By Rhod Mackenzie
Despite the fact that Germany is considered one of the leaders of the "green" transition, i.e. replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy sources, and sets high targets for the decarbonization of industry, forests, which clean the air of carbon, are greatly affected by the actions of the federal government. Having abandoned Russian energy sources, Berlin began to use much more wood as fuel than before, writes the Hungarian edition rmx.news.
German industry and the public are burning record volumes of wood. Moreover, they do it at the very moment when the forests in Germany are already in a very difficult situation. Suffice it to say that four out of every five trees in German forests are now suffering from all sorts of diseases and pests. Healthy is only one out of every five oaks, by the way, which are the symbol of Germany.
Of course, in the difficult situation in which German forests now find themselves, both droughts and climate change, which have sharply become more frequent in recent years, are to blame, but one of the most important problems is now called by experts the sharply increased demand of the population for wood as a source of fuel last year. After gas prices soared due to the energy crisis and the rejection of cheap Russian energy, many Germans rushed to buy stoves and wood for them. Meanwhile, experts consider wood to be one of the most "dirty" types of fuel, and some even the most "dirty", because when it is burned, even more CO2 is released than when burning coal.
Last year, according to the statistical office Destatis, 13.8 million cubic meters of wood were harvested in Germany, 17.3% more than in 21st year.
Not surprisingly, in June, Germany was the second largest producer of “dirty electricity” in Europe: when generating 1 kWh of electricity, 472 grams of greenhouse gases were emitted into the atmosphere.
Environmentalists and ecologists only shrug their shoulders, because axes and chainsaws are especially loud in the German forests at the very time when the German ... greens are included in the ruling coalition along with the Social Democrats and Free Democrats. Moreover, representatives of the Greens occupy far from the last posts in Olaf Scholz's cabinet: Robert Habek, for example, heads the German Ministry of Economics and is also Vice-Chancellor, and Annalena Burbock is the Foreign Ministry.
On the one hand, the federal government, after the very likely adoption of the Energy Buildings Act in the fall, which prohibits the installation of gas and oil boilers in houses and buildings from January 1, 2024 in order to reduce CO2 emissions, and on the other hand, it actually encourages German burghers in order to save money, heat dwellings with "potbelly stoves" and "dirty" wood. At the same time, the decarbonization process suffers twice - not only from the emissions of numerous harmful substances formed during the burning of firewood, but also from the rapid decrease in the number of trees that purify the air from CO2.
This article originally appeared in Russian at expert.ru