The World is Mobilizing In opposition to Massive Biomass This Week

Communities all over the world will spotlight that the manufacturing and export of forest-based biomass threatens communities and the local weather.

On Thursday, October nineteenth, people and organizations all over the world will participate in a world day of motion in opposition to “Massive Biomass.” In demonstrations, briefings, and different actions spanning six continents, members will stress that burning forest-based wooden pellets for large-scale vitality manufacturing harms communities and imperils efforts to combat local weather change. Communities will urge governments in lots of nations to forestall carbon-storing forests from being was wooden chips, and to implement world safeguards that stop forest-based biomass from being handled as a local weather answer at moments like this 12 months’s Local weather COP.

Worldwide Day of Motion on Massive Biomass 2023, Picture courtesy of The Environmental Paper Community (EPN)

A number of the key geographies the place NRDC is working with companions to combat the threats of biomass embody the US, Canada, and the UK. The U.S. and Canada have develop into main gamers within the forest biomass economic system, rating first and third respectively, in world exports of wooden pellets for commercial-scale vitality manufacturing. The UK is Europe’s largest importer of wooden pellets.

Opposite to onerous science, business maintains that wooden pellets from logged forests are a sustainable supply of vitality. Consultants have proven that clearcutting forests to be exported and burned for biomass is a false local weather answer, that it destroys carbon-storing timber and soils, and that these actions will launch extra CO2 than burning fossil fuels on the timescale that scientists say is essential to cut back emissions. With world temperatures smashing data in 2023, emissions have to fall now to forestall passing harmful local weather tipping factors. In nations together with Canada and the UK, forest-based biomass additionally depends closely on authorities subsidies that in any other case may broaden actually clear vitality at a fast scale or help the safety of pure carbon shops.

But some nations are shopping for this false promise. The UK, like many different European nations, is hinging its vitality future on importing huge volumes of forest-based wooden pellets, claiming that this can assist them obtain web zero emissions. Canada, in flip, exports 90 p.c of the wooden pellets it produces, feeding rising worldwide demand from Europe and Asia. Giant volumes of pellets used for biomass come from Canadian main forests, or never-industrially-disturbed, irreplaceable carbon shops that scientists say have to be protected. Canada’s failure to transparently measure and report on the true emissions related to widespread industrial logging has allowed it to downplay the price of clearcutting carbon-rich forests, fostering the false narrative that this logging – and biomass manufacturing – is carbon-neutral.

Within the U.S. — as in Canada — whereas burning wooden pellets to generate electrical energy remains to be a comparatively small portion of the nation’s vitality portfolio, the logging of timber and manufacturing of wooden pellets which can be exported abroad is increasing considerably. The business is just not solely contributing to the local weather disaster, however is an environmental justice menace. Pellet mills within the U.S. disproportionately hurt weak communities which can be already affected by environmental injustices. They emit harmful air pollution, together with soot, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and unstable natural compounds, and have repeatedly exceeded air air pollution limits. Communities are reporting vital well being impacts. Within the southeastern U.S., pellet mills are greater than 50% extra possible to be situated in excessive poverty communities of shade.

As one instance of the business’s enlargement within the U.S., the wooden pellet business is rising its geographical attain into California to raised serve markets in Japan and South Korea. The business observe file of environmental injustice threatens to proceed because the proposed port location of Stockton is within the 99^th percentile statewide for air pollution burdens. This neighborhood — ranked as inside the prime 5 of deprived communities in California — is demanding their commissioners block the mission proposed by Golden State Pure Sources.

On October 19, communities all over the world will come collectively united in opposition to forest-based biomass, stressing its dangers to communities and the local weather. The query is: will governments hear?

Initially printed on the NRDC Knowledgeable Weblog. Courtenay Lewis, Supervisor of Ecosystems Coverage, Canada Undertaking, Worldwide Program, Elly Pepper, Deputy Director, World Biodiversity Conservation, Nature Program; and Rita Frost Forest Advocate, Nature Program