The promoting advertising marketing campaign group ‘Lower Carbon Not Forests’ has shared a mannequin new infographic that tells the story of the UK authorities’s hypocrisy on forest conservation and native local weather — displaying that right now, timber want our voices.
Lower Carbon Not Forests is a hard-hitting promoting advertising marketing campaign from a coalition of environmental advocacy teams to level out the UK’s wasteful subsidies for companies that burn timber for electrical energy and to place strain on policymakers to help reform.
The multi-channel group, led collectively by Biofuelwatch, Dogwood Alliance, the Pure Property Security Council and the Southern Environmental Legal guidelines Centre, requires an finish to biomass burning subsidies, redirecting billions of kilos to fill a “crucial funding hole” for numerous renewable vitality decisions, very like wind and movie voltaic.
Watch the infographic beneath…
Based totally on the coalition, the UK is essential consumer of biomass electrical energy in Europe, backed by higher than £1 billion (€1.1 billion) per 12 months in authorities subsidies, paid out by way of a value on vitality funds. The group says burning wooden in energy stations is “no larger for the native local weather than burning coal”.
Lower Carbon Not Forests’ new infographic contrasts the realm of forest the federal authorities pledges to plant with timber as a part of its “Nature for Native local weather” fund with the realm of forest that can have to be scale back down over the an an identical interval to provide the UK’s huge demand for wooden to burn as gasoline for electrical energy.
A status for motion to assist our timber
A contemporary YouGov polling concerning public attitudes all through the UK about biomass vitality confirmed that fewer than one in 4 Britons (23%) suppose electrical energy generated by burning wooden from forests need to be categorized as renewable vitality, whereas large majorities (upwards of 80%) as soon as extra the Authorities supporting wind and movie voltaic vitality.
85% of respondents anxious concerning the impact on wildlife if timber in forests are being scale back all the easiest way proper all the way down to generate electrical energy – essential end consequence all through the survey.
And because the COVID-19 lockdown has been eased, 82% of respondents furthermore agree that the UK ought to intention to protect enhancements in air high-quality by switching to vitality sources with no related air air air air pollution emissions. Burning biomass from forests in actuality releases harmful air air air air pollution like particulate matter, along with native local weather air air air pollution.
Lower Carbon Not Forests, is rallying constituents to contact their Member of Parliament and press for an finish to subsidies.
Their promoting advertising marketing campaign’s title to motion urging MPs to redirect billions in biomass subsidies to specific clear and renewable vitality like image voltaic and wind shall be discovered correct proper right here.
In conditions of direct motion, activists have furthermore begun lining the put collectively tracks carrying wooden pellets to the Drax plant, an indication of defiance in opposition to this soiled vitality.
Undermining environmental conservation and native local weather targets
The Environmental Audit Committee merely presently achieved a status for proof on biodiversity and ecosystems, looking for enter on the easiest way it may larger combine and improve its efforts to deal with biodiversity, native local weather change and sustainable enchancment.
These are laudable targets. Nonetheless the UK authorities’s tree planting and worldwide forest conservation efforts are dwarfed yearly by the dimensions of dangerous subsidies that it continues to provide vitality firms that import wooden from abroad forests to burn for electrical energy below the guise of producing renewable vitality.
This isn’t solely wasteful financially, nonetheless counterproductive to environmental conservation and native local weather targets. Keep in mind the following:
- Per her response to a query tabled by Rosie Cooper MP concerning native tree planting, the Secretary of State for Setting, Meals and Rural Affairs acknowledged that, all through the 2020 Worth range Assertion, the federal authorities launched a £640m “Nature for Native local weather fund” for England. Based totally on the announcement, this may point out an extra 30,000 hectares of timber (roughly 300 sq. kilometers), “a forest bigger than Birmingham,” over the next 5 years.
Nonetheless, in 2019, wooden pellet sourcing for Drax’s coal-to-biomass conversions at Drax Energy Station alone required sourcing of over 7 million tonnes of wooden pellet, roughly 4.5 million tonnes of which had been sourced from forests all through the southern United States.
Supplying this demand required the harvesting of roughly 340 sq. kilometres of forests all through the area. At this diploma, 5 years of current thus requires 1,700 sq. kilometers of harvesting, equal to 6 occasions the realm the UK intends to plant by way of the “nature for native local weather fund.” And as quickly as additional, Drax really imported higher than 1.5 occasions that from all sources in 2019, so your entire forest harvest impact is certainly moderately so much increased.
- And eventually, per the response Ms Cooper acquired from the Secretary of State for Worldwide Enchancment, DFID tales that it has invested £57.2 million (2017-18), £53.1 million (2018-19) and £50.8 million (2019-20) in bilateral forest programmes over the sooner three years. This implies the UK’s annual abroad forest conservation funding is lower than 4% of what it spends to subsidise importing wooden from abroad forests to be burnt for vitality yearly.
Taken collectively, it’s clear that billions in UK biomass subsidies crowd out completely totally different efforts at forest conservation.
Burning timber
Biomass subsidies help the harvest and burning of big components of timber from ecologically delicate forests all world huge for electrical energy, contributing to their degradation and endangering the wildlife that rely upon them.
Inserting an finish to as shortly as and for all to the UK’s damaging legacy of reliance on biomass electrical energy is vital to serving to reverse the biodiversity disaster and have to be on the core of how the UK bolsters its conservation insurance coverage protection insurance coverage insurance policies and invests in a extremely inexperienced restoration from the COVID-19 pandemic.
What’s at stake correct proper right here is upwards of £1 billion per 12 months, at present paid to firms that burn timber for electrical energy, nonetheless utterly on the Authorities’s discretion to half out and reinvest in exact native local weather and conservation decisions.
