‘Use of biomass from forests is not sustainable’

The Dutch cabinet is causing a stir in terms of climate and energy, but with the biomass document it takes the cake. Let Dutch (former) politicians monitor this document in Brussels: Franz Timmermans, vice president of the European Commission, and his right-hand man Dietrich Samsom. This is one of the main reasons why we are stuck with even more large-scale subsidies for the Dutch couple to use woody biomass for energy production. The urgent question that this raises is why these men at the national and European levels are trying to justify this environmental corruption of unprecedented proportions.

The hard truth is that in Estonia, Latvia and the United States valuable forests and natural areas are being destroyed for industrial wood burning. Whole trees go into the chipper at the site and enter the Rotterdam harbor as wood chips. These can be 100 years old trees, from protected animal habitats or from rich charcoal soil.

According to Samsom and Timmermans, the ‘criteria for extra tight stability’ in the new EU mandate to address all this is an open mockery. Not only does the current practice show with certainty that the criteria are unattainable and verifiable, but above all they will never contribute to solving the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

International Petition

So five Dutch ecosystems and natural systems have pulled out of the biomass sustainability agreement this week. They feel deceived and previous concerns about abuse have been underestimated by companies and subsequent ministers who have not been taken seriously.

The same thing is happening at the European level. Over the past two years, criticism and opposition have grown into an international coalition of more than 100 organizations, and in recent weeks an international petition has raised concerns about EU rules for wildlife on behalf of more than a quarter of a million Europeans. And a short film. Not only about the impact of precious forests in the Baltic countries, but also on the impacts in Romania, the United States and Canada.

Three weeks ago, an international petition was handed over at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels. The group represented 128 NGOs and was led by Comite Sean LutzNL, Bird Life Europe, Weymouth EU and the Forest Conservation Alliance. The petition urges Timmermans to remove wildlife from the EU order as ‘renewable energy’.

The simple reality is this: Greenhouse gas emissions cannot be reduced by the continued use of large amounts of wood, which has been fueled by billions of subsidies.

The claims of small businesses about the use of sawdust do not change this. This sawdust and other residual materials are best used to make chipboards and other products. However, there is not enough sawdust for both industrial processing and energy production, so that half of the biomass burned in the EU now comes directly from forests.

Forests that have already been heavily affected by massive clearing in recent years are under even greater pressure. So burning wildlife is not sustainable; This is exacerbating the climate and biodiversity crisis.

Environmental error

The biomass story resonates on all sides. Fraud, deception, lying, discourse: choose your word. It is not fair, it is not stable, it is renewable. The Joint Research Center, a scientific body of the European Commission, has already decided that energy from biomass can not compete with fossil fuels in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. This is one of the biggest environmental misconceptions internationally and politically because it is a misinterpretation that wildlife contributes to CO2 ‘reduction targets’.₂Emission. Everyone knows that wildlife burning contributes to an increase in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Moreover, it spends billions of dollars on subsidies very foolishly.

It is time for a paradigm shift before the European Commission sends a new order to the European Parliament: Stop using taxpayer money to destroy our last forests.

European Parliament warned: Be prepared, do not be fooled by lies, listen to society and science. They know better than current partners what is going on.

Fenna Swart (Director of the Clean Air NL Committee and affiliate with Leiden University), Wolfgang Richard (Greenpeace Climate and Biodiversity Campaign Manager in the Netherlands) and Mary Booth (US Partnership Director for Ecology and Policy Integration)