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Biofuelwatch actively supports the campaign for an EU moratorium on agrofuels from large-scale monocultures. Agroenergy monocultures are linked to accelerated climate change, deforestation, the impoverishment and dispossession of local communities, bio-diversity losses, human rights abuses, water and soil degradation, loss of food sovereignty and food security.

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Savoy State Forest, "Shelterwood Logging", New State Road, 2008; Photo: Massachusetts Forest Watch.

Across the US and the EU as well as in many other countries, government policies and subsidies are triggering the development of large-scale industrial wood power stations as well as increased co-firing of coal with wood. Similar 'renewable energy' policies, for example in the UK, Germany and Italy, are also incentivising agrofuel (mainly palm oil) power stations. According to media investigations, wood power stations planned in the UK will burn at least 20-30 million tonnes, mostly imports.

Biomass has almost certainly become the largest growing market for wood products. This is leading to more intensive and destructive logging, for example in Massachusetts, and to a rush for more industrial tree plantations. In West Papua, for example, plantation concessions have been awarded for an area of diverse rainforest on which many local communities depend, specifically for wood pellets and wood chips for export (see report by EIA).