In theory, a power station that makes its electricity from burning wood could be carbon neutral. That is, if the power station owns the land that they get the wood from, and each time they cut some trees down, they immediately replace them.
Unfortunately, this is not how biomass burning power stations work.
As you would imagine, it is far cheaper for a supplier of wood to go out and cut down an already standing forest, rather than to grown and then harvest their own. As such Biomass power stations can support the clear cutting of old growth forests.
With a target of cutting carbon emissions by 55% by 2030, it is not surprising that they refuse to follow the science on this. Without enormous change, this target is impossible to reach without woody biomass. The problem is, that in order to count well for their goal, they treat woody biomass as carbon neutral, along the same lines as wind and solar.
This is obviously insane.
If you pay for your electricity from solar, you know that there has been no carbon emissions from creating the electricity (even if there were some for making the solar panels, this works out as very low over the lifetime of the solar panel).
Not true for woody biomass, you are assuming that the forest you have cut down and burnt will be replaced. Given the need to greatly reduce carbon in the atmosphere now -not in the next few decades, it is the equivalent of borrowing negative emissions tomorrow to pay for your positive emissions today. While eventually the emissions sum will work, for the next few decades you have emitted emissions – and this assumes that the tree that is planted is left in the ground.
This is not good, and it should remain a stain on the EU parliament until it is corrected.
