Gardanne, France – How biomass burning wrecks Europe’s forests By guest author Fred Pearce, author and journalist – article from Fern’s report ‘Up in Flames’ Gardanne, near Marseilles in southern France, is a small town with a large power station. The Centrale Thermique de Provence has the tallest chimney in France. At 300
Dear Vice President Timmermans By guest author Adam Macon, Dogwood Alliance, USA Across the United States a growing movement to protect Southern US forests has been gaining attention in Europe. Driven by the well intentioned but unsustainable EU policies towards bioenergy, forests of the Southern US are being clearcut, manufactured into
Slovakia – Up in Flames By guest author Fred Pearce, author and journalist – article from Fern’s report ‘Up in Flames’ He said he was a forest ranger. But he leaped out of an unmarked car and showed no ID before shouting at us and waving a heavy stick menacingly in our faces.
EU power plants are hungry for U.S. forests Climate Central, an American watchdog, is drawing attention to one of Europe’s most deceptive illusions on climate change. One which arises from a rather convenient legal loophole that treats energy generated from burning wood as ‘carbon neutral’. As Climate Central explains in
Stealing Romania’s last forests – for energy? By Lisa Benedetti, BirdLife Europe Undercover investigators from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) have caught Holzindustrie Schweighofer red handed. The Austrian timber and wood processing company have been violating Romanian law; accepting offers to buy illegally cut timber, offering bonuses to those harvesting
Waste wood – to burn or not to burn? By Lisa Benedetti, BirdLife Europe Forests fuel most of Europe’s bioenergy demands. But when it comes to the use of wood as a material versus as an energy source, political and market interests can collide. This is happening in Austria, where
France is set to ignore EU limits on bad biofuels By Faustine Bas-Defossez, Senior Policy Officer, Agriculture and Bioenergy, EEB All eyes will be on finding solutions to fight climate change in the run up to COP21 in Paris later this year. So it is simply astonishing to see that
We need a faster solar energy revolution By Lisa Benedetti, BirdLife Europe Are there better alternatives to bioenergy and fossil fuels? Well, did you know that solar energy is the most abundant energy resource on earth? That 173,000 terawatts of solar energy strikes our planet continuously – more than 10,000 times the