Contra bioenergy

I cannot but wonder how people supposedly interested in things ecological end up cheering for greater use of bioenergy. It appears that these people manage to disconnect the actual ecology from the policies they advocate. It appears that what counts is the appearance of greenery even if this showing off causes an ecological disaster.

Excuse my french, but the whole vision of bioenergy is crazy as it amounts to greater human interference in the biosystem. Fundamental idea is, that in addition to all the other damage humans cause, we should also satisfy more of our energy needs from the biosystem. This vision is patently absurd on ecological grounds even without bothering to analyze technicalities of, for example, how rainforests are being destroyed to create palm-oil. It is simply bizarre to note how organizations like “Suomen luonnonsuojeluliitto” (finnish union for environmental protection) encourage dramatically increased use of bioenergy and mainly object to destroying the rainforest. Apparently, destruction of other ecosystems closer to home is not such a big deal.

In bioenergy you either destroy the natural habitat and start farming some de-facto monoculture for energy or you go to a forest and start killing, burning and removing nutrients from it. There are some processes (such as energy from waste) which amount to neither of the above, but the potential volumes for those processes are so low that they will play totally irrelevant role in mitigating the effects of climate change.

Bioenergy is one of those fads that will hopefully fade as soon as possible. Humans should satisfy their energy needs less and less at the expense of the biosystem. In other words move away from the bioenergy. We should not destroy the ecosystem in order to save it.