![]() Sometimes a crisis really can be an opportunity: forget fracking, it’s time to get Britain logging. If we fell our alien conifers and burn them, replacing them with either native broadleaf woodland or other threatened habitats like peat bogs or heathland, we can keep the lights on and bring back Britain’s nature, surely a win-win solution. At the same time, we’re experiencing a collapse in our native wildlife as our precious natural habitats are blanketed in non-native trees for which no commercial or ecological logic exists. On the face of it, it seems an elegant solution: we already burn wood in vast quantities for energy, but we import almost all of it from the US. As he notes, “There is, in truth, no larger single crop for wildlife prevention in our country.” His solution, “fell the conifers and regrow native trees in our national forests,” because “to get our precious woodlands back… we need to ask for the existing trees to be cut down.” In his excellent book Rebirding, the conservationist Benedict Macdonald observed plaintively that conifer plantations make up 51% of Britain’s woodland, “alien crops” which “come with no useful insect package, and do not ‘compute’ for Britain’s native wildlife”. As the Woodland Trust notes, “approximately 40% (227,000ha) of the remaining ancient woodland in the UK has been cleared and replanted with dense non-native plantations”. ![]() As environmentalists have complained for years, the Forestry Commission and other large landowners have blanketed Britain’s precious uplands and heathlands with non-native conifers like Sitka spruce for generations, with a devastating effect on our native wildlife. ![]() As a result, the price of American wood pellets is already climbing, even leaving aside the undesirability, for the climate, of importing from the other side of the world a resource that literally grows on trees.įor the medium term, Britain should secure its own domestic supply of wood for energy generation, so here’s my modest proposal: cut down our conifer plantations and burn them. Many of Western Europe’s power stations were dependent on compressed wood pellets imported from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, now cut off by the war and sanctions. Wood biomass is a vital part of Britain’s energy mix until the proposed new nuclear power stations come onstream, but the market for wood pellets isn’t immune to the rising energy prices Putin’s war on Ukraine has wrought. As the president of the World Bionergy Association, Christian Rakos notes, wood-dominated biomass already makes “a greater contribution to Europe’s renewable energy goals than all the continent’s wind and solar output combined”. In fact, despite all the attention given to wind and wave power, biomass is Britain’s greatest source of renewable energy at around 40% of the total, the same percentage as in the EU where biomass heats 50 million homes. Most people don’t realise that a decent chunk of Britain’s electricity - around 6.5% last quarter - comes from burning biomass, mostly wood, centred on the vast Drax power station. In Germany, Google searches for firewood have gone through the roof as anxious consumers stock up for winter and sales of woodburning stoves have been so robust that Germany’s undergoing a shortage, as Europe’s industrial powerhouse returns to pre-industrial survival methods.īut mankind’s oldest means of keeping warm isn’t just for ordinary householders. With energy prices rocketing, affluent Western European countries like Germany and Belgium are beginning to echo previously crisis-struck nations like Greece and Lebanon as ordinary people prepare to return to heating their homes with firewood, just to keep warm. Winter is coming, and it’s going to be tough. He’s got wood (Photo credit should read ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |