Stop promoting forest biomass as sustainable, renewable and climate-friendly energy solutions.
A petition with 200,000 signatures from European citizens asking for the elimination of forest biomass from the European Directive on Renewable Energy (RED), currently under review, was delivered by Forest Defenders Allaince-FDA (network of 130 national and international associations present in Europe and Third States) and BirdLife Europe in Brussels, at the Office of the Vice President of the European Commission, FransTimmermans.
In Italy, an appeal was made by GreenImpact, GUFI - Unitary Group for Italian Forests and Lipu to the Minister for Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani, "to promote -, reads the document - a true 'ecological' policy that protects forests: burning them, in fact, causes the release of CO2 into the atmosphere, and forest over-exploitation puts biodiversity, which is already in dramatic decline, at risk ".
"The increasing use of forest biomass for energy production - comments Giovanni Damiani, biologist and president of the GUFI association - constitutes a serious danger for forests, subjected to intensive exploitation that damages biodiversity. They cannot be considered a form of clean energy, also in consideration of the high polluting and climate-altering emissions released by the combustion of wood and their impact on human health ".
