Greens open fire on Leith biofuel plans

Published on Tuesday 9 November 2010 10:54

GREEN campaigners have warned against plans to import wood for powering a proposed energy plant in Leith.

Forth Energy wants to ship woodchip from North America or Scandinavia to help power the 360 million plant, which has been earmarked for Edinburgh's waterfront.

But Friends of the Earth Scotland said policy makers needed to learn the lessons of biofuels, the production of which is claimed to have led to deforestation.

Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "Scottish policymakers should also take note of the lessons from biofuels when they consider plans for importing biomass for energy generation in Scotland, such as those proposed by Forth Energy at Dundee and Leith."

Adrian Bebb, from Friends of the Earth Europe, added: "The scale of the damage that European countries will cause with their biofuels plans is now clear - forests and nature will be destroyed on a shocking scale to fuel our cars. The resulting release of climate-damaging greenhouse gases will make biofuels a worse polluter than fossil fuels."