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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:23AM
> But about the clear-cutting: sounds like the environmental subsidies should be paid after 20 years.
> First year: cut some Slovenian forest down. Profit!!!!1! register with EU for subsidy.
> Year 20: EU pays out subsidy, *if* it looks like the forest is again full of mature trees. Otherwise: oh it seems you forgot to replant it 19 years ago.
But in practice:
First year: cut Solvenian forest. Register with EU for subsidy.
First year + 1 day: borrow against future EU subsidy, sell stake in EU subsidy, short EU subsidy. Pay out bonuses.
Year 20: Ooops. No forest, no subsidy. Collect short profits. Investors complain, EU bails them out.
Didn't we see that somewhere before?