Upcoming Events

National | Environment

no events match your query!

Blog Feeds

Anti-Empire

Anti-Empire

offsite link North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link ?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty

Anti-Empire >>

The Saker

Indymedia ireland

Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Army Sergeant Travis Decker Murdered His Three Children After Being Denied Mental Health Care at JBL... Sat Jun 07, 2025 04:52 | JBLM Whistleblowers
A corrupt military police force and incompetent Commander who denied emergency mental health care and crisis counseling to an American service member resulted in the murder of the sergeant's three young daughters

offsite link Gaza doctor grieves her nine children killed in Israeli strike Sun May 25, 2025 20:00 | imc
Israeli regime continues it's slaughter
'The children were completely charred'

Paediatrician Alaa al-Najjar was treating victims of Israeli attacks when her children were killed by an Israeli strike on their home

offsite link British doctors working in Gaza describe territory as a ?slaughterhouse? Sat May 24, 2025 00:23 | imc
There?s no food getting in so people are starving,? surgeon Tom Potokar says
British doctors working in Gaza have described the territory as a ?slaughterhouse,? where the patients they are treating are severely malnourished.

Plastic surgeons and orthopedic specialists from the UK are based at the Amal and Nasser hospitals in Khan Younis in the south of the territory.

Dr. Tom Potokar, a plastic surgeon specializing in burn injuries, has worked in Gaza 16 times but said this mission had revealed a level of destruction far greater than his last visit in 2023,

offsite link It is time to talk about the Out of Control Immigration. Mon Mar 31, 2025 22:12 | imc
For the last few years since the CV19 scamdemic undocumented immigration into Ireland has surged. No one is allowed discuss it because they do not want any rational debate about it. If you do you are labelled an extremist. However this out of control immigration is fully facilitated by the Irish government and the EU and the shady figure behind the Neo Con movement pushing for endless war, wokeism and globalist agenda.

offsite link [Dublin] National Demonstration for Palestine: End Israeli Apartheid & Genocide Thu Mar 06, 2025 22:35 | ipsc
Sat, 22 March 2025, 13:00 Assemble at the Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square, Dublin 1
The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, supported by over 150 Irish civil society organisations, has called another National Demonstration for Palestine on Saturday 22nd March.

The march will begin at the Garden of Remembrance at 1pm and finish outside the D?il on Molesworth Street/Kildare Street to bring our demands to the Irish government?s doorstep.

The Saker >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link Angela Rayner?s Lawyers: We Never Gave Her Tax Advice Thu Sep 04, 2025 19:11 | Will Jones
Angela Rayner's?lawyers claim they have been made "scapegoats" and did not give her tax advice, as experts say the Deputy PM "cut corners" by using a cheaper local law firm.
The post Angela Rayner’s Lawyers: We Never Gave Her Tax Advice appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Ethiopian Asylum Seeker, 41, Found Guilty of Trying to Kiss Schoolgirl, 14, in Sexual Assault that T... Thu Sep 04, 2025 17:00 | Will Jones
A migrant who tried to kiss her a schoolgirl and later groped a woman who came to her aid ? attacks that triggered the Epping hotel protests ? was convicted of sex offences today.
The post Ethiopian Asylum Seeker, 41, Found Guilty of Trying to Kiss Schoolgirl, 14, in Sexual Assault that Triggered Epping Hotel Protests appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link And the Legacy Media Wonder Why Nobody Trusts Them Thu Sep 04, 2025 15:39 | Dr James Allan
Minnesota school shooter Robert Westman wrote "kill Donald Trump" on his gun.?But the legacy media reported he had written "Donald Trump's name on his gun". And they wonder why nobody trusts them, says Prof James Allan.
The post And the Legacy Media Wonder Why Nobody Trusts Them appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Britain is Descending into Anarcho-Tyranny ? We Need a First Amendment Thu Sep 04, 2025 13:34 | Will Jones
Britain is descending into an anarcho-tyrannical state and needs its own US First Amendment to protect freedom of speech from our censorious overlords, says Allister Heath in his latest blistering Telegraph column.
The post Britain is Descending into Anarcho-Tyranny ? We Need a First Amendment appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Vandals Graffiti Rayner?s Seaside Home Thu Sep 04, 2025 11:32 | Will Jones
Angela Rayner?s seaside apartment has been vandalised with graffiti?branding her a "tax evader".
The post Vandals Graffiti Rayner’s Seaside Home appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en

offsite link Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en

offsite link The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en

Voltaire Network >>

Ireland’s ‘False Climate Solution’ Faces European Court Of Justice

category national | environment | press release author Monday March 04, 2019 21:52author by foie - Friends of the Irish Environment Report this post to the editors

Press Release - Friends of the Irish Environment -4th Mar 2019

FOREST BIOMASS CHALLENGE TO CO-FIRED PEAT PLANTS

The inclusion of forest biomass as a renewable fuel fatally undermines the goals of the new European Renewable Energy Directive [RED II], according to Plaintiffs from six different countries in an action filed today in the European General Court in Luxembourg. Each has suffered, in diverse and particular ways, from the consequences of the Directive’s biomass energy policy.

Tony Lowes of Ireland’s environmental NGO Friends of the Irish Environment [FIE] is one of the Plaintiffs in the legal challenge, citing the co-firing with biomass of Ireland’s peat powered electric plants.

The lawsuit seeks to remove forest biomass from the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive recently approved by the European Union. The Directive raises the overall EU target for Renewable Energy Sources (RES) consumption by 2030 from 20% to 32%.

However, the Plaintiffs contend that RED II ‘ignores the science on forest bioenergy and promotes false climate solutions’. According to Dr. Mary S. Booth, director of the USA Partnership for Policy Integrity and lead science advisor on the case, ‘Burning wood for energy emit more CO2 per unit of energy generated than coal but RED II counts these emissions as zero. RED II also fails to properly account for the lifecycle carbon emissions from harvesting, producing, transporting, and burning woody biomass fuels, including the loss of carbon sequestration potential after the vast increase in industrial logging destroys the very forest systems that have until now absorbed carbon from the atmosphere.’

‘Ireland’s cofiring of peat powered plants with biomass is an example of a “false climate solution,’” said Ireland’s Mr. Lowes. He cites the Irish Climate Change Advisory Council’s 2018 Report’s conclusion that ‘The bio-mass subsidy for peat power plants is an environmentally harmful subsidy resulting in substantially higher emissions of greenhouse gases at significant direct cost to the nation.

‘According to the EPA ‘Ireland’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Projections 2017-2035’, this demand is increasing the price of biomass, resulting in “energy demand in heating being met by more fossil fuels because of the biomass subsidy of peat powered plants”.’

Mr. Lowes’ points out that ‘the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland’s forecast that the annual supply gap in wood production for biomass could be up to 1.88 million cubic metres by 2020 and more than twice that by 2025 – all of which must be sourced outside Ireland.

The case is coordinated by the US-based Partnership for Policy Integrity and testimonials from experts and organisations include Program Director Adam Colette of the Dogwood Alliance.

The Dogwood Alliance was one of more than 30 conservation and environmental justice organizations in the Southern United States who wrote in August 2018 to the Irish government, the Electricity Supply Board [ESB] and Bord na Móna pointing out that the wood pellets the company plans to import come from their region, the North Atlantic Coastal Plain. They say their coastal hardwood forests are at the heart of the world’s 36th biodiversity hotspot and are being felled with no legal obligation to replant. ‘The forests in the region need to, instead, be left standing to protect communities, fight climate change, and provide habitat for plants and animals’, the groups argue.

Wood pellets from forests and pine plantations in the Southern US are the most likely biomass source for any industrial scale co-firing and future power station conversions in Ireland, according to Bord na Mona’s 2016 Annual Report.

Aside from a US landowner impacted by clearcutting of the once biologically-rich bottomland hardwood forests in North Caroline, plaintiffs come from Estonia, the world’s third-largest wood pellet producer; Romania, especially in the Carpathian Mountains where logging is felling some of the last remaining primeval forests; Slovakia – where logging is taking place in protected national parks, reserves, and even a UNESCO World Heritage Site; and a resident whose health is being harmed by emissions from cofiring a coal plant with biomass in Gardonne, France.

If the Court agrees to hear the case, it would be the first time that an NGO will have been granted standing before the court to challenge an EU law or regulation. Thus the case in itself is precedent-setting. The case will be posted online as soon as it is filed.

CASE WEBSITE www.eubiomasscase.org
Telebriefing March 4 11am Irish Time: http://www.pfpi.net/media-briefings-for-eu-biomass-case

CONTACTS
FERN www.fern.org
Partnership for Policy Integrity www.pfpi.net
EU Contact: MARK OLDEN. MARK@FERN.ORG +44 797 388 4718
Ireland: Tony Lowes 353 (0)27 74771 / 353 (0)87 2176316
Daithí Ó hÉalaithe (Irish language) +353 (0)87 6178852

Copyright © 2019 Friends of the Irish Environment, All rights reserved.
Press Release

Our mailing address is:
Friends of the Irish Environment
Kilcatherine
Eyeries, Cork P75 CX53
Ireland

Related Link: https://www.friendsoftheirishenvironment.org/press-releases/17628-ireland-s-false-climate-solution-faces-european-court-of-justice
© 2001-2025 Independent Media Centre Ireland. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Independent Media Centre Ireland. Disclaimer | Privacy