New Report Slams “Sustainable” Biomass Energy

Bio­mass ener­gy is not sus­tain­able at an indus­tri­al scale, accord­ing to a new report by Bio­fu­el­watch, an inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion based in the US and Unit­ed King­dom (UK). Sus­tain­able Bio­mass: A Mod­ern Myth sounds the warn­ing bell on trends that would make the UK the world’s largest con­sumer of bio­mass elec­tric­i­ty, along with the inevitable impacts on the cli­mate, forests, pub­lic health, and human rights.

The first-of-its-kind report dis­sects “sus­tain­abil­i­ty stan­dards” being pro­posed by the UK gov­ern­ment to grease the skids for an unprece­dent­ed expan­sion in bio­mass incineration—much of which would come from the US and glob­al south—while pro­fil­ing the enti­ties that would craft and mon­i­tor these standards. 

“Indus­try plans, if realised,” reads the report, “will result in nine times as much wood being burnt for elec­tric­i­ty every year as the UK pro­duces annu­al­ly.” Under the guise of pro­vid­ing envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions, gov­ern­ment bio­mass sus­tain­abil­i­ty stan­dards would open much of the world’s remain­ing forests to the bio­mass indus­try, argue the report’s authors Almuth Ern­st­ing, Rachel Smolk­er and Emil­ia Han­na.

Sus­tain­able Bio­mass: A Mod­ern Myth blames the dis­tri­b­u­tion of gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies, such as Renew­able Oblig­a­tion Cer­tifi­cates, as the “main dri­ver” for this rapid explo­sion in for­est incin­er­a­tion, with pro­posed plans that would “attract around £4 bil­lion in sub­si­dies every year.” Instead, the report rec­om­mends that these lim­it­ed tax­pay­er funds only sup­port “forms of ener­gy which are gen­uine­ly renew­able, sus­tain­able and cli­mate friend­ly,” such as solar energy.

Many of the bio­mass pow­er incin­er­a­tors pro­posed for the UK would be gar­gan­tu­an, the largest sit­ed at Port Tal—a 350 megawatt incin­er­a­tor that would devour rough­ly 3.5 mil­lion green tons of wood per year. The bio­mass indus­try free-for-all would also include full or par­tial con­ver­sion of coal plants to burn var­i­ous per­cent­ages of trees, all under the ban­ner of “green energy.”

While the health impacts of the pro­posed bio­mass boom, includ­ing asth­ma-caus­ing par­tic­u­late mat­ter and car­cino­genic volatile organ­ic com­pounds, would be borne by UK residents—sustainability stan­dards ignore human health—the vast major­i­ty of the logged forests would come from out­side the island nation. As it stands now, bio­mass imports are shipped from Cana­da, the south­east­ern US, East­ern Europe, and Rus­sia. Report authors pre­dict the future sup­ply of forests for bioen­er­gy com­ing “pri­mar­i­ly” from Africa and South Amer­i­ca, an unset­tling throw­back to British colo­nial­ism of yesteryear.

The Bio­fu­el­watch report clears up any mis­con­cep­tions about these giant facil­i­ties being fueled sole­ly by “wood residues,” mak­ing it clear that “across Europe and North Amer­i­ca, bioen­er­gy pow­er sta­tions are increas­ing­ly rely­ing on burn­ing wood from whole trees cut for this purpose.”

Cur­rent­ly, bio­mass devel­op­er RWE logs south­east­ern forests and process­es them in a pel­let mill in Way­cross, Geor­gia to fuel their Euro­pean coal plants co-fired with bio­mass. The RWE facil­i­ty com­man­deers 1.5 mil­lion green tons of wood per year to cre­ate 750,000 tons of pel­lets to ship over­seas. Orga­ni­za­tions such as Dog­wood Alliance, based in North Car­oli­na, are push­ing back against this for­est liq­ui­da­tion for indus­tri­al scale bioen­er­gy, both in the US and overseas. 

Not only will whole live trees be logged to feed the incin­er­a­tors, the report reveals, but nat­ur­al forests around the world will be increas­ing­ly con­vert­ed into monocrop tree plan­ta­tions, large­ly devoid of bio­di­ver­si­ty. Cit­ing Euro­pean indus­try analy­ses, the report deter­mines that “most of the glob­al increase in bioen­er­gy” will come from these cel­lu­lose farms, “increas­ing­ly in south­ern coun­tries,” some uti­liz­ing genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered (GE) trees.

This loom­ing defor­esta­tion for UK elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion will have more than just for­est impacts, but will also vio­late human rights. “Across the glob­al South, indus­tri­al tree plan­ta­tions are expand­ing at the expense of grass­lands, farm­lands and forests, and lead­ing to land-grabs, threat­en­ing the liveli­hoods and rights of pas­toral­ists, small farm­ers, rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, and for­est-depen­dent peoples.”

UK sus­tain­abil­i­ty stan­dards also fall short of their sup­posed goals to pro­tect the cli­mate. “By ignor­ing all emis­sions asso­ci­at­ed with bioen­er­gy in the ener­gy sec­tor, bio­mass pow­er sta­tions are false­ly classed as ‘car­bon neu­tral’ or ‘low car­bon,’” accord­ing to the report. It also calls atten­tion to how life-cycle green­house gas emis­sions are “out­sourced to oth­er coun­tries” rather than account­ed for in the UK and points out how the most recent sci­ence is ignored in the car­bon account­ing from wood sourced with­in the country.

The heart of the report picks apart var­i­ous bio­mass cer­ti­fi­ca­tion schemes, which have been framed by the UK gov­ern­ment as a way to ensure strong envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards, but are con­sid­ered by crit­ics to be just anoth­er form of “green­wash.” Bio­fu­el­watch fore­casts “boom­ing busi­ness for what is a small group of spe­cial­ist con­sul­tan­cy firms which ver­i­fy, inspect and cer­ti­fy adher­ence” to so-called sus­tain­abil­i­ty stan­dards in order to qual­i­fy for subsidies.

“Whether a tim­ber, ener­gy or oth­er com­pa­ny choos­es its own label, a nation­al or less known indus­try stan­dard, or a rec­og­nized glob­al cer­tifi­ca­tion scheme…” reads the report, “chances are that it will turn to a firm belong­ing to the same group of pri­vate ‘inspec­tion, ver­ifi­ca­tion and cer­tifi­ca­tion companies.’”

The report inves­ti­gates and cri­tiques sev­er­al dif­fer­ent bio­mass ener­gy cer­ti­fi­ca­tion schemes, includ­ing Bureau Ver­i­tas, SGS, Con­trol Union Cer­tifi­ca­tion, Ter­raVer­i­tas, Ter­ra­Choice, and Under­writ­ers Lab­o­ra­to­ries. Bio­mass devel­op­ers Drax and Forth Ener­gy have put forth their own stan­dards, exposed in the report as not being based on the most recent sci­ence, not requir­ing suf­fi­cient evi­dence for pro­duc­ers to pass inspec­tions, and being used main­ly as a lob­by­ing tool to influ­ence UK policy.

For­est Stew­ard­ship Coun­cil (FSC) and Pro­gram for the Endorse­ment of For­est Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (PEFC) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion schemes for wood pel­lets are also held under the micro­scope and dis­sect­ed, call­ing atten­tion to a lack of trans­paren­cy in the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process and past envi­ron­men­tal vio­la­tions that occurred under their watch.