Welcome to our first newsletter of 2022! It’s full of updates about campaigns that we – and you – have been supporting, along with policy developments. We are also sending you our very best wishes to you all, due to the terrible situation in Ukraine and the latest IPCC report confirming our worst fears about the climate crisis. These are frightening and uncertain times. Our thoughts are with everyone in Ukraine and their families and friends, and we are supporting Ukrainian NGOs calling for a ban on the import of Russian wood. We will be sending round a call for action on this in the next few days – watch this space. For now, further information and a link to help provide humanitarian aid below.
Biofuelwatch NEWSLETTER March 2022 is out now! take action on calling on the UK government to ban wood imports from Russia and Belarus, find out more about a new role we are hiring for and lots of updates and lots… Click To Tweet1. Action: support Ukraine call for ban on wood imports from Russia and Belarus
2. We are hiring: Biomass Campaign Community Organiser
3. Watch post Burned Screening Discussion with colleagues from US
4. Cut Carbon not Forest
5. Axe Drax demonstration 10th February
6. Burning questions for Drax financers
7. French Companies greenwashing unveiled
8. New Stand.Earth ‘Beyond Burning’ video with Emma Thompson
9. Update from California
1. Action: support Ukraine call for ban on wood imports from Russia and Belarus
As many of us have seen the awful pictures coming out from Ukraine many have been wondering what we can do to support people in that country. A powerful way of showing solidarity is through sanctions which stop the financial resources that are fueling the war. The UK government has pledged some strong economic sanctions, however more still needs to be done to stop the regimes in Russia and Belarus from profiting from trading in products and resources including timber and wood products. We have launched a campaign this week where we are asking you to send an email to your local MP and the Secretaries of State asking for an immediate wood import ban. If you haven’t already done so we have added the link below for you to send an email.
2. We are hiring: Biomass Camping Community Organiser
We are hiring a Biomass Campaign and Community Organiser, if you have great facilitation skills and are experienced at campaigning at a community level in North East of England, Humberside, Yorkshire and the Midlands please click below to see the full job description and information on how to apply.
3. Post-Burned Screening Discussion with colleagues from US
Thank you to everyone who joined us on the 8th of February for an online screening of Burned: Are Trees the New Coal. The event was co-hosted by Biofuelwatch, Cut Carbon Not Forests and Bristol Friends of the Earth.
We were delighted to be joined by two guest speakers for a post-film discussion, and you can find a video of that discussion with Donna and Mac below.
Donna Chavis has over 40 years of service in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors on the local, state, and national level and currently serves as Senior Climate Campaigner with Friends of the Earth US. She is a Founder and Convener of the RedTailed Hawk Collective and was a member of the Planning Committee of the First National People of Color Leadership Summit in 1991 which developed the Principles of Environmental Justice, to which she remains committed to this day. She is a member and elder of the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina.
Mac Legerton is a rural development specialist who works with multiple nonprofits on the local, state, and international level. He serves as Co-Director of the Robeson County Cooperative for Sustainable Development, Program Director of the NC Climate Solutions Coalition, and is the Sponsorship Relationship Manager for the international, Global Carbon Reward, a new international climate stabilization policy and project.
If you, or a group you are part of, are interested in organizing a screening of this award-winning documentary please email us a: biofuelwatch@gmail.com. We will try to organize guest speakers from wood pellet-sourcing regions shown in the film.
4.CCNF calls out Drax greenwashing
On the 24th of February Drax published its financial results for 2021. Cut Carbon Not Forests planned to call out the company’s greenwashing by projecting a message onto Drax’s smokestacks. Sadly, increased security around the power station (and the police) stopped the team from sharing the projections.
Some financial media covered the results with articles which contained absolutely zero information about how misleading Drax’s claims of “sustainability” are, and credulously reported on Drax’s plans to implement bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. That’s why it’s still so important we push back and make sure people are hearing the truth – that burning trees for energy is not green or sustainable – and that’s why CCNF has decided to share the video they were planning to project, and are amplifying it on all of their social channels.
You can see the video on Biofuelwatch’s Twitter and Facebook pages.
5. Axe Drax demonstration
Climate justice campaigners took part in online and in-person demonstrations outside Leeds Crown Court on the 10th February in support of health and safety charges against Drax Power Station, and to stand in solidarity with its workers, who it’s alleged were improperly protected against dangerous wood dust.
6. Burning questions for Drax financers
The brilliant team at Sharklays recently published an article on their website looking at Barclays relationship with Drax. This relationship has consisted of financing from Barclays for Drax’s £300m facilities which were shared in the group’s 2020 annual report. Drax is the biggest single emitter of CO2 in the UK, and third biggest in Europe – as well as producing large amounts of dangerous particulate matter – all while costing taxpayers billions of pounds in subsidies every year, since the UK government considers biomass renewable and even excludes the emissions from its total in climate change accounting.
7. French Company’s greenwashing unveiled
We were pleased to be part of a joint article by Environmental Paper Network, and Dogwood Alliance which exposed Albioma’s greenwashing of their coal-to-biomass conversions in the French Overseas Territories of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Réunion. The French energy company is in the process of converting or replacing at least four coal power plants in French Overseas Territories to biomass. Albioma’s website implies that it relies on sugarcane, but in reality it increasingly burns wood pellets from Enviva, a company based in the Southern USA. Enviva routinely sources wood, including whole logs from mature trees, from the clearcutting of highly biodiverse coastal hardwood forests in the Southeastern USA.
8.New Stand.Earth ‘Beyond Burning’ video with Emma Thompson
Burning trees for energy is anything but clean, just or green. But politicians are subsidizing the forest biomass industry internationally to the tune of billions of dollars a year, and pretending it’s a climate solution. Watch and share this new Stand.earth video, narrated by actress, Emma Thompson, and tell your government the forest is worth more standing:
9. Update from California
Our colleague Gary has been busy in California with lots of media based work which we wanted to share with you. First KPFA news has an interview with Gary about the ‘Carbon Capture? or Captured Futures?‘ report on Sacramento climate politics.
Gary also gave an interview to the ‘Green and Red Podcast’ on The Myth of California’s Climate Exceptionalism. We have added the youtube video and link to this below: