Is Europe clean as it has been portrayed to be, or is it just driving a clean energy shenanigan? When clean energy transition comes to play, Europe has customarily been seen as the global leader while other countries, especially the US, are presented as secondary participants.
In 2020, RE leapt to generate 38 per cent of Europe’s electricity, marking the first time renewables overtook fossil-fired generation, which dipped to 37 per cent. In the same year, IEA reported that natural gas and coal-generated a homogenised 61 per cent of electricity in the US and renewables accounted for 20 per cent.
The debate between Europe and America is at the heart of biomass as a clean energy source. Under the clean energy charade, the European Union in 2009 issued a Renewable Energy Directive (RED), guarantying to curb greenhouse gas emissions while encouraging member states to shift from fossil fuels to renewables.
However, this directive had a major loophole as the EU classified biomass as a renewable energy source commensurate with wind and solar power. In line with RED, EU governments have been propelling energy providers to burn biomass instead of coal, driving up enormous demand for wood.
It turns out that the UN years ago devised a method to measure global carbon emissions and, in an attempt to simplify the process and avoid double-counting, UN technologists opined that biomass emissions should be calculated where the trees are cut down, not where the wood pellets are burned.
The UN adopted this methodology in its RED, permitting companies to burn biomass produced in the US without reporting the emissions.
In essence, cutting trees down is an offence, whereas burning them up is no offence. However, the fact remains that they are both offences and are not an actual move towards clean energy transitions. This is because biomass is solely dependant on trees and encourages deforestation, which affects the sustainability of the ecosystem.
It appears the EU’s clean energy transition through biomass is mere shenanigans.