Biomass Energy, Forests and Climate Library

Welcome to the Biomass Energy, Forests and Climate library. It has been brought together by the Forest, Climate and Biomass Working Group of the Environmental Paper Network. We want activists, communities, scholars – anyone who’s interested in forest biomass issues – to be able to find all the key resources in one place. So we’ve gathered together key resources that present case studies and explain the science behind biomass energy and its impacts on forests and climate.

If you have any suggestions for resources we should have in this library or any comments about it, please contact us. You may also find our Frequently Asked Questions helpful.

Trophic rewilding can expand natural climate solutions

Natural climate solutions are being advanced to arrest climate warming by protecting and enhancing carbon capture and storage in plants, soils and sediments in ecosystems. These solutions are viewed as having the ancillary benefit of protecting habitats and landscapes to conserve animal species diversity. However, this reasoning undervalues the role animals play in controlling the carbon cycle. We present scientific evidence showing that protecting and restoring wild animals and their functional roles can enhance natural carbon capture and storage.

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Author: O.J. Schmitz et al

Date: 2022

Location: Array

Language: English

Type of resource: Academic article

Topics:

Global evidence that big trees are hugely important for mitigating climate change

We keep hearing from the forest industry that old trees need to be logged to make room for young, fast-growing trees. But old trees are massively important for ecosystem integrity and carbon stocks. When they’re logged, most of the carbon ends up in the atmosphere in short order (very little of it being incorporated into long-lived wood products). It doesn’t matter then how fast-growing the replacement trees are, logging these big old trees will cause a surge in GHG emissions. This page links to four important papers that make the case for old trees.

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Organization: Forest Defenders Alliance

Author: Several

Date: 2022

Location: Array

Type of resource: Fact Sheet

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Biomass production, supply, uses and flows in the European Union

To provide a sound scientific basis for well-prepared EC policy making, the JRC was requested by Commission services to periodically provide data, processed information, models, and analysis on EU and global biomass supply and demand and its sustainability. This report is the 3rd public-facing report under this mandate.

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Organization: Joint Research Centre (European Commission)

Author: Joint Research Centre (European Commission)

Date: 2023

Location: Array

Language: English

Type of resource: Report

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Forest bioenergy harvesting changes carbon balance and risks biodiversity in boreal forest landscapes

Climate solutions relying on forest bioenergy may be in conflict with carbon sequestration and storage by forests as well as conservation of biodiversity. We quantified effects of forest residue harvesting for bioenergy on both forest carbon balance and biodiversity in a boreal forest landscape.

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Organization: Canadian Journal of Forest Research

Author: Repo, Anna et al

Date: 2020

Location: Array

Type of resource: Academic article

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Closing an open balance: The impact of increased tree harvest on forest carbon

Fossil- based emissions can be avoided by using wood in place of non- renewable raw materials as energy and materials. However, wood harvest influences forest carbon stocks. Increased harvest may reduce the overall climate benefit of wood use significantly, but is widely overlooked.

Biomass Basics: Biomass & Pollution

Biomass, or bioenergy, creates energy by burning living materials like plants and trees. The wood pellet industry uses trees to make wood pellets. It then ships them to Europe and Asia and burns them in power plants to create electricity. Wood pellet plants are as dirty and problematic as coal plants.

EU climate plan sacrifices carbon storage and biodiversity for bioenergy

Incoming policies will cause the European Union to harvest more wood, shift one-fifth of cropland to bioenergy and outsource deforestation, analysis shows.

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Organization: Nature

Author: Timothy Searchinger et al

Date: 2022

Location: Array

Language: English

Type of resource: Academic article

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Case study of upcoming energy plantations in Indonesia

A presentation by Forest Watch Indonesia which looks at the new and upcoming threat to forests which are to be utilised for energy (biomass) as a result of government's new renewable energy policies.

Economic factors influence net carbon emissions of forest bioenergy expansion

There is considerable concern that consuming forest biomass for energy will increase net carbon emissions from forests, which is defined as carbon debt. Using a market-based economic model, we test the effects of 51 demand pathways for forest bioenergy on future forest carbon stocks to assess the likelihood of incurring a sustained carbon debt lasting for several decades.

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Organization: Nature

Author: Alice Favero et al

Date: 2023

Location: Array

Language: English

Type of resource: Academic article

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