Biomassacre – protest highlights danger of using our native forests for biofuel
“Native Forest Biomass is bad for climate, bad for forests, and bad for your industry”
26th July 2013. Concerns that the Clean Energy Council (CEC) has been hijacked by the logging industry were today aired by concerned citizens who called on members to reject current policy that supports burning native forests biomass to produce electricity and converting logged native forests to biofuels.
Delegates entering the Clean Energy Week Conference were leafleted and greeted with posters and woodchips, in a polite protest action.
“The vast majority of members of the Clean Energy Council are wind and solar power companies who are genuinely renewable, but the commitment of their representative body to controversial native forest bioenergy sourced from industrial scale logging blights their commitment to tackle climate change and tarnishes the image of all concerned,” said CEO of Markets For Change, Peg Putt.
“Native forest biomass is the new woodchipping. It is just as bad for biodiversity, deeply unpopular, and also contributes large carbon emissions to the atmosphere contrary to the misleading assertions of logging industry advocates.”
“We are calling on members of the Clean Energy Council to insist that this unacceptable policy, of which many are unaware and which advocates overturning current government policy that native forest-derived bioenergy is ineligible for Renewable Energy Credits due to its unacceptable impacts, is abandoned,” Ms Putt concluded.
Concerned citizen and solar installer Anne Wilson participating in the leafleting of delegates said “I became a solar installer, accredited by the Clean Energy Council, because I wanted to do something real about climate change, so I was shocked when I found out the CEC supports native forest bioenergy.”
Further information: www.marketsforchange.org www.biomassacre.com www.cleanupenergycouncil.org.au