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from the I-think-you're-doing-it-wrong dept.
What a surprise: If you subsidize something, you get more of it. In the EU, there are financial incentives for generating energy from renewable sources. Trees are a renewable resource, true enough, but I doubt that the Eurocrats intended to subsidize the massive destruction of forests.
Protected forests are being indiscriminately felled across Europe to meet the EU's renewable energy targets, according to an investigation by the conservation group Birdlife.
Up to 65% of Europe's renewable output currently comes from bioenergy, involving fuels such as wood pellets and chips, rather than wind and solar power.
Bioenergy fuel is supposed to be harvested from residue such as forest waste but, under current legislation, European bioenergy plants do not have to produce evidence that their wood products have been sustainably sourced.
Birdlife found logging taking place in conservation zones such as Poloniny national park in eastern Slovakia and in Italian riverside forests around Emilia-Romagna, where it said it had been falsely presented as flood-risk mitigation.
[...] Jori Sihvonen, the biofuels officer at Transport and Environment, which co-authored the report, said: "It is easy to fall into thinking that all bioenergy is sustainable, but time and again we see some forms of it can be worse for society, the natural environment and, in the case of burning land-based biofuels or whole trees, even the climate.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday December 02 2016, @10:52PM
I also found this statement unbelievable :
Up to 65% of Europe's renewable output currently comes from bioenergy, involving fuels such as wood pellets and chips, rather than wind and solar power.
First, it doesn't jive with all the much touted wind and solar claims over the last few years, and second if they are burning wood to generate energy they are doing it wrong. Its about the dirtiest way to get heat, worse than coal.
There are forest to biofuel projects [alaskaair.com] that MIGHT eventually make a difference, but usually these are way more expensive than the fuel they replace, and not all that practical.
With certain tree species (poplar and similar) that will sprout from their roots and re-grow if you leave even a short 6 inch tall stump, and you can harvest these with machinery every 5 to 10 years and chip them directly into trucks for transfer to rendering plants. Its been done by paper companies for fiber for 40 years in some markets. (The trick is never let them get bigger than you can mow and chip in place without a huge crew of workers - maybe 3-4 inches diameter at ground level).
But even if all these schemes pass some lame sustainability test, they invariably run afoul of CO2 emissions concerns.
If you just PLANT the trees, and let them grow to a large sustainable forest you do more for the environment than cutting them down and burning them.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 03 2016, @11:00PM
A standing forest is a giant pulse CO2 emission waiting to happen. Forests burn, it's actually natural and beneficial to many species of larger trees.
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