Email alert: Stop more deforestation biofuels and peat burning as 'green energy'
Almuth Ernsting | 04.01.2007 11:23 | Climate Chaos | Ecology
On 10th January, the European Commission is expected to make a final decision on the European Biomass Plan. There are serious concerns that they will promote ever more biofuels from palm oil, soya and sugar cane linked to rainforest destruction, peat drainage, biodiversity losses and, in some cases, human rights abuses. There is even pressure on them to class and supoort peat as a source of 'renewable biomass'. Please write to the European Commission today to express concerns.
The European Parliament have now voted on the Biomass Action Plan. They can only make recommendations and the final decision will be made by the European Commission, probably on 10th January.
Some of the European Parliament's resolutions are extremely alarming:
They recognised that, without safeguards, biofuels could cause serious environmental harm, accelerate deforestation and do little to reduce greenhouse gas emission (fine, although they seem to hvae ignored a recent study by European research institutions which warns that one the worst type of biofuels, palm oil from South-east Asian peatlands, is linked to ten times the carbon emissions from an equivalent amount of mineral oil).
BUT:
They still want to massively expand Europe's palm oil industry right away, without having any safeguards in place.
They refused a ban on palm oil.
They are pushing for certification, even though no single certification scheme exists (the one which is furthest developed, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, still hasn't even got a time-table for certifying anything sustainable and there is no evidence that the companies involved have improved their practices at all), and nobody knows for sure if certification could work anyway.
They want to abolish compulsory set-asides, even though the European Environment Agency and conservation NGOs all say that this would dramatically reduce Europe's biodiversity.
And finally they want to class PEAT as a source of 'long-term renewable energy' for biomass. Now that would be a sure way of considerably increasing our greenhouse gas emissions in the name of 'green energy'. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change clearly say that it's not renewable, it's not biomass or bioenergy and it is linked to high carbon emissions from burning and also from cutting it (it's actually worse than most conventional fossil fuels because you don't just release the carbon from what you burn, but from a whole peatbog which you'll need to have drained first). Finland and Sweden already subsidise 'green electricity' from peat!
What to do:
Go to
http://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?id=europe_biofuel
Please edit your letter if possible - but if you don't have time to do that, sending the standard letter unedited will still help! Many thanks.
Almuth
Some of the European Parliament's resolutions are extremely alarming:
They recognised that, without safeguards, biofuels could cause serious environmental harm, accelerate deforestation and do little to reduce greenhouse gas emission (fine, although they seem to hvae ignored a recent study by European research institutions which warns that one the worst type of biofuels, palm oil from South-east Asian peatlands, is linked to ten times the carbon emissions from an equivalent amount of mineral oil).
BUT:
They still want to massively expand Europe's palm oil industry right away, without having any safeguards in place.
They refused a ban on palm oil.
They are pushing for certification, even though no single certification scheme exists (the one which is furthest developed, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, still hasn't even got a time-table for certifying anything sustainable and there is no evidence that the companies involved have improved their practices at all), and nobody knows for sure if certification could work anyway.
They want to abolish compulsory set-asides, even though the European Environment Agency and conservation NGOs all say that this would dramatically reduce Europe's biodiversity.
And finally they want to class PEAT as a source of 'long-term renewable energy' for biomass. Now that would be a sure way of considerably increasing our greenhouse gas emissions in the name of 'green energy'. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change clearly say that it's not renewable, it's not biomass or bioenergy and it is linked to high carbon emissions from burning and also from cutting it (it's actually worse than most conventional fossil fuels because you don't just release the carbon from what you burn, but from a whole peatbog which you'll need to have drained first). Finland and Sweden already subsidise 'green electricity' from peat!
What to do:
Go to
http://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?id=europe_biofuel Please edit your letter if possible - but if you don't have time to do that, sending the standard letter unedited will still help! Many thanks.
Almuth
Almuth Ernsting
e-mail:
info@biofuelwatch.org.uk
Homepage:
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk