The promoting and advertising and marketing advertising and marketing 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 appropriate now, timber want our voices.
Lower Carbon Not Forests is a hard-hitting promoting and advertising and marketing advertising and marketing marketing campaign from a coalition of environmental advocacy teams to level out the UK’s wasteful subsidies for corporations that burn timber for electrical vitality and to place strain on policymakers to help reform.
The multi-channel group, led collectively by Biofuelwatch, Dogwood Alliance, the Pure Belongings Security Council and the Southern Environmental Legal guidelines Centre, requires an finish to biomass burning subsidies, redirecting billions of kilos to fill a “vital funding hole” for numerous renewable vitality decisions, similar to wind and {photograph} voltaic.
Watch the infographic beneath…
Based on the coalition, the UK is a crucial shopper of biomass electrical vitality in Europe, backed by greater than £1 billion (€1.1 billion) per 12 months in authorities subsidies, paid out by the use of a price on vitality funds. The group says burning picket in vitality stations is “no bigger 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 which can needs to be lower down over the same interval to provide the UK’s big demand for picket to burn as gasoline for electrical vitality.
A popularity for motion to assist our timber
A contemporary YouGov polling relating to public attitudes all through the UK about biomass vitality confirmed that fewer than one in 4 Britons (23%) suppose electrical vitality generated by burning picket from forests need to be categorized as renewable vitality, whereas massive majorities (upwards of 80%) as soon as extra the Authorities supporting wind and {photograph} voltaic vitality.
85% of respondents anxious relating to the impact on wildlife if timber in forests are being lower all one of the simplest ways all the way in which all the way down to generate electrical vitality – an vital 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 really 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 and advertising and marketing advertising and marketing marketing campaign’s title to motion urging MPs to redirect billions in biomass subsidies to specific clear and renewable vitality like {photograph} voltaic and wind will possible be discovered correct proper right here.
In circumstances of direct motion, activists have furthermore begun lining the put collectively tracks carrying picket 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 today achieved a popularity for proof on biodiversity and ecosystems, looking for enter on one of the simplest ways it’d bigger 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 corporations that import picket from abroad forests to burn for electrical vitality beneath the guise of producing renewable vitality.
This isn’t solely wasteful financially, nonetheless counterproductive to environmental conservation and native local weather targets. Take into accout the next:
- Per her response to a query tabled by Rosie Cooper MP relating to native tree planting, the Secretary of State for Setting, Meals and Rural Affairs acknowledged that, all through the 2020 Worth differ Assertion, the federal authorities launched a £640m “Nature for Native local weather fund” for England. Based on the announcement, this may increasingly more and more point out an extra 30,000 hectares of timber (roughly 300 sq. kilometers), “a forest bigger than Birmingham,” over the subsequent 5 years.
Nonetheless, in 2019, picket pellet sourcing for Drax’s coal-to-biomass conversions at Drax Energy Station alone required sourcing of over 7 million tonnes of picket 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 house. 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 the use of the “nature for native local weather fund.” And as quickly as further, Drax really imported greater than 1.5 occasions that from all sources in 2019, so the complete forest harvest impact is certainly fairly a bit greater.
- And finally, 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 means the UK’s annual abroad forest conservation funding is lower than 4% of what it spends to subsidise importing picket 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 massive elements of timber from ecologically delicate forests all world massive for electrical vitality, contributing to their degradation and endangering the wildlife that rely upon them.
Placing an finish to as shortly as and for all to the UK’s damaging legacy of reliance on biomass electrical vitality is vital to serving to reverse the biodiversity disaster and needs 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 corporations that burn timber for electrical vitality, nonetheless utterly on the Authorities’s discretion to half out and reinvest in exact native local weather and conservation decisions.
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