European lawsuit on biomass rules threatens Drax plant. A coalition of environmental campaigners has launched a court bid to stop the European Commission treating forest grown wood as a renewable source of energy. Plaintiffs from six countries filed a lawsuit last week with the European General Court in Luxembourg, which seeks to annul the forest biomass provisions of the EU’s 2018 Renewable Energy Directive (RED) II. The case is designed to disqualify forest wood from contributing to the directive’s target that 32% of all electricity generated across the EU should be generated from renewable sources. The plaintiffs challenge the directive’s criteria for assessing greenhouse gas emissions, which they say fails to count the CO2 coming out the smokestack when wood is burned. They say that if this is taken into account, biomass plants emit more CO2 per megawatt hour than fossil-fuelled power plants, including coal. And while equivalent CO2 can be sequestered by regrowth of woodland, replacing the trees that have been harvested can take over a century and will not happen if the land is converted to agricultural uses, according to the suit.
Edie 12th March 2019 read more »
