Stop UK funding damaging biofuels

The government believes it can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by providing finance to renewable energy technologies through subsidies called Renewable Obligation Certificates  (ROCs).  As well as providing support for clean technologies like wind farms,  ROCs also finance electricity from biomass and bioliquids, which have been shown to increase greenhouse gas emissions, cause deforestation, and worsen air quality locally. It is astonishing this is still going on - when are they going to wake up?

Email the UK Dept of Energy and Climate Change and your MP in the action below.

Here's what the campaign write: "The sourcing of biofuels and biomass from overseas has been widely implicated (directly and indirectly) in human rights abuses – including the forced eviction of people from their land and inhumane treatment of workers. The Renewables Obligation also subsidises the incineration of waste, which can be derived from fossil fuels,  thus worsening air quality and discouraging recycling. The Government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change is currently consulting on the level of support to be given from April 2013 to all types of electricity classed as renewable, including from biomass and bioliquids. They propose to continue to support biomass on an unlimited scale – even more than at present as far as co-firing of biomass with coal is concerned. They also propose to support the burning of up to 400,000 tonnes of bioliquids per year (on top of the large-scale use of biofuels for transport). If all this bioliquid were palm oil – a realistic prospect given that this is by far the cheapest vegetable oil – then 110,000 hectares of new oil palm plantations would be needed.

"The Renewable Obligation Scheme is financed through money taken from our fuel bills, so it is OUR MONEY that is being spent. If things stay as they are, it will cost us up to £3 billion every year by 2020 to fund this dirty, false solution at the expense of people and the planet."

Please take action here: http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2011/rocs-alerts/