests, accelerating land grabbing and
monoculture plantation expansion, exposing disadvantaged
communities to pollution, all whilst accelerating climate
change, are some of the impacts being highlighted in
today’s wave of action on big
biomass.”
Quote (2), Kazue Komatsubara, a
researcher for Friends of the Earth Japan, said
“Burning trees for electricity is neither sustainable nor
carbon neutral but a new threat to climate and biodiversity.
Japan’s reliance on imported wood pellets is responsible
for the increasing destruction of forest ecosystems in the
countries where the pellets are produced. Large-scale
biomass power generation, including co-firing and the
subsidies for it, must be stopped before it’s too
late.”
Quote (3): Kwami Kpondzo, Friends of
the Earth Togo, said: “Tree
plantations for energy are already being established on a
large scale throughout Africa, making it inevitable that
large volumes of wood will eventually be exported to be
burned in the Global North to meet the rapidly growing
demand for biomass. There is already evidence of this
emerging trend in Ghana, where a Norwegian company (APSD)
has acquired large areas of land to establish eucalyptus
plantations on. The exploitation of land in the Global South
by companies in the Global North to make a profit is a form
of modern-day colonialism.”
Quote (4) Yuyun
Indradi, TrendAsia, Indonesia said, “In Indonesia,
we have already experienced massive deforestation as a
result of logging and the establishment of large-scale
monoculture plantations by the pulp & paper and palm oil
Industry, causing the Guinness Book of World Records to
recognise us as the country with the fastest rate of forest
destruction on the planet. Plans to develop more plantations
to supply the biomass industry will only create a new threat
to our remaining tropical rainforest and its biodiversity.
We agree that coal-fired power plants must be immediately
retired, but burning forests for energy is not the
alternative. This only worsens the climate crisis and has to
stop.”
Quote (5) Fernanda Andrade, a resident
directly impacted by a biomass power station, Portugal
said, “With no information provided to residents in
advance or an environmental impact study, construction began
in 2018 on a biomass power plant in Gramenesa-Fundão, next
to our homes that have been here for decades. It works
uninterrupted night and day. In addition to the various
types of pollution emitted from the plant, noise being the
most problematic, they also chip wood on site, right next to
our homes. The daily stress and pollution caused by all this
ongoing torment is seriously degrading our health. Sleep
deprivation, nervousness, heart and lung problems,
depression, and even the abandonment of people’s homes have
been a constant throughout these nearly five years of
torture. This biomass power plant and its chipping facility,
built a few metres from our homes, is our slow death
sentence.”
Quote (6) Diego Oyarzo, Colectivo
Viento Sur, Chile said “Here in Chile, pulp and
paper mills are building over-sized, dedicated biomass
boilers in order to take advantage of strong policy support
and financial incentives for producing electricity from
burning wood. Arauco’s Valdivia mill built in the early
2000s in southern Chile is a good example of this. These are
essentially stand-alone biomass power stations that require
more feedstock than the waste produced by the adjacent pulp
mills, meaning that additional wood is brought into the mill
and burned in order to sell electricity to the public grid.
These developments are not only increasing pressure on our
forests and incentivising the establishment of monoculture
tree plantations, but they also harm communities and
increase carbon emissions.”
Quote (7) Jana
Ballenthien, forest campaigner at ROBIN WOOD, Germany
said, “In Germany, wood from
forests is already being burned directly in power plants.
The German energy companies are not yet involved in the big
import business and the conversion of coal-fired power
plants, but they are on the verge of it. On the
International Day of Action on Big Biomass, we are demanding
that Robert Habeck, the German Federal Minister for Economic
Affairs and Climate, takes a strong stand against the
burning of our forests in the RED negotiations and that the
German government sets nationally ambitious goals for a
socially-just and climate-friendly energy and heat
transition and against the burning of wood in power
plants.”
Quote (8) Bhola Bhattarai, NAFAN,
Nepal said “Many indigenous and local communities
are dependent on forests in Nepal. Around 44% of our forests
are community-managed forests. In this context, the Nepal
government should stop providing licences for
industrialised, large-scale production and use of forest
biomass for energy. The Biomass
Energy Strategy 2017 supports the expansion of
industrial biomass production in Nepal. Most affected are
the thousands of forest-dependent women, Dalits, and other
marginalized communities who get fodder, firewood, grass,
timber, and herbs from the forest. If forests are instead
exploited by the biomass industry to produce pellets on an
industrial scale, poor forest-dependent people will lose
their livelihoods.”
Quote (9) Jenny Weber,
Campaign Manager at the Bob Brown Foundation,
Australia said “Australia’s Labor Government is
currently considering excluding native forest biomass from
eligibility under our Renewable Energy Act. Failing to
remove it would be a climate and biodiversity crime in this
age of breakdown. Burning of logged wood from native forests
releases far more emissions than coal and the loss of native
forests also means we are losing a critical solution…
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