The European Union is accelerating global warming and damaging forests worldwide, says a lawsuit filed聽today with the European General Court in Luxembourg.
The case is being brought by an alliance of environmental organisations along with seven individuals who say their rights are being infringed by the EU, which they say encourages wood burning without counting the carbon emissions. The lawsuit aims to聽end subsidies聽for biomass energy and stop wood burning counting towards meeting renewable energy targets.
鈥淭he EU鈥檚 own advisors told them, this is a really bad idea, you鈥檙e making climate change worse,鈥� says Mary Booth of the US-based Partnership for Policy Integrity, the science advisor on the lawsuit. 鈥淭hey ignored pretty much all of it.鈥�
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Worse than coal
While burning wood might seem to be an appealing alternative to fossil fuels, it actually produces more carbon dioxide than burning coal per unit of energy produced.
鈥淪ince new trees don鈥檛 instantly, magically appear when you cut down old trees and burn them, there鈥檚 a carbon impact,鈥� says Booth. Globally, trees are being felled faster than they can regrow.
What鈥檚 more, even if trees do regrow, there will still be more CO2 in the atmosphere than if the original trees had been left to grow bigger. 鈥淲e need a lot more big trees,鈥� says Booth.
贬辞飞别惫别谤,听under EU law, none of the CO2 emitted when wood is burned is counted. 鈥�65 per cent of the renewable energy that the EU uses is emitting carbon, but you鈥檙e just not counting the carbon,鈥� says Booth. 鈥淪o not only are your emissions reductions phoney, your renewable energy is phoney too.鈥�
According to the lawsuit, this violates one of the founding treaties of the EU, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Its objectives include 鈥減reserving, protecting and improving the quality of the environment鈥� and in particular combating climate change鈥�.
Clear cut
The claimants include Kent Roberson, whose family have lived, farmed and hunted on聽30 acres of forest in North Carolina since 1898. He says the forest around them has been clear-cut to provide wood pellets for export to the EU.
Another is Raul Cazan of Romania, who is fighting to protect some of the last primeval forests in Europe from intensive logging, much of it illegal. 鈥淚t鈥檚 hard to imagine a more counter-productive policy than burning forests for fuel,鈥� Cazan says.
A third claimant, Tony Lowes of Ireland, focuses on the damage done by cutting peat. Its use in power stations was set to end, but will now continue thanks to EU subsidies for burning peat and wood together. 鈥淭he damage is enormous,鈥� he says.
鈥淭he EU is determined to ensure that renewable energy plays a key role in meeting the energy needs of Europeans,鈥� says European Commission spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, who could not comment on the specifics of the case.
Massive scale
While the environmental impact of wood burning is complex and controversial, many researchers agree that its use on a massive scale is a bad idea.
鈥淭his is not sensible,鈥� says Duncan Brack of the policy research institute Chatham House in London,聽who has studied the issue. 鈥淎nd it鈥檚 particularly not sensible to subsidise it.鈥�
What鈥檚 more, some other countries are now following the EU鈥檚 example. Last year聽the US Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would treat forest biomass as carbon neutral.
And while it isn鈥檛 an issue in this lawsuit,聽wood burning is also a major source of air pollution.
Environmental campaigners are聽increasingly resorting to lawsuits聽to try to force politicians to obey the laws they have passed. The EU and聽many individual countries including the US are being sued聽for their failure to tackle climate change.
