UK: END BIOMASS SUBSIDIES – MP Pledge

MPs – How can you support?

In 2018, the government effectively ended future subsidy for burning wood for electricity, sending the clear message that this is no longer considered part of the solution to climate change.

However, UK power stations received £1.5 billion in UK renewable subsidies in 2019 to burn millions of tonnes of wood pellets. Many of these pellets came from clear-felled biodiverse forests in Europe, Canada and the Southern USA. 

The good news is that £1.26 billion of the £1.5 billion in renewable subsidies for biomass burning are Renewable Obligation Certificate subsidies that can be transferred from wood-burning power stations to low-carbon renewable energy.

If you are an MP, please help us to call for existing Renewable Obligation subsidies to be redirected from tree burning in UK power stations towards renewable and low-carbon solar, wave and wind power. 

This will not only save millions of pounds to be invested in genuinely renewable wind, wave and solar energy but will also help the UK to meet our international climate commitments. 

For more information about why we need to redirect Renewable Obligation Certificate subsidies from tree burning to renewables, please see the MP Briefing below.

If you are an MP and you would like to support the campaign, there are 4 keys things you can do:

1. Sign the Cut Carbon Not Forests pledge to help transfer over £1 billion in UK renewable subsidies from tree burning to renewable wind, wave & solar power

 

2. Write to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Alok Sharma, and the Energy Minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, to urge them to redirect renewable ROC subsides from companies that burn trees for electricity to low-cost and truly clean and renewable energy instead.

3. Ask a question in the House of Commons about why the government insists on funding false climate solutions like biomass when the best available science shows that burning trees for electricity accelerates climate change; and whether it would consider redirecting renewable subsides to solar and wind power.

4. Meet with the Cut Carbon not Forest coalition to discuss ending biomass subsides. Please email ccnf@cutcarbonnotforests.org if you would like more information about the campaign or to arrange a meeting. 

Not an MP?

If you are not a MP, You take action in one of 3 ways:

  1. If you live in the UK please contact your MP to sign the pledge using the below form:

2. Or you can contact your UK MP via our Cut Carbon Not Forests website (click below button) and send a email to your local MP.

3. If you live outside of the UK please follow the Cut Carbon not Forests Twitter and Facebook pages or share the below tweet.  

The European Academies Science Advisory Council has recently announced that “Labelling forest biomass as renewable has a perverse impact on the climate. Much of the biomass employed in Europe is anything but carbon neutral. Current accounting rules under the emission trading scheme let certain power plants and countries shine as climate pioneers although they actually damage the climate” 

For more information about this announcement, please see: