The hidden fact behind the UK’s tree-planting hypocrisy

The promoting and advertising advertising marketing campaign group ‘Lower Carbon Not Forests’ has shared a mannequin new infographic that tells the story of the UK authorities’s hypocrisy on forest conservation and native local weather — displaying that appropriate now, timber want our voices.

Lower Carbon Not Forests is a hard-hitting promoting and advertising advertising marketing campaign from a coalition of environmental advocacy teams to level out the UK’s wasteful subsidies for corporations that burn timber for electrical energy and to place stress on policymakers to help reform.

The multi-channel group, led collectively by Biofuelwatch, Dogwood Alliance, the Pure Property Security Council and the Southern Environmental Legal guidelines Centre, requires an finish to biomass burning subsidies, redirecting billions of kilos to fill a “crucial funding hole” for varied renewable vitality selections, similar to wind and {photograph} voltaic.

Watch the infographic beneath…

Based mostly totally on the coalition, the UK is a really highly effective consumer of biomass electrical energy in Europe, backed by bigger than £1 billion (€1.1 billion) per 12 months in authorities subsidies, paid out by way of a payment on vitality funds. The group says burning wooden in energy stations is “no better for the native local weather than burning coal”.

Lower Carbon Not Forests’ new infographic contrasts the realm of forest the federal authorities pledges to plant with timber as a part of its “Nature for Native local weather” fund with the realm of forest which can must be scale back down over the an similar interval to supply the UK’s big demand for wooden to burn as gasoline for electrical energy.

A fame for motion to assist our timber

A contemporary YouGov polling referring to public attitudes contained in the UK about biomass vitality confirmed that fewer than one in 4 Britons (23%) suppose electrical energy generated by burning wooden from forests need to be categorized as renewable vitality, whereas massive majorities (upwards of 80%) as soon as extra the Authorities supporting wind and {photograph} voltaic vitality.

85% of respondents anxious relating to the affect on wildlife if timber in forests are being scale back all the best way through which all the best way all the way down to generate electrical energy – a really highly effective end finish consequence contained in the survey.

And because the COVID-19 lockdown has been eased, 82% of respondents furthermore agree that the UK should intention to protect enhancements in air fine quality by switching to vitality sources with no related air air air air pollution emissions. Burning biomass from forests in precise reality releases harmful air air air air pollution like particulate matter, along with native local weather air air air pollution.

Lower Carbon Not Forests, is rallying constituents to contact their Member of Parliament and press for an finish to subsidies.

Their promoting and advertising advertising marketing campaign’s establish to motion urging MPs to redirect billions in biomass subsidies to express clear and renewable vitality like {photograph} voltaic and wind will probably be discovered correct proper right here.

In conditions of direct motion, activists have furthermore begun lining the put collectively tracks carrying wooden pellets to the Drax plant, an indication of defiance in opposition to this soiled vitality.

Undermining environmental conservation and native local weather targets

The Environmental Audit Committee merely as of late achieved a fame for proof on biodiversity and ecosystems, searching for enter on the best way through which it may probably better combine and improve its efforts to handle biodiversity, native local weather change and sustainable enchancment.

These are laudable targets. Nonetheless the UK authorities’s tree planting and worldwide forest conservation efforts are dwarfed yearly by the dimensions of dangerous subsidies that it continues to produce vitality corporations that import wooden from abroad forests to burn for electrical energy beneath the guise of producing renewable vitality.

This isn’t solely wasteful financially, nonetheless counterproductive to environmental conservation and native local weather targets. Think about the next:

• Per her response to a query tabled by Rosie Cooper MP referring to native tree planting, the Secretary of State for Setting, Meals and Rural Affairs acknowledged that, contained in the 2020 Value fluctuate Assertion, the federal authorities launched a £640m “Nature for Native local weather fund” for England. Based mostly totally on the announcement, this will more and more recommend a further 30,000 hectares of timber (roughly 300 sq. kilometers), “a forest bigger than Birmingham,” over the subsequent 5 years.

Nonetheless, in 2019, wooden pellet sourcing for Drax’s coal-to-biomass conversions at Drax Vitality Station alone required sourcing of over 7 million tonnes of wooden pellet, roughly 4.5 million tonnes of which had been sourced from forests contained in the southern United States.

Supplying this demand required the harvesting of roughly 340 sq. kilometres of forests contained in the area. At this diploma, 5 years of current thus requires 1,700 sq. kilometers of harvesting, equal to 6 occasions the realm the UK intends to plant by way of the “nature for native local weather fund.” And as quickly as further, Drax truly imported bigger than 1.5 occasions that from all sources in 2019, so your complete forest harvest affect is actually tons greater.

• And finally, per the response Ms Cooper acquired from the Secretary of State for Worldwide Enchancment, DFID tales that it has invested £57.2 million (2017-18), £53.1 million (2018-19) and £50.8 million (2019-20) in bilateral forest programmes over the sooner three years. This implies the UK’s annual abroad forest conservation funding is lower than 4% of what it spends to subsidise importing wooden from abroad forests to be burnt for vitality yearly.

Taken collectively, it’s clear that billions in UK biomass subsidies crowd out completely completely different efforts at forest conservation.

Burning timber

Biomass subsidies help the harvest and burning of huge components of timber from ecologically delicate forests all world broad for electrical energy, contributing to their degradation and endangering the wildlife that rely on them.

Inserting an finish to as shortly as and for all to the UK’s damaging legacy of reliance on biomass electrical energy is important to serving to reverse the biodiversity disaster and must be on the core of how the UK bolsters its conservation insurance coverage protection insurance coverage insurance policies and invests in a extremely inexperienced restoration from the COVID-19 pandemic.

What’s at stake correct proper right here is upwards of £1 billion per 12 months, at present paid to corporations that burn timber for electrical energy, nonetheless utterly on the Authorities’s discretion to half out and reinvest in exact native local weather and conservation selections.