{"id":58607,"date":"2021-07-14T06:21:21","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T11:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58607"},"modified":"2021-07-14T06:21:21","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T11:21:21","slug":"biomass-the-eus-great-clean-energy-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58607","title":{"rendered":"Biomass: The EU’s Great ‘Clean Energy’ Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Biomass: The EU’s Great ‘Clean Energy’ Fraud<\/a><\/h3>\n
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“The professionalization of the biomass industry is a problem that needs attention<\/em>.”–Bas Eickhout, Dutch politician and member of the European Parliament.<\/p>\n

When it comes to the global shift to low-carbon energy sources, Europe has traditionally been viewed as the world leader while the United States has frequently been regarded as an important, albeit grudging, participant. Over the past half-decade, China has also improved its stock in the fast-growing market through a plethora of heavy investments, especially in solar and wind.<\/p>\n

For the most part, those views appear merited:\u00a0Renewables rose to generate 38% of Europe’s electricity<\/a>\u00a0in 2020 (compared to 34.6% in 2019), marking the first time renewables overtook fossil-fired generation, which fell to 37%. In contrast, the IEA estimates that natural gas and coal generated a combined 61% of electricity in the United States in 2020, with\u00a0renewables accounting for just 20%<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the EU earned extra bragging rights after renewable energy surpassed the use of fossil fuels on the continent for the first time in history.<\/p>\n

In contrast, the United States’ standing in the energy transition cycle took a significant hit after former president Donald Trump fulfilled a key campaign pledge by withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement, joining the likes of Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries not party to the agreement.<\/p>\n

But maybe Europe is not as clean as it has made the world believe\u2014and the United States is not as dirty.<\/p>\n

In 2009, the European Union issued a\u00a0Renewable Energy Directive<\/a>\u00a0(RED), pledging to curb greenhouse gas emissions and urging its member states to shift from fossil fuels to renewables. But the fine print provided a major loophole: the EU classified biomass as a renewable energy source, on par with wind and solar power.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Biomass: The EU’s Great ‘Clean Energy’ Fraud “The professionalization of the biomass industry is a problem that needs attention.”–Bas Eickhout, Dutch politician and member of the European Parliament. When it comes to the global shift to low-carbon energy sources, Europe has traditionally been viewed as the world leader while the United States has frequently been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[23185,2634,27351,5332,674],"class_list":["post-58607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-alex-kimani","tag-biomass","tag-clean-energy-2","tag-oilprice-com","tag-renewable-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58607"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58609,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58607\/revisions\/58609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}