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]
