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ajor marketing campaign teams have joined forces to sentence the continued burning of wooden from forests and power crops in UK energy stations.
Campaigners from Greenpeace, WWF, the RSPB, Wildlife Trusts, Wildlife and Countryside Hyperlink and Mighty Earth are among the many NGOs who’ve penned an open letter to Power Secretary Grant Shapps forward of the anticipated publication of the Authorities’s new Biomass Technique.
The activists are calling on ministers to finish all subsidies for burning wooden from forests and power crops in energy stations and to not award power corporations any new help or contracts to take action.
Bioenergy has been promoted as a carbon-neutral and renewable power supply on the idea that the emissions launched by burning wooden and crops may be offset by the carbon dioxide taken up by these planted to interchange them.
The trade claims that the wooden is sustainably sourced from forestry waste – like twigs and offcuts reasonably than entire timber – and that carbon seize expertise may also help to catch CO2 emissions when its burned.
However scientists and activists have been elevating critical doubts over the veracity of those sustainability claims and whether or not biomass ought to play a serious function in nationwide internet zero plans.
“The idea that burning wooden is carbon impartial is fake,” the campaigners wrote on Friday.
“It is extremely completely different than the genuinely low-carbon power supplied by wind, photo voltaic, or geothermal.
“Bioenergy energy vegetation are a few of the largest sources of carbon dioxide within the UK.
“It’s assumed that they’ll offset their emissions by regrowing the timber which can be lower down. However this will take a long time – time we don’t have within the race to chop emissions and deal with local weather change.”
Within the letter, the campaigners additionally claimed that burning wooden pellets has been discovered to extend power payments, carries larger dangers to UK power and meals safety in comparison with wind and photo voltaic, and causes air pollution that may negatively have an effect on well being and nature.
They disputed Authorities and trade arguments that carbon seize expertise could make bioenergy “carbon adverse”, including that the UK’s internet zero plans are based mostly on “flawed calculations”.
Elsewhere, they raised issues that subsidies shall be granted to energy corporations in the event that they commit to make use of carbon seize expertise – however no matter whether or not they truly achieve this.
“Billions of billpayers’ cash could also be used for business-as-usual burning of timber,” the letter warned.
The Authorities is about to unveil a brand new biomass technique on the finish of June, outlining how utilizing sustainably-sourced wooden and carbon seize expertise may also help the UK attain internet zero.
Power big Drax, which runs the wood-burning energy plant in Yorkshire, has been hoping the Authorities will lengthen wooden burning licences past the present 2027 expiration.
However the latest Local weather Change Committee’s report into the Authorities’s internet zero progress discovered that biomass energy vegetation should not be given contracts to function from 2027 if the UK hopes to attain its targets.
The vast majority of biomass burned within the UK is sourced and shipped from international locations just like the US, Canada and Estonia with producers usually counting on authorities subsidies to make revenue.
Many been rocked by scandals lately, going through allegations of reducing down entire timber reasonably than simply forestry waste and polluting the air of susceptible communities the place the wooden pellets are made.
The campaigners referred to reviews that Drax’s personal scientific advisers informed the corporate to cease calling biomass “carbon impartial” and referring to the wooden it makes use of as “waste”.
In addition they cited analysis which discovered that Drax is a serious PM10 polluter – small particles that may be inhaled and trigger well being points.
Gemma Hoskins, senior UK director at Mighty Earth, mentioned: “Chopping down timber to make wooden pellets to burn for electrical energy isn’t carbon impartial, it’s a carbon nightmare, releasing extra carbon into the ambiance than coal.”
Alex Mackaness, senior coverage adviser for bioenergy at RSPB, mentioned: “Shifting ahead, burning timber for electrical energy technology, even with carbon seize and storage, shouldn’t be supported, and as a substitute the Technique should determine how we greatest use the scarce biomass sources we now have at our disposal in a method that delivers each for individuals and nature.”
Matt Williams, campaigner for Minimize Carbon Not Forests, added: “It has develop into crystal clear how dangerous burning timber is for the local weather, forests, and folks’s power payments.
“It’s time to consign burning timber in energy vegetation to the previous, and give attention to defending forests.”
A Division for Power Safety and Web Zero spokesperson mentioned: “We’re dedicated to sustaining our strict biomass sustainability standards, to make sure biomass use genuinely contributes to the UK’s decarbonisation efforts and is consistent with the UK’s local weather and environmental targets.
“Our ambition is to stay on the forefront of biomass sustainability, strengthening our already strict standards the place required.
“The Biomass Technique will current additional element on this space.”
PA has contacted Drax for remark.
