The meeting with those who oppose the installation of the BIOSYL factory in Guéret, a wood pellet factory for heating, takes place on the site of the future factory. It would occupy around fifteen hectares on the outskirts of Guéret. Cédric and Justine from the “Forêt Debout” Association provide the visit. The first building permit filed by Biosyl did not mention the presence of a wetland rich in biodiversity. However, it is very present…
But it is also the very functioning of the factory that worries Justine:“They plan to install a huge factory for very small pellets. This factory will not be supplied like the other pellet factories, with “sawmill associates”, sawdust and softwood. We will have a factory that prides itself on making wood pellets (or pellets) with hardwoods, round woods. It’s written in the file. The beautiful woods go to China or Europe, and the rest must be valued. So near here, we have a stationery store that does it, but it’s a little far away. There, the recovery would be more local, but we already know that the pressure on the available wood resource will be too great. It will get worse. Everywhere in France, wood energy with the financing and subsidies it obtains is creating a distortion of competition which is pushing many sawyers and industrialists to make pellets.”
Biosyl factory: the mayor of Guéret denounces the absence of an ecological impact study
Too many pellets with untenable pressure on locally available wood resources. This is what worries the mayor of Guéret. Marie-Françoise Fournier asks for an in-depth impact study to be carried out, in vain: “I wonder what is behind this file so that I am not offered a serious ecological impact study. The problem today is that we are reducing the dialogue between those who support Biosyl, who are for the economic development of Creuse, who are intelligent people, and those who ask questions in terms of ecology – ecology seems to be a bad word – angry, excessive, ignorant people who stupidly defend the trees! So yes, Biosyl will perhaps create 35 jobs in the town and will make some local taxes which will go into the coffers but what impact afterwards for our children and our grandchildren? Frankly I think we have a problem in this country. It’s because we throw ourselves headlong into certain projects without measuring their impact over the next 10 or 15 years. And what’s more, the wealth of our territory is its nature. Biosyl will be around a hundred trucks crossing the town of Guéret every day. We can work on attractiveness afterwards, behind that! “
Supported by the prefecture and the urban community, the Biosyl factory would produce 85,000 tonnes of pellets each year from 130,000 tonnes of wood, 80% of which is hardwood. The factory plans to source its supplies within a 130 km radius around the factory. Not entirely virtuous for the environment. Nor for the local economic fabric, believes Thomas Pasquet, former forestry operator – sawyer in the Creuse: “There already exists a factory in Creuse which consumes 60,000 tonnes of hardwood each year to make logs, compost and forest chips. This factory will find itself in competition with a factory, Biosyl, subsidized (to the tune of 5 million (public aid). It therefore risks closure while it operates, while it sources its supplies from around it, adapted to the reality of the region. We will create 35 jobs in Guéret with Biosyl and eliminate 30 jobs elsewhere in one. factory which was working well until now! I don’t see the use of it.“
The practice of clear-cutting: another source of concern
Another concern on the part of the population: the lack of guarantee on the part of Biosyl that its wood will not come from clearcutting. Forests completely razed by heavy machinery, which impacts biodiversity and forest water resources. Practices observed in one of the 2 other Biosyl factories explains Bruno Doucet of the NGO Canopy : “It was in the Morvan. A few years ago, we wanted to know where the wood from several clearcuts of hardwood trees in the Morvan was taken. And by following this wood, we realized that it was going to the Biosyl factory in Cosne-sur-Loire in Nièvre which took large oaks and beeches to transform them into wood pellets. We questioned the director of Biosyl at the time and he told us that he had not. no intention of destroying or degrading forests And he committed to no longer taking wood from clear felling Before, a few months later, receiving a letter, we “Canopée” where he told us: finally,. I am not going to keep my commitment. This means that we do not trust Biosyl which, in any case, in Limousin has not made any promises of this type. So we can fear that the wood comes from clear felling!”
The Biosyl Guéret factory has not been the subject of any ecological impact study or public inquiry.
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