biofuelwatch: ROC and RHI alert to MPs

UK RENEWABLES POLICY

This alert is for residents of the UK only.

Background

Under EU legislation, the UK has to supply 15% of energy by 2020 from renewable sources. This should be a good (if all too small) move for climate and environment. But there is a danger if policy favours those renewable energy technologies that have significant adverse environmental impacts - such as biofuels and biomass. Not all so-called renewable energy is 'good'.

The government's subsidies for renewable electricity (Renewable Obligation Certificates or ROCs) favour biofuels such as palm oil over onshore wind, i.e. they support an energy source which makes climate change even worse. Peat expert Professor Siegert of Munich University has commented on palm oil power plants in Germany: "We were able to prove that the making of these plantations and the burning of the rain forests and peat areas emits many thousands of times as much CO2 as we then are able to prevent by using palm oil. And that is a disastrous balance for the climate." Biofuel subsidies are disastrous not only for the climate but also for rural communities across the global South, for food prices and for forests and biodiversity and human rights.

Attracted by large subsidies (around £17.5 million per year for a 20 MW power station), several companies are planning to build a series of vegetable oil power stations, while others work on entering the heating oil market and building smaller biofuel power plants. Last year, three local authorities refused planning applications for biofuel power stations, following major concerns about the global impact of biofuels, as well as about health impacts on communities living close to planned developments. However, the push for more biofuel burning will continue as long as subsidies remain.

The new market for biofuels for heat and power is additional to the fast growing market for biofuels for transport which is already causing more deforestation, more hunger and more indigenous peoples and small farmers being displaced from their land.

As well as biofuels, ROCs also favour large-scale industrial biomass burning which will primarily come from woodchip and wood pellet imports. Drax power station alone is planning to burn up to 6.1 million tonnes of biomass a year, all or predominantly imported. Prenergy has permission to build the world's largest wood-fired power station in Port Talbot, Wales (350 MW) and Anglesey Aluminium is planning a 300 MW biomass power station in Wales. Both are reliant on imports.

According to recent media research, current biomass power station plans in the UK will require at least 20-30 million tonnes of additional wood imports tinyurl.com/yjejq8f. The direct and indirect impacts on forests and, on communities as a result of plantation expansion, have not been considered but are likely to be severe. A drastic increase in the trade of wood products will exacerbate the disastrous impacts which the pulp and paper industry is having on forests, people, biodiversity and climate. Burning wood chips for example from South America for example, may be cheaper than investing in solar energy, but for the climate this is a very damaging choice and one which must not be rewarded with subsidies. In West Papua, there are reports of concessions for hundreds of thousands of hectares of rainforest having been granted to establish bioenergy tree plantations, an example of the growing impacts of the growing global market in wood pellets and wood chips for biomass power stations.

Please write to your MP today and ask for an immediate end to all subsidies that encourage the use of biomass and biofuel and for an urgent reform of the 2009 Renewable Obligations Order. We want all Government funding to go towards genuinely sustainable and climate-friendly renewable energy, including wind, marine and solar, NOT biofuels and biomass (which inevitably means large-scale biomass imports). The Renewable Heating Initiative due to come into force in 2011 is also expected to favour bio-energy for heating and will lead to even faster expansion of global biofuel and biomass production. Many thanks.

Please personalise your letter before sending it if possible. It would be particularly effective if you could also visit your MP's surgery and discuss the issues with him or her. You can find your constituency name and your MP's details here: findyourmp.parliament.uk. If you can't find your MP in the list please let us know.

SELECT YOUR CONSTITUENCY AREA/MP:

LETTER TO YOUR MP

Dear Sir/Madam

subject

Re: 'Green energy' subsidies should not be used to stimulate burning biofuels and biomass I am writing to express my concern that existing UK policy on Renewable Electricity is flawed and that the proposals due to be introduced in 2011 for Renewable Heat are likely to exacerbate the problem. Currently the Renewable Obligation gives high levels of financial support to electricity generators to burn liquid biofuels, including palm oil and soybean oil, and biomass, including imported wood from destructive logging and plantations. A major increase in renewable energy is essential, but it must be renewable energy which truly mitigates climate change and protects, rather than harms the environment. Burning large volumes of biofuels and industrial biomass will have the opposite effect. It will also lead to more land being used to grow crops and trees for fuel instead of food and will put more pressures on indigenous peoples, small farmers and other communities in other countries who are already at risk of losing their land and livelihoods to oil palm and other plantations. These problems arise because of financial support arrangements implemented by the UK Government. Such arrangements are permitted under EU legislation, but are not required of member states. Electricity from burning liquid biofuels and solid biomass is now eligible for twice the subsidy (paid as Renewable Obligation Certificates or ROCs) as generating electricity from onshore wind. Biofuel power stations burning 'virgin vegetable oil' are only financially viable because of this subsidy. A series of sizeable biofuel electricity power stations has been proposed as a result of these market subsidies, two of the developers make it clear that they intend to burn palm oil while the others have failed to legally committed themselves to not doing so. Palm oil is the cheapest vegetable oil on the market, and according to UNEP is the main cause of deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia. Deforestation in both countries is linked to the destruction of peatlands and the emissions of vast quantities of carbon. Carbon emissions from peat fires in Indonesia, linked to plantation expansion, have on several occasions been higher than the UK's entire annual CO2 emissions. Palm oil expansion is also linked to the displacement of large numbers of communities, land conflicts and the destruction of indigenous peoples' and other communities' livelihoods. A typical 25 MW biofuel power station would require some 10,000 hectares of oil palm plantations to supply its fuel, adding to pressure on tropical rainforests. If UK-grown vegetable oil were used instead, agricultural land would be taken out of food production, adding to food imports. The 50 MW power station planned for Bristol will burn about 100 million litres (90,000 tonnes) of palm oil a year – the same volume as is currently going into the entire UK transport biodiesel market. In 2005, total EU-27 imports of palm oil were 4.5 million tonnes, equivalent to 9.7 kg per person (FAO). The Bristol power station's annual consumption of 90,000 tonnes is equivalent to over 200 kg of palm oil per head of population in Bristol each year. Far more than they consume in food and healthcare products. The Renewable Obligations Order also gives high levels of support for electricity generation from burning wood. This is encouraging large-scale imports of biomass, particularly woodchips and wood pellets, for example from South America, South-east Asia, West Africa or the southern US (where displacement of wood now used for pulp and paper will mean more pressure on forests and on communities in the global South). No adequate assessment has been carried out on the impact which this new demand has and will have on forests, communities and, in the case of tree plantations, grasslands and other ecosystems, nor on the likely impacts on the climate. There are already reports from West Papua, of concessions being granted for the destruction of hundreds of thousands of hectares of rainforest to establish tree plantations for wood chips and wood pellets, as a result of the growing global market in biomass. Even if the climate impacts of increased logging, forest degradation and land-clearance for tree plantations were ignored, cutting down and burning trees results in immediate up-front emissions of CO2 which will not be reabsorbed for several decades by new planting. At a 2008 industry conference, it was noted that the heating oil market represented a 3 billion-litre opportunity for the biofuel industry. If the proposed Renewable Heat Incentive incentivises this market to any great extent, it will add significantly to the UK consumption of liquid biofuels. Whereas the EU's renewable energy target is binding on the UK it is entirely the UK government's choice whether to support sustainable and climate-friendly true renewable energy or to favour biofuels and massive biomass imports, yet: under EU law, for example, governments cannot discriminate against biofuels from plantations where people have been evicted or even killed and the all-important indirect impacts will remain largely or completely ignored. I would therefore ask you to call on the government to immediately suspend all subsidies for biofuel and biomass electricity under the Renewable Obligation Order and to reform the Order as a matter of urgency so that all subsidies go towards truly sustainable renewable energy, including wind and solar, not biofuels and biomass (which inevitably means large-scale biomass imports). In addition there must be no new bioenergy subsidies under the Renewable Heat Initiative. Yours sincerely,
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