Today a coalition of green groups and businesses, including the RSPB, has written to the Secretaries of State for Business and for Energy and Climate Change, Vince Cable and Ed Davey.
We are calling on them to protect the wildlife, climate and jobs that are threatened by the rapid expansion of bioenergy based on burning trees. We want them to act to limit the size of the biomass industry to sustainable levels.
You can help as well. Please write to your MP today and call on them to support only sustainable biomass.
Here is the letter we have sent:
We believe that Government needs to act quickly to limit support for large-scale electricity-only biomass, both to protect our climate and environment, as well as the many British businesses that depend on affordable sources of wood, pulp and other forms of biomass.
Current plans to subsidise biomass electricity could see the sector consuming the equivalent of six times the UK’s annual forestry harvest by 2017. These plans threaten to increase our greenhouse gas emissions, and this increased pressure on a scarce and valuable natural resource will threaten the survival of existing industries – in wood, wood panels, packaging, construction, furniture and paper.
Over 40,000 jobs rely on these industries and many of these would be at risk thanks to the reckless pursuit of biomass electricity. 8,400 people rely on jobs in the wood panel industry. The sawmilling industry, which supports a further 12,000 jobs, could be jeopardised. In addition the paper industry in the UK represents at least 25,000 direct employees and, it is estimated, up to 100,000 indirect employees.
A growing body of evidence highlights the carbon debt created when a tree is harvested and burned. This debt can take between decades and centuries to repay as trees re-grow, meaning that this kind of energy fails to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the medium term; however, current calculations of the emissions from biomass electricity ignore this and the biomass industry does not have to count them when it receives subsidies. [You can read more about this in RSPB, Friends of the Earth & Greenpeace report, 'Dirtier than Coal: Why Government plans to subsidise the burning of trees are bad news for the planet, 2012'.]
Whilst bioenergy releases the carbon stored in wood into the atmosphere, the use of wood for products such as construction timber, packaging, fencing, wood panels and furniture plays an important role by locking that carbon up for very long periods, often well in excess of 60 years after harvesting, quite apart from extended carbon storage when wood fibre is recycled and re-used. A Forest Research report commissioned by the Department of Energy and Climate Change clearly concludes that using woody biomass for energy-only consistently performs worse from a carbon point of view than more traditional uses. When using forest biomass the underlying principle should be to maximise the beneficial use of this renewable but ultimately limited resource and to apply a cascading approach to resource use wherever possible and appropriate.
Bioenergy has an important role to play in the UK’s renewable energy strategy, but not through the use of wood (except genuine wastes) for electricity alone (as opposed to more efficient, good quality combined heat and power). It is clear that burning wood for electricity alone fails to provide the emission savings it is designed for while putting at risk other industries which perform far better from a carbon point of view. As such, we are calling on Government to use the UK Energy Bill to reflect environmental realities and to limit the scope of biomass in the energy sector and ultimately to put sustainability at the heart of the policy framework for biomass.
Mike Clarke, Executive Director, RSPBJohn Sauven, Executive Director, GreenpeaceAndy Atkins, Chief Executive, Friends of the EarthDavid Sulman, Executive Director, UK Forest Products AssociationDavid Workman, Director General, Confederation of Paper IndustriesBob Livesey, Joint Managing Director, EggerKarl Morris, Managing Director, NorbordMike McKenna, Director, KronospanAlistair Kerr, Director General, Wood Panel Industries FederationJohn Dye, President, TIMCONHamish Macleod, Director of Public Affairs, BSW TimberJohn White, CEO, Timber Trade FederationPaul von der Heyde, Chairman, British Furniture ConfederationJackie Bazeley, Managing Director, British Furniture ManufacturersMichael Powell, Chairman, FIRA, Furniture Industry Research Association
Please do help by writing to your MPs and calling on them to support only sustainable biomass today if you can.