Why Burning Biomass is not Carbon Neutral

The world is on the edge of a climate disaster. The temperature of the earth in the last two hundred fifty years has increased by one degree. This has a serious negative influence on water supplies, the ocean’s biodiversity, food production and the climate. To counteract these problems a 195 countries of the United Nations have agreed that the increase in temperature of the earth has to stay below 2 degrees. They have even set a goal to try limit the increase to 1,5 degrees. To achieve this goal fossil burning fuels such as coal, oil and gas must be stopped within 20 years. After that time Carbon dioxide must even be taken out of the air to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and prevent further global warming. Plants remove Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while they are growing and turn this into oxygen. Small trees do not absorb much Carbon dioxide but after 20 years they can absorb more than 20 kilos of Carbon dioxide per year. When a tree reaches the age of 80 it has removed more than a thousand kilos of Carbon dioxide from the air and it produces enough oxygen to keep 2 people a tree dies, most of the Carbon dioxide stays stored in its wood and it’s converted into a breeding ground for new plants. “Bioenergy” is energy made by burning biomass – mostly wood. Although it contains “bio”, which sounds positive, it is not a carbon neutral form of energy like wind or solar energy. A common misconception is that with bioenergy you have a closed circle of carbon that is absorbed from the air by a tree and then re-released when the tree is burned. The reality is more complicated: Wood for bioenergy usually comes from forests. Healthy forests function as storage for carbon. That means they constantly soak up Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Without this vital function our climate would be changing even faster than it already is. What happens to the carbon if we harvest wood from those forests? Well, if the wood is used for example for houses or furniture the carbon stays locked in. That means it is not released into the atmosphere for a long time. But if we burn the wood for energy, this carbon is immediately released into the atmosphere. Even though it takes a tree decades to absorb the same amount of Carbon dioxide. In the past two hundred years, all the trees on earth could not process the amount of Carbon dioxide that we released into the air causing the temperature on earth to increase by 1 degree. Now we are going to cut down all of those trees and burn them which releases even more Carbon dioxide and less Carbon dioxide will be absorbed because the remaining trees will not suddenly start absorbing more Carbon dioxide. This means this carbon is additional in the atmosphere which helps accelerate climate change. This holds true even if we only harvest as much wood as regrows each year. But EU law pretends these emissions from wood burning don’t exist and supports bioenergy as if it was a carbon-neutral form of energy. That means that tax payers’ money in the form of subsidies is going to a dirty form of energy, diverting support away from clean energies like solar and wind. The best way to fight climate change is to plant more trees than we cut down and to use the cut down trees as building material. We must use subsidies for real clean energy solutions such as housing isolation, wind and solar energy and the development of new technologies. All over the world the climate movement is growing. It is being led by different players from society: businesses, clubs, unions and concerned citizens who demand justice and action with the goal of reducing Carbon dioxide and creating a healthy climate. This movement will increasingly call for governments to adhere to the Paris Agreement. You can also be part of this movement. Make sure you’re aware of important things that are happening and try to live as sustainable as you can. Discuss climate change with your family, friends and colleagues and demand action from the political parties in your city or country. The climate, the quality of your life and the future depend on your commitment. Start today and share this video. Contributors to this video are: WWF International: Birdlife Europe & Asia: Tyndall Centre research: