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piqer for: Climate and Environment Global finds Globalization and politics
I'm a freelance journalist, currently based in Madrid. I used to be a News Producer at CNBC in London before, but I thought a little bit more sun might do me good. Now I write for several news organizations, covering a range of topics, from Spanish politics and human rights for Deutsche Welle to climate change for La Marea.
Burning Pellets For Energy Raises Concerns About Green Claims
Europe is replacing coal with wood. Pellets are the next big thing in electricity and heating supply, as burning them is supposed to be carbon-neutral. But is it really?
Ecologists disagree — and Fred Pearce is at least doubtful in this article for YaleEnvironment 360. I really liked the investigative style. It's a topic I wasn't familiar with, and it seems really good soil for journalistic inquiry.
The idea is simple: If we cut down trees for burning, and replace them with new ones in the same forests, then we'll have carbon-neutral energy (excluding, of course, transport and processing). Right? Not so fast. There are a number of concerns.
The one that's central to this story is the lack of accountability. As the activity is supposed to be carbon-neutral, the cutdown and burning of the trees is often not accounted for. This makes it difficult to track and understand. Then there's also the matter of illegal logging (which is really well covered in the article, but leaves a lot of room for further investigation). And what kind of wood are we burning? Is it really just twigs and treetops, as the industry says?
However, the point that struck home for me was that of the time lag. Burning trees releases carbon to the atmosphere immediately, but growing them takes time. Can we afford this kind of delay? Will it still matter when those new trees grow to the size of their predecessors?
The one certainty is that if things do not go according to plan, Europe’s promises for meeting its Paris climate commitments will go up in smoke.
However, there's something I really didn't like, and it sounded my journalist alarms loud and clear: Initially, the article stated that "most" of the new European green energy came from burning pellets. That's not true, as Simon Evans (from Carbon Brief) noted on Twitter. The editors changed the expression from "most" to "much", but failed to declare the update. That makes the outlet look bad, and it's a completely unnecessary way to lose credibility.
