Brussels, 27/08/2013 (Agence Europe) - Birdlife Europe has accused the European Commission of totally overlooking the need to guarantee that the use of biomass as a source of energy will bring a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Birdlife made the accusation after getting hold of an internal Commission document (from DG Energy) on biomass sustainability criteria.
Birdlife Europe believes that this oversight is of concern because the EU's current policy on bioenergy, based on the 2008 Renewable Energy Directive, considers biomass as being neutral from the point of view of carbon emissions and does not include either any sustainability requirements or any mechanisms to guarantee that the demand for biomass does not exceed the supply obtained sustainably - which already leads to great environmental damage. The mushrooming of imports of wood pellets from North America, which results in wide-scale damage to biodiversity through increased wood logging is a telling example of this. In Europe, the use of corn for biogas production is just as problematic with the massive destruction of permanent grasslands, including areas protected by the EU Natura 2000 network.
“We are currently subsidising forms of bioenergy that end up increasing emissions rather than decreasing them and this won't change under the proposal that emerged from DG Energy. EU biomass subsidies are now threatening species half way around the world, as is the case of the Cerulean Warbler and the Prothonotary Warbler whose south-eastern US habitats are being clear-felled so that the forest can be pelletised and shipped to European power plants”, says Ariel Bruner, the head of EU policy at Birdlife Europe.
As things stand, what the Commission plans is only a simple extension of the criteria already applicable to biofuels without dealing with the specific problems of biomass, and the Commission ignores the ILUC factor, which is rather surprising as a proposal has been tabled for taking account of the ILUC factor in the production of biofuels, the NGO observes.
Birdlife Europe is especially concerned by the fact that the proposal considers the logging of primary forests sustainable as long as these forests are affected by fire, wind or pest outbreaks, which are all typically natural phonomena in virtually all primary forests. Birdlife Europe deplores the fact that the proposal would not even require biogas plant operators to check regularly for methane leaks, when methane leakage (an extremely powerful greenhouse gas) is widespread and cancels out the benefits of replacing fossil fuel with biogas. (AN/transl.fl)