Europe and the US can share some lessons about bioenergy By Sini Eräjää, Policy Officer EU Bioenergy, Birdlife Europe and the European Environmental Bureau As our fact-finding mission in the US to witness firsthand the origins and impacts of bioenergy being supplied to the EU came to an end, we
Biofuels – a story without a happy end By Ariel Brunner and Trees Robijns, BirdLife Europe – partially based on the analysis of the Commission’s Globiom study carried out by Transport & Environment (T&E) Biofuels have been promoted in Europe since the early 2000s. In the beginning, they were touted as a
It’s crunch time for the EU’s new bioenergy policy By Sini Eräjää, Policy Officer EU Bioenergy, Birdlife Europe and the European Environmental Bureau After many years of contemplation, the moment for the EU to decide on how to regulate bioenergy use is approaching. Today, the Commission is closing a public
Biodiesel: a cure worse than the fossil disease By Lisa Benedetti, BirdLife Europe Biodiesel is the most consumed biofuel in Europe. It is projected to make up almost 70% of the EU biofuels market by 2020. This dependence poses some questions, so the European Commission is now considering what its
Bioenergy and social injustice in southeastern US By guest author Linde Zuidema, Bioenergy Campaigner, Fern “Communities were not informed nor consulted about this wood pellet facility, the process was everything but transparent. All is decided behind closed doors, and all they tell us is lies, lies, lies. The County claims
Many trees, but few forests in the southern US By Sini Eräjää, Policy Officer EU Bioenergy, Birdlife Europe and the European Environmental Bureau “There are still some trees down here but there’s all the time less forests” said a shopkeeper in the town of Ahoskie in North Carolina. He was sitting
A story unfolding, EU energy policy and American forests By Sini Eräjää, Policy Officer EU Bioenergy, Birdlife Europe and the European Environmental Bureau I never would have thought that in the early days of the EU’s efforts to increase renewable energy use that working in this field would take me to forests along
GRAS – a tool to guarantee sustainable bioenergy By guest authors Mohammad Abdel-Razek, Jan Henke, Pascal Ripplinger, GRAS Global Risk Assessment Services GmbH The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledges that “bioenergy has a significant greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential, provided that the resources are developed sustainably”. True, the
Co-firing with biomass compared to other renewables By guest author Geert Warringa, CE Delft Co-firing is the combustion of two different types of material at the same time for energy production. In the Netherlands, co-firing coal with biomass is one of the options for meeting their 14% renewables target. However,