[SCE] Press Release: Global NGOs react to biomass industry greenwashing drive

Wed Nov 10 09:25:10 PST 2021

The State has embarked on a program of burning  fuels derived from fire
resiliency operations for energy production.

The fire management plan includes 50 biomass generation plants
strategically located across the State - where "low value wood product" -
materials removed (small trees, brush, chaparral, etc) as part of fire
ladder management will be hauled to these plants to be burned for energy
production.

It should be obvious that this plan can be abused for profit (unnecessary
removal for profit and to keep the plants running).  And....that this will
be a continuous and expensive process (opening the forest allows for brush
generation and more understory generation which needs future management as
a fuel source and the thinner forest lets wind in which can push fire -
and/or the loss of natural habitats that were productive ecosystems.

I did go over this in my paper: CLIMATE, FORESTS, BIOMASS, WATER YIELD AND
EMERGENCY RULES FOR FUELS MANAGEMENT

New threat to California’s forest and rivers  - attached.

The Resources Agency (and the Air Board) are pushing this plan along -
with Governor Newsom pushing for results in treated ground.

> ==========================
> Sonoma Coast Environmental
> ==========================
> This is important.  The logging industry and the biomass industry are
> spreading much misinformation and capitalizing on the fear of fire to
> institute policies that will only make the fire hazards worse.
>
> Rick Coates
> Executive Director
> Forest Unlimited
> 707-632-6070 or rcoates at sonic.net
>
> Please consider the environment before printing this email
>
> ”It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”
> ---Ben Franklin
>
>> On Nov 9, 2021, at 8:11 PM, Ruess <ruepqrst at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> FYI:
>>
>> take good care,
>> Rue
>>
>> Global NGOs warn COP26 that burning forest wood for energy sabotages
>> climate action
>> Declaration reacts to high-profile biomass industry greenwashing drive
>>
>> Contacts:
>> Peg Putt, Coordinator at Forests, Climate and Biomass Energy Working
>> Group at the Environmental Paper Network| peg.putt at gmail.com
>> <mailto:peg.putt at gmail.com> | +61 418 127 580
>>
>> Mary Booth, Director, Partnership for Policy Integrity |mbooth at pfpi.net
>> <mailto:%7Cmbooth at pfpi.net> | +1 413 404 6324
>>
>> EMBARGO: 00:01 GMT Wednesday 10th November, 2021
>>
>> Environmental organizations are pledging their opposition to burning
>> forest biomass for renewable energy in a declaration issued today at the
>> Glasgow climate conference (COP26). The statement (below) was issued as
>> the biomass and wood pellet industries host a series of events
>> <https://sustainablebioenergy.org/> at COP26 that NGOs say greenwashes
>> the use of forest biomass for energy.
>>
>> Burning forest wood for renewable energy is growing explosively,
>> particularly in Europe where renewable energy targets and subsidies of
>> over €10 billion per year reward biomass as “zero carbon” energy.  While
>> some policymakers promote replacing coal with wood, biomass harvesting
>> and use has been implicated in increasing emissions, degrading the EU’s
>> forest carbon sink and contributing to declining biodiversity. Bioenergy
>> is not being directly discussed at COP26, but the role of nature and
>> carbon uptake by forests and other ecosystems is critical to the world’s
>> ability to deliver the Paris Agreement’s goal of holding global
>> temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees C. Amid concerns about the
>> climate and forest impacts of burning forest wood for fuel, Europe’s
>> largest biomass plant was recently delisted
>> <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/19/drax-dropped-from-index-of-green-energy-firms-amid-biomass-doubts>
>> from a leading clean energy index last month due to sustainability
>> concerns.
>>
>> Peg Putt, a coordinator of the Forests, Climate and Biomass Energy
>> Working Group at the Environmental Paper Network <> called on
>> policymakers to follow the science: “Treating burning wood from the
>> world’s forests as anything other than another source of carbon
>> pollution that damages forest carbon storage has long since been
>> unmasked as a false climate solution, and affected communities and
>> citizens the world over have had enough. Cheap theatre by the biomass
>> industry with claims that burning forest wood is ‘sustainable’ would be
>> laughable if policymakers were not so prone to falling for biomass
>> industry propaganda.”
>>
>> Climate science shows that a pathway to net zero requires drastically
>> reducing emissions and finding a way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere,
>> including by protecting and restoring forests. Burning wood for energy
>> emits more carbon pollution at the smokestack per megawatt-hour than
>> burning fossil-fuels, and multiple peer-reviewed studies have concluded
>> that because forests regrow so slowly, net emissions from biomass can
>> exceed those from fossil fuels for decades to centuries. However, the
>> biomass industry claims that “sustainable” biomass is instantaneously
>> carbon neutral, relying on various justifications including the idea
>> that as long as forests are growing elsewhere, carbon uptake
>> instantaneously offsets emissions from harvesting and burning wood.
>>
>> “We’re in a fight for the future of forests and the climate, but also
>> for the integrity of climate pledges” said Mary Booth, director of the
>> Partnership for Policy Integrity. “Even as policymakers pledge to phase
>> out coal and plant trees to address climate change, they allocate
>> billions in subsidies so the biomass industry can log and burn its way
>> through our forests. Policymakers who think we can reduce emissions this
>> way are living in a fantasy.”
>>
>> Claims by the biomass industry that burning wood is carbon neutral
>> translate to claims that it is “carbon negative” when biomass energy is
>> paired with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Drax, the UK power plant
>> that burns around 7 million tonnes of wood pellets and which owns pellet
>> manufacturing plants of its own in the US and Canada, is seeking
>> additional subsidies from the UK government to support attempts to
>> become carbon negative using BECCS.
>>
>> Deepak Rughani, co-director of UK-based Biofuelwatch, said, “It’s absurd
>> and dangerous to hang COP26 pledges for net zero emissions on BECCS. The
>> IPCC has warned that wood-burning for BECCS will emit more CO2 than it
>> sequesters, and the biomass industry is destroying natural habitats and
>> polluting communities. Further, the CCS aspect of BECCS is deeply
>> problematic with both the carbon capture and the storage technologies in
>> their infancy. Even Drax admits that its BECCS assumptions for energy
>> are not based on real world data.”
>>
>> Many of the wood pellets burned in the UK and internationally are
>> manufactured from forests in the US and Canada. The process is highly
>> polluting, and a number of plants have been found to emit far more air
>> pollution than their permits allow. The issue of siting polluting
>> facilities in environmental justice communities is increasingly of
>> concern to the Biden Administration. Kathy Egland, Member of National
>> Board of Directors of the National Association for the Advancement of
>> Colored People (NAACP) USA & chair of the Board's Environmental and
>> Climate Justice (ECJ) Committee said,
>>
>> “The wood pellet industry, including UK based biomass giant Drax, is
>> cutting through U.S. forests almost at the speed of wildfires and
>> committing human rights violations by deliberately siting their toxic
>> wood pellets plants in low income communities of color. The U.S. has
>> allowed UK based industries to come into our county, decimate our
>> forests and poison the same vulnerable populations already
>> disproportionately harmed by fossil fuels - just to burn trees for a
>> false energy solution that’s even worse than coal and will not get us to
>> 1.5C.”
>>
>> ### end of media release
>>
>>
>>
>> Global Movement Opposes Burning Forest Wood for Renewable Energy
>>
>> Citizens and non-government organisations around the globe oppose
>> large-scale use of forest biomass for energy.
>>
>> These groups, representing millions of members internationally, declare
>> that logging and burning forests is bad for the climate, bad for human
>> health and bad for the rich biodiversity of forests.
>>
>> They call for:
>> ●       An end to renewable energy subsidies and other incentives for
>> burning forest wood
>> ●       Redirecting this support to energy efficiency and true
>> low-emissions renewable energy sources
>> ●       Excluding the burning of forest wood from counting toward
>> renewable energy targets
>> ●       Prioritizing forest protection and restoration as a solution to
>> climate and biodiversity crises
>> ●       An end to environmental injustice, human and civil rights
>> violations associated with the biomass industry
>>
>> Statements of opposition comprise:
>>
>> Global: 170 NGOs: The
>> <https://environmentalpaper.org/the-biomass-delusion/>Biomass Delusion
>> <https://environmentalpaper.org/the-biomass-delusion/> position
>> statement – signed by 170 NGOs
>>
>> Europe: 285,000 citizens & 130 NGOs: A WeMove petition
>> <https://act.wemove.eu/campaigns/biomass-europe>, “The EU must protect
>> forests not burn them for energy”
>>
>> UK: 31,000 citizens & 22 NGOs
>> <https://elc-insight.org/uk-joint-ngo-statement-on-biomass-for-net-zero/>:
>> UK petition
>> <https://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/292/982/428/saynotoburningtrees1/>
>>
>> US: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People:
>> Resolution in Opposition to Wood Pellets Manufacturing and Use of
>> Wood-Bioenergy
>>
>> Japan and South Korean NGOs: Japan - South Korea NGO Statement on
>> Biomass
>> <https://forestdefenders.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Japan-South-Korea-NGO-Statement-on-Biomass.pdf>
>>
>> African NGOs:  <https://globalforestcoalition.org/21-oct-africa/>No Land
>> Grabbing for Industrial Biomass
>> <https://globalforestcoalition.org/21-oct-africa/>
>>
>> Australian NGOs:
>> <http://forestsandclimate.org.au/threats/national-position-statement-against-forest-bioenergy/>National
>> Position Statement against Forest Bioenergy
>> <http://forestsandclimate.org.au/threats/national-position-statement-against-forest-bioenergy/>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> Groups "SonCo_Env.Leaders" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>> an email to sonco_envleaders+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com
>> <mailto:sonco_envleaders+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com>.
>> To view this discussion on the web visit
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sonco_envleaders/E7909D4B-6C30-4F8B-B614-503CFE94B9DF%40gmail.com
>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sonco_envleaders/E7909D4B-6C30-4F8B-B614-503CFE94B9DF%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout
>> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.
>
> _______________________________________________
> =========================================
> The Sonoma Coast Environmental Listserver
> TO UNSUBSCRIBE or to otherwise manage your subscribership, visit
> http://lists.mcn.org/mailman/listinfo/sce

Alan Levine
Coast Action Group
Affiliate of Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance
(707)  542-4408

Alan Levine
Coast Action Group
Affiliate of Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance
(707)  542-4408