Nature Alert: Please object to large proposed biomass power station in Wales

Thursday, 26 November 2009

Please object to large proposed biomass power station in Wales

Dear friends,

Climate campaigners in Wales are asking for support against plans for a 300 MW biomass power station in Holyhead, Wales by Anglesey Aluminium Ltd. The power station would burn 2.4 million tonnes of biomass, most of it imported wood chips. It would add to the fast growing and unsustainable demand for wood imports for bioenergy in the UK. The UK already imports around 80% of all wood and wood products in the country, much of it from industrial tree plantations which have disastrous impacts on communities, ecosystems and the climate as well as from destructive industrial logging. The proposed power station would worsen this situation, with growing signs that wood power expansion in Europe is already leading to more monoculture tree plantations in West Papua, South America and elsewhere. Furthermore, local residents will be affected by increased levels of nitrogen oxide, small particulates and other air pollutants which are linked to health problems including respiratory diseases.

Please go to

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/angleseyoct2009.php

to find more background information and to send your objection to the Department for Energy and Climate Change, which will determine the application.

Many thanks.

Best regards,

Almuth Ernsting, Biofuelwatch

info@biofuelwatch.org.uk

Hall of Shame for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the Palm Oil Industry.

Nothing can prepare one for the sight of the systematic extermination of orangutans by the government of Indonesia.

Look at the photos and news articles on these pages in the context of a statement the President made to the media on 10th December 2007.

“In the last 35 years about 50,000 orangutans are estimated to have been lost as their habitats shrank. If this continues, this majestic creature will likely face extinction by 2050,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the launch of an orangutan conservation plan at the climate talks in Bali.

“The fate of the orangutan is a subject that goes to the heart of sustainable forests … To save the orangutan we have to save the forest.”

Statements like these are most welcome, but unless backed up by action, such words fall on deaf ears within the Ministry of Forestry....who are busy granting licences to cut down the very forests the President says they should protect!

When you think you are to busy to help, please could you reflect for a moment on .........

The following extract refers to environmental problems in general. I just hope you find it as thought provoking and relevant to orangutans as I have.

"This is such a shocking and unpalatable fact that most people deny it, or they just don't want to think about it. They believe as individuals, they can do little about it, so push it to the back of their minds. But I can't do that.

When something has to be done, we need to do it. It doesn't matter how big the challenge is or how hard the solution; if I know something is wrong, and I am in a position to help, I will do my best to make it right." Duncan Bannatyne, successful British businessman.