Windfarms could provide windfall for local communities

Hi again

Happy to forward news that the government looks into incentives, such as discounted electricity bills or new playgrounds, for areas that install turbines, just in via the LEG – Lochaber Environmental Group:

Windfarms could provide windfall for local communities

[Press Association/The Guardian, 20 Sept 2012]

Communities that have windfarms in their area could get money off their electricity bills or grants for facilities such as playgrounds, the government has suggested. The Department of Energy and Climate Change has launched a consultation into how communities could benefit from having windfarms sited near them, for example by receiving discounts on other bills or investment in local infrastructure. It will also look at how local businesses could become involved in the supply chain and how developers can best consult local people. Energy secretary Edward Davey said that too often host communities have seen the "windfarm but not the windfall" and he wants to ensure people benefited from them.

Currently the industry pays a minimum of £1,000 per megawatt of turbines installed to local communities, but in some cases companies provide larger benefits packages. The government is also reviewing the cost of onshore wind to ensure subsidies from April 2014 have been set at the right level. Subsidies are due to be cut by 10% from next year, although there were moves by the Treasury to have them reduced by 25%.
Significant opposition to onshore windfarms has been voiced by a number of Tory MPs, who wanted to see subsidies for the technology slashed, but the latest figures show the majority of people are in favour of the turbines. The latest data from Decc's quarterly survey into public attitudes revealed that 66% of people were in favour of onshore wind, although the figure was lower than for other renewable technologies. Onshore wind had the highest level of opposition of the renewable energy sources, although only 12% opposed the technology, with just 4% strongly opposed to it.
Davey said: "Onshore wind has an important role to play in a diverse energy mix that is secure, low carbon and affordable. We know that two-thirds of people support the growth of onshore wind. But far too often, host communities have seen the windfarms but not the windfall. We are sensitive to the controversy around onshore wind and we want to ensure that people benefit from having windfarms sited near to them.
But the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) warned the government against promoting a system in which communities were "paid off" to secure planning permission for windfarms. Tom Leveridge, senior energy campaigner for CPRE, said: "We must make sure that this does not promote simplistic notions of 'sharing benefits' that amount to little more then paying off communities to secure planning permission. This would fundamentally undermine a core principle of the planning system – that planning permission should not be bought or sold – and put the countryside at greater risk from poorly sited wind developments."

For the original article, see:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/20/wind-farms-community-benefits-government

New Biofuelwatch Report – Sustainable Biomass: A Modern Myth

Hi again
A week ago, Biofuelwatch released a new report, ‘Sustainable Biomass: A Modern Myth’. 

Several years before I arrived in Argyll, I had the opportunity to see the destructive effects of large landowners scrabbling for land to produce the new commodity of "biofuel" in Colombia. It keeps happening, to the great distress of crofters, very small landowners in Las Pavas, Sur de Bolivar.
Here's a video documenting the peaceful resistance of villagers/smallholding farmers against the illegal destruction of their land and of their property by Aportes San Isidro S.A., one of the world's big palm oil producers:

Agresión contra familias campesinas desplazadas en Colombia

(In Spanish – the farmers' resilience, resistance and faith-based humour is admirable –
they've been fighting this "dirty game" for six years!)

What initially looked like a great idea has contributed to world hunger, mass displacement of people in the third world, and certainly hasn't helped to push us toward reducing our energy consumption, quite the contrary.

The Biofuelwatch report "explores the certification companies certifying biomass as sustainable, the UK government’s proposed sustainability criteria for biomass, and developer’s ‘promises’ to source sustainable biomass."

Download Sustainable biomass: A modern myth –  A review of standards, criteria and schemes certifying industrial biomass as ‘sustainable’, with particular emphasis on UK biomass electricity developments, Biofuelwatch report [Note: File size 4.75 MB]

Download the Report without pictures (831 kb) here.

Download the Executive Summary (4 pages)


And here's a link to a few good, critical articles in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/biofuels

Make "green energy" truly sustainable

UK RENEWABLES POLICY alert (for UK residents only)

Having received an alert from www.biofuelwatch.org.uk earlier today, I have sent the following letter to Alan Reid, MP.

Please feel free to visit the Biofuelwatch Website, where you will find the letter that you can adapt to suit your own situation.


'Green energy' subsidies should not be used to stimulate burning of biofuels and biomass

Dear Sir/Madam,

Re: 'Green energy' subsidies should not be used to stimulate burning biofuels and biomass

This is not the first time that I am writing to you as the Secretary of Sustainable Oban, but today I am writing from a personal angle as well because some of my family live in one of the countries most seriously affected by EU legislation.

Please therefore allow me to express my deep concern that existing UK policy on Renewable Electricity is flawed and that the proposals due to be introduced in 2011 for Renewable Heat are likely to exacerbate the problem. Currently the Renewable Obligation gives high levels of financial support to electricity generators to burn liquid biofuels, including palm oil and soybean oil, and biomass, including imported wood from destructive logging and plantations.

A major increase in renewable energy is essential, but it must be renewable energy which truly mitigates climate change and protects, rather than harms the environment. Burning large volumes of biofuels and industrial biomass will have the opposite effect. It will also lead to more land being used to grow crops and trees for fuel instead of food and will put more pressures on indigenous peoples, small farmers and other communities in other countries who, in Colombia, Indonesia and Malaysia in particular (one of my sources is pbi – Peace Brigades International, a human rights organisation with "unarmed bodyguards" in Colombia and Indonesia), are already losing their lives, land and livelihoods to oil palm and other plantations.

These problems arise because of financial support arrangements implemented by the UK Government. Such arrangements are permitted under EU legislation, but are not required of member states.

Electricity from burning liquid biofuels and solid biomass is now eligible for twice the subsidy (paid as Renewable Obligation Certificates or ROCs) as generating electricity from onshore wind. Biofuel power stations burning 'virgin vegetable oil' are only financially viable because of this subsidy. A series of sizeable biofuel electricity power stations has been proposed as a result of these market subsidies, two of the developers make it clear that they intend to burn palm oil while the others have failed to legally commit themselves to not doing so. Palm oil is the cheapest vegetable oil on the market, and according to UNEP is the main cause of deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia. Deforestation in both countries is linked to the destruction of peatlands and the emissions of vast quantities of carbon. Carbon emissions from peat fires in Indonesia, linked to plantation expansion, have on several occasions been higher than the UK's entire annual CO2 emissions. Palm oi
l expansion is also linked to the displacement of large numbers of communities, unlawfull killings, land conflicts and the destruction of indigenous peoples' and other communities' livelihoods.

A typical 25 MW biofuel power station would require some 10,000 hectares of oil palm plantations to supply its fuel, adding to pressure on tropical rainforests. If UK-grown vegetable oil were used instead, agricultural land would be taken out of food production, adding to food imports. The 50 MW power station planned for Bristol will burn about 100 million litres (90,000 tonnes) of palm oil a year – the same volume as is currently going into the entire UK transport biodiesel market.

In 2005, total EU-27 imports of palm oil were 4.5 million tonnes, equivalent to 9.7 kg per person (FAO). The Bristol power station's annual consumption of 90,000 tonnes is equivalent to over 200 kg of palm oil per head of population in Bristol each year, far more than they consume in food and healthcare products.

The Renewable Obligations Order also gives high levels of support for electricity generation from burning wood. This is encouraging large-scale imports of biomass, particularly woodchips and wood pellets, for example from South America, South-east Asia, West Africa or the southern US (where displacement of wood now used for pulp and paper will mean more pressure on forests and on communities in the global South). No adequate assessment has been carried out on the impact which this new demand has and will have on forests, communities and, in the case of tree plantations, on grasslands and other ecosystems, nor on the likely impacts on the climate. There are already reports from West Papua of concessions being granted for the destruction of hundreds of thousands of hectares of rainforest to establish tree plantations for wood chips and wood pellets as a result of the growing global market in biomass. Even if the climate impacts of increased logging, forest degradation and la
nd-clearance for tree plantations were ignored, cutting down and burning trees results in immediate up-front emissions of CO2 which it will take new planting several decades at least to reabsorb.

At a 2008 industry conference, it was noted that the heating oil market represented a 3 billion-litre opportunity for the biofuel industry. If the proposed Renewable Heat Incentive incentivises this market to any great extent, it will add significantly to the UK consumption of liquid biofuels.

Whereas the EU's renewable energy target is binding on the UK, it is entirely the UK government's choice whether to support sustainable and climate-friendly truly renewable energy or to favour biofuels and massive biomass imports, yet: under EU law, for example, governments cannot discriminate against biofuels from plantations where people have been evicted or even killed. This means that the all-important indirect impacts will remain largely or completely ignored.

I therefore urge you to call on the government to immediately suspend all subsidies for biofuel and biomass electricity under the Renewable Obligation Order and to reform the Order as a matter of urgency so that all subsidies go towards truly sustainable renewable energy, including wind and solar, not biofuels and biomass (which inevitably means large-scale biomass imports). In addition there must be no new bioenergy subsidies under the Renewable Heat Initiative.

Thank you for your commitment to a truly sustainable Britain.

Yours sincerely,

Margaret Powell-Joss, Secretary
Sustainable Oban
[full address given in original letter]