The project to build a biomass power plant in Toulouse has angered local residents
“The choice of burning biomass is the worst”, says the collective “Toulouse chauffe”, at the origin of the rally this Saturday. About sixty residents of the Croix-Daurade district and activists gathered at the exit of the Roseraie metro station to denounce the project to build a biomass power plant. atlanta avenue.
A biomass power plant produces electricity by burning plant matter, usually wood. Originally, the town hall wanted to set it up in the Borderouge district
but in front of the anger of the residents, the project migrated.
Air quality at stake?
“We have a demonstration that despite what the City says, the Atlanta sector is inhabited, the residents are there to prove it“, insists Céline, mobilized since the beginning. For her, the move of the project does not change anything.”The documents from the town hall show us an area of 200 meters around the plant, to prove that everything is fine because there are no houses. Except that for a boiler room, the radius of maximum concentration emissions is one kilometer, not 200 meters. We really feel like we’re being taken for asses.”
Especially since the power plant project has doubled its capacityaccording to the demonstrators, going from 30 to 60 gigawatt hours per year, which will generate more pollution for Anne: “Fine particles and CO2, there will be a very large number of them anyway, since the project has now been doubled, we are very worried.”
She is not the only one, 800 researchers from the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have already warned: the timber industry could lead to a 10% increase in greenhouse gases in the next ten years.
This pollution would have consequences on health: last March, about fifty doctors, health professionals and associations of residents in Strasbourg alerted in a grandstand
saying that wood burning was “more dangerous than diesel“.
Distraught residents
The problem for the demonstrators is also the lack of communication. “We learn from mobilizations that the factory moves from site to site, deplores Patrice, present at the rally, but at no time were we invited to an information meeting in this district. I think we need at least a debate. Yes, it needs heating, but not that way.”
For the “Toulouse chauffe” collective, there are alternatives : geothermal energy for example, a suitable time but deemed too expensive by the town hall, according to the collective. The City of Toulouse did not respond to our requests.