>“Biomass only exists at the scale that it does because of subsidies,” says Duncan Brack, associate fellow at the London-based thinktank Chatham House. “We’re effectively paying to increase carbon emissions in the atmosphere, which is an absurd use of public money.”
It is also creating new terrible markets elsewhere — this article neglects to mention the massive, new wood pellet industry in the southern US which has been implemented to meet European demand (three quarters of a billion dollars of wood pellets were imported to the EU from the US in 2018). This has led US wood pellet producers too seek to grow the domestic US market for wood pellet use; a terrible outcome on top of the destruction of forest.
Biomass fuel is entirely carbon neutral if done right. We’re not unlocking massive amounts of energy stored over millions of years like with coal.
Also not sure why the article complains about “removing whole tree trunks”. Coppicing would be far less effective than complete replacement of trees.
Let’s quote a guy who doesn’t even have an online presence to get a clickworthy title.
theguardian has degraded by so much these past years.
FWIW burning trees which can regrow is a lot better than burning gas or, god forbid, lignite.
And carbon-neutrality is obviously not a fairy tale. That’s just theguardian trying to get you to read their garbage.
Clear cutting forests in natural reserves is far from being sustainable. It destroys natural habitats and causes biodiversity loss, which is currently as big of a problem as climate change Worldwide. Clear cutting intensively managed “economic” forests is not so bad, because they are often mono-cultures of single tree species and have lower biodiversity than natural forests.
If the author had spent 10 seconds on Google then he would’ve realized his article would’ve been utter nonsense.
Europese forests have actually increased by 10% in two decades.
>The area of forest in the EU increased by almost 10 % in 1990–2020. At the EU level, forestry and logging accounted for 0.2 % of the total GDP in 2018. In 2018, about 520 000 people worked in the forestry and logging sector in the EU, with Poland recording the largest workforce of about 73 300 people.
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>“Biomass only exists at the scale that it does because of subsidies,” says Duncan Brack, associate fellow at the London-based thinktank Chatham House. “We’re effectively paying to increase carbon emissions in the atmosphere, which is an absurd use of public money.”
It is also creating new terrible markets elsewhere — this article neglects to mention the massive, new wood pellet industry in the southern US which has been implemented to meet European demand (three quarters of a billion dollars of wood pellets were imported to the EU from the US in 2018). This has led US wood pellet producers too seek to grow the domestic US market for wood pellet use; a terrible outcome on top of the destruction of forest.
Biomass fuel is entirely carbon neutral if done right. We’re not unlocking massive amounts of energy stored over millions of years like with coal.
Also not sure why the article complains about “removing whole tree trunks”. Coppicing would be far less effective than complete replacement of trees.
Let’s quote a guy who doesn’t even have an online presence to get a clickworthy title.
theguardian has degraded by so much these past years.
FWIW burning trees which can regrow is a lot better than burning gas or, god forbid, lignite.
And carbon-neutrality is obviously not a fairy tale. That’s just theguardian trying to get you to read their garbage.
Clear cutting forests in natural reserves is far from being sustainable. It destroys natural habitats and causes biodiversity loss, which is currently as big of a problem as climate change Worldwide. Clear cutting intensively managed “economic” forests is not so bad, because they are often mono-cultures of single tree species and have lower biodiversity than natural forests.
If the author had spent 10 seconds on Google then he would’ve realized his article would’ve been utter nonsense.
Europese forests have actually increased by 10% in two decades.
>The area of forest in the EU increased by almost 10 % in 1990–2020. At the EU level, forestry and logging accounted for 0.2 % of the total GDP in 2018. In 2018, about 520 000 people worked in the forestry and logging sector in the EU, with Poland recording the largest workforce of about 73 300 people.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Forests,_forestry_and_logging