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– For immediate release –
Contact: Ms Peg Putt +61 418127580, email – peg.putt@gmail.com
We need a Global Renewable Energy Target without Big Biomass Energy Expansion
Dubai, 1 December 2023. As climate COP28 convenes in Dubai, the Biomass Action Network of EPN* warns that burning forest biomass at scale for centralised energy generation is at least as emissive as coal per unit of produced energy. It undermines the ability of forests to keep carbon out of the atmosphere. and sequester more, and is increasingly implicated in human rights abuses and untenable claims of “abatement” via co-firing wood with coal in coal-fired generators.
Big biomass is a dangerous distraction from real, effective action to combat climate change and is causing immense damage under misguided subsidy schemes. It must not be expanded under The Global Renewable Energy Target which will be discussed in Dubai – says Peg Putt, coordinator of Biomass Action Network of EPN Unknown to many who think of solar and wind power in relation to renewable energy, burning wood for energy dominates “renewable” energy in Europe and the OECD – bioenergy accounts for around 60% of renewable energy with solid wood biomass, at around 45% of all renewable energy, being its largest component Ms Putt explained. Wind and solar have small shares by comparison.
After the Glasgow COP 26 Decision to “phase down unabated coal power”, schemes to take out 5-10% of coal in generators and substitute it with forest biomass are being put in place. As a consequence coal-fired power is entrenched, forests and forest communities are being destroyed whilst emissions are not reduced. In Indonesia, this will result in large scale deforestation and conversion of natural forests to 2.3 million hectares of energy plantations under government mandated “abatement” plans.
A doubling or tripling of biomass energy cannot be countenanced but is foreshadowed by IRENA and the IEA. The world needs low emissions sources and not this destructive logging, burning, and polluting human rights abuser that masquerades as renewable. – says Peg Putt
The UNFCCC has unwittingly encouraged the expansion of centralised, wood-fired generators and a large international trade in wood pellets via its flawed carbon accounting rules for this specific form of energy. Under the current rules, only the emissions from fossil fuels are reported and accounted for at the smokestack whilst the very real emissions from biomass combustion are not. Biomass burning emissions are never explicitly reported, instead they are buried somewhere in the total land sector changes (if a country actually chooses to account for the land sector). They are frequently attributed to another country where biomass was sourced rather than the one which actually generates energy by burning wood. To most policy makers this means that burning forest biomass is carbon neutral encouraging them to reach abatement goals by promoting investments in Big Biomass Energy projects.
Flawed carbon accounting for forest biomass has to be fixed via a revision of the UNFCCC and IPCC rules. Some IPCC scientists who developed the methodology are recognising its flaws which lead to unintended adverse consequences that must be fixed.– says Peg Putt – Communities are suffering too, as indigenous and local communities are dispossessed from forests and from land converted to energy plantations. Others are suffering air pollution in the regions where wood pellets are manufactured and where they are burnt in centralised generators.
* The Biomass Action Network of EPN is a global network of hundreds of CSOs across 6 continents working together for environmental and social responsibility in the biomass industry. It is based on a shared position opposing the harms of burning forest biomass in centralised energy generators expressed in the Biomass Delusion statement, which member groups endorse.
The press release is also available in Chinese on the website of EPN China www.environmentalpaper.cn
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