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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been called out by more than 600 scientists over the UK’s use of the controversial energy, which they say is destroying the “lungs of the earth”.
Signatories from every continent spoke of the “devastating effects” of bioenergy on forests in the letter.
A controversial form of energy, which divides scientific opinion, involves cutting down and burning trees to generate electricity.
Professors and science students warn of the industry’s “increasing threat to biodiversity” as they say it hacks away at trees and habitats.
They warn that it degrades The current high stakes force the rapid loss of life-sustaining nature to slow.
“It’s just not environmentally sustainable,” said Professor Alexandre Antonelli, director of science at Kew Gardens, one of the lead authors.
“Sustainability means you can do something forever… and because we’ve been losing forests growing for decades, if not centuries, we’re not allowing nature to recover to the level it needs to recover biodiversity,” he told Sky. Said news.
That’s important because healthy, old forests harbor things like algae, which can slow floods, and pollinate insects and birds and absorb more carbon dioxide, he says.
They want the leaders of the UK and other major users or consumers of bioenergy – including Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden – to abandon the energy form entirely.
The letter comes ahead of negotiations of a global nature COP15 Launching next week in Montreal, the aim is to put the brakes on the rapid loss of nature that provides food, medicine, income and pollination around the world.
The signatories warn that negotiations could fail unless businesses stop clearing forests for bioenergy, which has grown in recent years to replace coal as the dirtiest fossil fuel.
‘Not the right solution’
The government’s climate advisers plan for a limited role for bioenergy in the UK, which generated 12.9% of its electricity last year.
But because one million species globally are now at risk of extinction, “we have to do everything to reverse the loss of biodiversity worldwide,” argued Professor Antonelli.
“The climate and biodiversity crises are strongly linked, and we need to find solutions for both,” he said, adding that “the energy transition around the world will be difficult”.
“But we don’t think burning forests… is the right solution,” he said. The signatories want the government to replace it with wind or solar power instead.
Many countries classify bioenergy as renewable, even though it emits more climate-warming carbon dioxide than oil or gas.
Proponents of biomass say the replacement trees absorb those greenhouse gases as they grow — critics say the trees take too long to grow back, and may never.
Strict sustainability criteria
Mark Somerfield of UK industry body REA said “biodiversity considerations are an important component of biomass sustainability governance”.
He cited a review of 211 studies, of which 69% concluded that afforestation had no negative impact on biodiversity.
The letter accuses the industry of clearing forest, which means cutting down entire sections rather than maintaining continuous cover, and is believed to be particularly bad for biodiversity.
Mr Somerfield said bioenergy was part of the “wider forestry economy”, which often uses residues from the timber industry, and therefore eliminates waste.
In October, 550 academics sympathetic to the industry wrote a letter arguing that bioenergy “can replace fossil energy and is a significant part of climate protection policy”.
A government spokesman said the UK “only supports biomass that complies with our strict sustainability criteria”.
“Many biomass feedstocks are prone to combustion or decomposition anyway, so it is more efficient to use that material as an energy source and displace expensive, volatile fossil fuels in the process,” they added.
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