European Update from “Our Forests Aren’t Fuel” Campaign Director Scot Quaranda

Yesterday I was accompanied by my colleagues from the US – Debbie Hammel from NRDC and Derb Carter from the Southern Environmental Law Center – to two important meetings in London with the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) as well as the Committee on Climate Change. The meetings were arranged by our allies at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and Friends of the Earth UK. RSPB’s Director of Climate Change, Harry Huyton, joined us as well as Kenneth Richter from Friends of the Earth.

Our first meeting was with Caroline Season, a senior policy adviser on renewable energy, Dr. Elizabeth McDonnell, the head of bioenergy policy, and Dr. Anna Stephenson, technical advisor at the DECC. DECC released seemingly weak sustainability criteria on wood pellet imports that rely heavily on the misleading certification scheme, SFI, and allows for a pretty massive build-out of new wood burning energy facilities in the UK between now and 2027. Our job was to counter industry’s claims of sustainability, debunk the SFI, and provide guidance on how they should adjust their standards in order to help end the destruction of Southern forests for the development of wood pellets. Overall, the meeting was a great opportunity to make our case on all of these issues and provide opportunities for future engagement that will allow us to make an impact in the UK.

Today we met with officials from the UK Committee on Climate Change, including Dr. Ute Collier, Team Leader, who is in charge of following the issue of the bioenergy build out in the UK. Ute and her team were quite knowledgeable on the issue, and hopefully we provided them with evidence that will help them further explore the disastrous carbon implications of a growing bioenergy industry in the UK.

All in all, I think our team made an impact, built stronger ties with these important agencies, and better positioned ourselves to challenge future growth in the UK. Many thanks to our partners for helping arrange these meetings, and I am looking forward to engaging with officials in the EU in coming days.

Cheers from this side of the pond.