The European Union is accelerating global warming and damaging forests worldwide, says a lawsuit filed today with the European General Court in Luxembourg.
The case is being brought by an alliance of environmental organisations along with seven individuals who say their rights are being infringed by the EU, which they say encourages wood burning without counting the carbon emissions. The lawsuit aims to end subsidies for biomass energy and stop wood burning counting towards meeting renewable energy targets.
“The EU’s own advisors told them, this is a really bad idea, you’re making climate change worse,” says Mary Booth of the US-based Partnership for Policy Integrity, the science advisor on the lawsuit. “They ignored pretty much all of it.”
Advertisement
Worse than coal
While burning wood might seem to be an appealing alternative to fossil fuels, it actually produces more carbon dioxide than burning coal per unit of energy produced.
“Since new trees don’t instantly, magically appear when you cut down old trees and burn them, there’s a carbon impact,” says Booth. Globally, trees are being felled faster than they can regrow.
What’s more, even if trees do regrow, there will still be more CO2 in the atmosphere than if the original trees had been left to grow bigger. “We need a lot more big trees,” says Booth.
±á´Ç·É±đ±ą±đ°ů,Ěýunder EU law, none of the CO2 emitted when wood is burned is counted. “65 per cent of the renewable energy that the EU uses is emitting carbon, but you’re just not counting the carbon,” says Booth. “So not only are your emissions reductions phoney, your renewable energy is phoney too.”
According to the lawsuit, this violates one of the founding treaties of the EU, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Its objectives include “preserving, protecting and improving the quality of the environment… and in particular combating climate change”.
Clear cut
The claimants include Kent Roberson, whose family have lived, farmed and hunted on 30 acres of forest in North Carolina since 1898. He says the forest around them has been clear-cut to provide wood pellets for export to the EU.
Another is Raul Cazan of Romania, who is fighting to protect some of the last primeval forests in Europe from intensive logging, much of it illegal. “It’s hard to imagine a more counter-productive policy than burning forests for fuel,” Cazan says.
A third claimant, Tony Lowes of Ireland, focuses on the damage done by cutting peat. Its use in power stations was set to end, but will now continue thanks to EU subsidies for burning peat and wood together. “The damage is enormous,” he says.
“The EU is determined to ensure that renewable energy plays a key role in meeting the energy needs of Europeans,” says European Commission spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, who could not comment on the specifics of the case.
Massive scale
While the environmental impact of wood burning is complex and controversial, many researchers agree that its use on a massive scale is a bad idea.
“This is not sensible,” says Duncan Brack of the policy research institute Chatham House in London, who has studied the issue. “And it’s particularly not sensible to subsidise it.”
What’s more, some other countries are now following the EU’s example. Last year the US Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would treat forest biomass as carbon neutral.
And while it isn’t an issue in this lawsuit, wood burning is also a major source of air pollution.
Environmental campaigners are increasingly resorting to lawsuits to try to force politicians to obey the laws they have passed. The EU and many individual countries including the US are being sued for their failure to tackle climate change.
