The global trend is seeing native forests cut down to be burnt in electricity furnaces and termed ‘renewable power’. This further damages climate, natural carbon stores and our forests and wildlife.

Talking Point: Burning forests for electricity makes no sense whatsoever

February 20, 2016

THEY call it “dead koala power” in NSW, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation say it is highly unlikely to meet their sustainability criteria for investment citing terrible impacts overseas affecting biodiversity, and even the president of the Institute of Foresters admits burning wood for electricity emits carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

Welcome to the forest furnace that the Hodgman Government and the native forest logging industry want to foist on Tasmania. It’s the complete opposite of a clean, green, clever development ...

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Drax biomass conversion must comply with EU state aid rules

January 6, 2016

Power plant conversion project in North Yorkshire is one of several state-backed renewable energy projects in the UK
Drax power station in North Yorkshire

Drax power station in North Yorkshire, which is being part-converted from coal to biomass power. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty

The Drax plans are in line with EU state aid rules.

The carbon footprint is ...

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Talks in the city of light generate more heat

December 21, 2015

Rather than relying on far-off negative-emissions technologies, Paris needed to deliver a low-carbon road map for today, argues Kevin Anderson.

The climate agreement delivered earlier this month in Paris is a genuine triumph of international diplomacy. It is a tribute to how France was able to bring a fractious world together. And it is testament to how assiduous and painstaking science can defeat the unremitting programme of misinformation that is perpetuated by powerful vested interests. It is the twenty-first century’s ...

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Pulp Fiction The European Accounting Error That’s Warming the Planet

October 20, 2015

As the world tries to shift away from fossil fuels, the energy industry is turning to what seems to be an endless supply of renewable energy: wood. In England and across Europe, wood has become the renewable of choice, with forests, many of them in the U.S., being razed to help feed surging demand. But as this five-month Climate Central investigation reveals, renewable energy doesn’t necessarily mean clean energy. Burning trees as fuel in power plants is ...

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Native forests can help hit emissions targets – if we leave them alone

July 23, 2015

The debate over native forest logging has been sparked once again, partly by the government’s successful push for wood burning to be included in the revamped Renewable Energy Target.

However, the disagreement over the best way to manage Australia’s 9.4 million hectares of public native forest is thrown into sharp relief by analysis showing that ending native forest logging, and completing the the industry’s shift into plantations instead, would get Australia much of the way to its greenhouse gas emissions reductions ...

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Forests at a tipping point – into the furnaces

June 26, 2015

Furnace

A new war has been declared on our native forests.

The Senate, with the help of Labor has passed legislation that not only allows the liquidation of native forest trees in electricity furnaces, but defines it as ‘renewable energy’ and thereby hands the logging and power industries credits (financial support) to assist this new excuse for unfettered forest obliteration. The woodchip industry at least had preferences for species ...

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