FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 16, 2022
BRUSSELS/SYDNEY – With a world leading move, Australia has excluded native forests from eligibility as a renewable energy source under the national Renewable Energy Target, increasing pressure on Europe to exclude forest biomass from the Renewable Energy Directive.
Peg Putt, Coordinator for Forests, Climate and Biomass at the Environmental Paper Network, said: “Europe can no longer claim global leadership on the renewable energy transition while such a large proportion of its so-called renewable energy is burning forests. Now the European Union has a world leading example of genuine policy reform that shows the way. Forest biomass is not renewable and its use for large scale energy should not be subsidised. It is vital to avoid the release of large carbon stores to the atmosphere that occurs with burning forests for power and heat, and equally important to avoid the unacceptable impacts on forest biodiversity. The world has to go beyond burning and adopt genuine low emissions renewables.”
The EU’s fraught Trialogue deliberations on how to treat forest biomass in RED II are continuing into next year. Europe has been taking advantage of a carbon accounting anomaly that gives an exaggerated sense of emissions reductions, simply because the large GHG emissions of burning wood do not appear in energy sector carbon accounts, whilst fossil fuel emissions do. The wood burning emissions impact the atmosphere regardless, but are hidden in notoriously flawed land sector carbon accounts – often in a different country than the one consuming the wood for energy.
Australia’s recognition of impacts on natural values and of strong community opposition to burning forest biomass is the course that Europe should also take in response to the same strong community concerns. The Australian Government statement says that native forest biomass is no longer considered an ‘eligible renewable energy source’ for the purposes of the Renewable Energy Target, and electricity it generates cannot be used to create tradeable Large-scale Generation Certificates.The decision takes into account strong and long standing community views.
This decision will put pressure on Enviva, Drax, and other companies in the biomass business over their appalling wood sourcing from old growth and biodiverse natural forests, including the old growth forests of Canada and the biodiverse swamp forests of the southern US. Romanian forests have been illegally logged and then burnt elsewhere in Europe.
Peg Putt said: “Frantic greenwashing has been unable to hide these travesties which are regularly unmasked by investigative journalism. Governments must step in to put an end to this, rather than being part of the problem. Financiers should grow a conscience too.”
Contact: Ms Peg Putt, +61 418 127 580, peg.putt@gmail.com, Coordinator – Forests, Climate and Biomass Working Group at Environmental Paper Network
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