More than 650 scientists are urging world leaders to stop burning trees to make energy because it destroys valuable habitats for wildlife.
In the buildup to Cop 15, the UN biodiversity summit, they state that countries need to stop using forest bioenergy to create heat and electricity, as it undermines international climate and nature targets. Renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, should be used, they say.
According to the letter addressed to world leaders including Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak and the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, bioenergy has wrongly been deemed carbon neutral and many countries are increasingly relying on forest biomass to meet net zero goals. The climate and biodiversity goal is to leave forests standing and biomass energy does the opposite, it says.
The letter states that if global leaders agree to protect 30% of land and sea by the Cop 15 meeting in Montreal by 2030, they must also commit to ending reliance on biomass energy. It says that commitments made at Cop 15 and at climate conferences could be undermined if this practice continues.
Professor Alexandre Antonelli, lead author of the letter and director of science at Kew Gardens, said that the answer is not to burn our precious forests. This green energy is misleading and is accelerating the global biodiversity crisis. Bioenergy is expected to account for a third of the world's low-carbon energy by the year 2030, according to a report by the International Energy Agency.
In 2019 more than 5 million metric tons of wood pellets were imported from the US, and the UK is the top importer of wood pellets for biomass. Bioenergy by cutting trees results in the release of carbon that would otherwise have been locked up in carbon-rich forests. The scientists say that this increases emissions and creates carbon debt that is only paid off decades or centuries later if the trees are regrown.
Burning wood for electricity is inefficient, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than gas or coal. The wood is used for harvesting and transporting it. Experts have warned about the impacts of bioenergy for years, but now they are finding out that it has serious risks for nature too, with many cases of protected forests being affected.
Canada, Estonia and the US are the largest suppliers of wood for biomass. Professor William Moomaw, a lead author of the letter from Tufts University in Massachusetts in the US, said: Our forests are the most biodiverse places on the planet, providing habitat for countless species. They are responsible for nearly 30% of the global emissions from burning fossil fuels.
Clearcutting for forest bioenergy is degrading the South-east US coastal forests, a global biodiversity hotspot, the Baltic states in Europe, boreal forests in Canada, and illegally cutting protected forest ecosystems in the Carpathians of eastern Europe. These are all home to rare plant species, mammals, and migratory and residential birds. Rare species such as the prothonotary warbler, the boreal woodland caribou and the black stork are declining as a result of forest degradation.
Elly Pepper, from the Natural Resources Defense Council NRDC and the Cut Carbon Not Forests Coalition CCNF said: Governments and the bioenergy industry each have a hand on an axe that is decimating the world s forests. Putting a fake renewable energy source like biomass energy at the heart of their net zero plans will undermine any global deal promising to save nature by 2030.
Bioenergy industry is helping to accelerate that by destroying precious forest habitats, because the world's wildlife is already vanishing.