ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the environmental and human costs renewable energy supplies in Europe pose to the poor in southern countries by drawing on experiences from Liberia. The "green" credentials of some renewable energy technologies are under fire as evidence of environmental degradation and human rights abuses continue to multiply. The biomass producer Buchanan Renewables entered into an agreement with the Government of Liberia to build and power an electricity plant using wood chips from unproductive rubber trees. Firestone Liberia, the largest supplier of rubber trees to Buchanan Renewables, was one of several plantation companies named in a United Nations and Government of Liberia report for appalling human rights abuses on their plantations. As communities suffered the social and environmental impacts of Firestone Liberia plantations, their unproductive rubber trees sold well to Buchanan Renewables, who then resold them as wood chips to Vattenfall.
