By Reuters Staff
2 Min Read
FILE PHOTO: A worker unloads palm oil fruit bunches at a factory in Tanjung Karang, Malaysia August 14, 2020. REUTERS/Lim Huey Teng
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia is taking legal action at the global trade watchdog against the European Union and member states France and Lithuania for restricting palm oil-based biofuels, the government said.
The world’s second largest palm oil producer, which has called a EU renewable-energy directive “discriminatory action,” is seeking consultations under the World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement Mechanism, the Plantation Industries and Commodities Ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Minister Mohd Khairuddin Aman Razali said the EU proceeded with implementing the directive without considering Malaysia’s commitment and views, even after Malaysia gave feedback and sent economic and technical missions to Europe.
Indeed the report finds that most of the forest biomass currently being burnt for energy in the EU not only increases emissions compared to fossil fuels, but does so for decades placing in peril the EU’s net zero emissions target for 2050 and the chances of stopping runaway climate change.
According to the Commission, the burning of biomass emits more than 350 million tonnes of CO2 per year throughout the EU.
Ironically, however, EU energy policy currently incentivises burning the type of biomass the Commission’s report shows is dangerous and counter to EU climate policy, which, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), fails to draw the conclusion that current energy policy should be changed.
Kalev Järvik stands on a bald patch of land in the heart of Estonia’s Haanja nature reserve and remembers when he could walk straight from one side of the reserve to the other under a canopy of trees.
Järvik has lived in the Haanja uplands in the southern county of Võru for more than 10 years. His closeness to the forest has shaped his life as a carpenter and the fortunes of the surrounding villages, with their handicraft traditions – a substitute for farming on the poor arable land. Upcountry, travel literature promotes the region to city dwellers, promising its ancient woodlands as a place to rest and reinvigorate the mind.
Info
27 January 2021
by WWF last modified 27 January 2021
A European Commission report concludes that most forest biomass produces more greenhouse gas emissions than coal, oil and gas.
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And in 23 out of the 24 scenarios the Commission s Joint Research Centre (JRC) examined, biomass had a negative impact on climate, biodiversity, or both.
Indeed the report, published yesterday, finds that most of the forest biomass currently being burnt for energy in the EU not only increases emissions compared to fossil fuels, but does so for decades - which would imperil the EU s net zero target for 2050 and chances of stopping runaway climate change.
Race for renewables burns through Europe’s forests
Wood pellets are sold as a clean alternative to coal, but campaigners say that a subsidized bioenergy boom in Europe is accelerating the climate crisis
By Hazel Sheffield / The Guardian
Kalev Jarvik stands on a bald patch of land in the heart of Estonia’s Haanja nature reserve and remembers when he could walk straight from one side of the reserve to the other under a canopy of trees.
Jarvik has lived in the Haanja uplands in the southern county of Voru for more than 10 years. His closeness to the forest has shaped his life as a carpenter and the fortunes of the surrounding villages, with their handicraft traditions a substitute for farming on the poor arable land.