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.

To use the library, you’ll see that the resources are organised into a few categories, so you can search by topic, geographic location, date and language. You can also use the search box to enter anything you like that might help you in your search – key words, authors, organisations, whatever will lead you to what you want.

When you get results for your search, it’ll tell you how many resources that has identified and, for each one, it will show you what sort of resource it is – pdf document, video, etc – and will give a short summary of what it contains. Click on the title to be taken straight to the resource itself. If you want to find out more about the organisation that produced the resource or the publication in which it was published, click on the Organisation/Publication name and it will take you to their web page.

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.

222 RESULTS

Author: BankTrack, EPN, Biofuelwatch
Date: 2022
Location: Worldwide
Language: French
Type of resource: Webinar
Topics: Biomass finance
Summary:

Un webinaire pour les militants : « Pressuriser les financiers de la filière biomasse bois » - une présentation des nouvelles données et comment les utiliser.

Author: BankTrack, EPN, Biofuelwatch
Date: 2022
Location: Worldwide
Language: English
Type of resource: Webinar
Topics: Biomass finance
Summary:

A webinar for campaigners: “Pressurising the financiers of the wood biomass industry” - a presentation of new data and how to use it.

Author: EPN's Africa Biomass Group
Date: 2022
Location: Continent - Africa
Language: English
Type of resource: Webinar
Topics: Global South
Summary:

A webinar exploring the unjust carbon accounting rules which allow responsibility for carbon emissions from biomass to fall on producing, rather than consuming, countries. It includes the screening of the documentary “The Impact of APSD Plantation on Communities in Atebubu” by Civic Response. The documentary explores the impacts that plantations established for a biomass power plant, are having on a local community in the Bono East Region of Ghana

Author: Colectivo Viento Sur
Date: 2022
Location: Continent - South America, Country - Chile
Language: Spanish
Type of resource: Info-graphic
Topics: Global South
Summary:

Una serie de infografías producidas por Latin-America Biomass Group para resaltar los problemas de la biomasa en América Latina.

A series of info-graphics produced by the Latin America Biomass Group.

Author: Trend Asia
Date: 2022
Location: Continent - Asia
Language: English
Type of resource: Report
Topics: Carbon accounting, Global South
Summary:

A report by Trend Asia finds that co-firing coal with biomass increases emissions.

Author: By Shaye Wolf and Chad Hanson
Date: 2022
Location: Worldwide, Continent - North America, Country - United States
Language:
Type of resource: Fact Sheet
Topics: Scientist statements
Summary:

Scientists with expertise in forest and fire ecology and climate change in California, are compelled to expose the many false claims from the biomass industry in regards, in particular the claim that harvesting wood for biomass is good fire management practise.

Author: Environmental Investigation Agency
Date: 2022
Location: Continent - Europe
Language: English
Type of resource: Report
Topics: Policy
Summary:

A new investigation from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) reveals that more than a dozen biomass facilities and pellet factories across four countries in Eastern and Central Europe received tens of thousands of whole logs from protected forests. Not only were these inputs not wood waste, as the industry claims, but they were sourced from Natura 2000 sites, Nature Reserves and National Parks, contributing to the destruction of the last wild forests on the continent.

Author: Peg Putt, translated by FoE Japan
Date: 2022
Location: Worldwide
Language: Japanese
Type of resource: Briefing
Topics: Carbon accounting
Summary:

Author: EPN's Biomass Working Group
Date: 2022
Location: Worldwide
Language: Japanese
Type of resource: Statement
Topics: NGO statements
Summary:

森林バイオマスエネルギーに関する意見表明

Author: Tinus Pulles, Michael Gillenwater & Klaus Radunsky
Date: 2022
Location: Worldwide
Language: English
Type of resource: Academic article
Topics: Carbon accounting
Summary:

In this paper, we review the present IPCC carbon mass flow approach and propose a change in the reporting and accounting methods that has the potential to address this national GHG emissions reporting issue.

Author: Zero
Date: 2022
Location: Continent - Europe, Country - Portugal
Language: English
Type of resource: Report
Topics: Bioeconomy, Forests and Biodiversity, Fossil Fuels
Summary:

NGO ZERO has exposed the industry’s unsustainable use of biomass In Portugal to reveal a significant recent increase in installed capacity.

Around 815,000 tonnes of wood pellets were produced in Portugal in 2021, requiring more than 1.5 million tonnes of wood. 510,000 tonnes were exported, mostly to burn in converted coal-fired power stations and other plants that burn biomass for electricity generation in the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands.

In Portugal there are now 26 pellet plants with a total installed capacity of over 1.7 million tonnes per year. Pine (maritime pine or pinheiro bravo) is the main species used by pellet manufacturers and most of the wood they use is from whole trees directly from forestry operations. This has significant climate impacts, and puts enormous pressure on pine stands that are already in rapid decline in Portugal.

Author: Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and Conservancy Team
Date: 2022
Location: Worldwide
Language: English
Type of resource: Report
Topics: Global South
Summary:

The report documents systematic human rights abuses against Indigenous Peoples across protected areas worldwide. It identifies trends occurring in an almost identical manner across 10 protected areas worldwide. These trends include forced displacements, losses of ancestral lands, beatings, sexual violence, looting, extrajudicial killings, and torching of property, often perpetrated by empowered, overzealous, and militarized law enforcement personnel and park rangers.

Author: Fern
Date: 2022
Location: Continent - Europe
Language: English
Type of resource: Briefing
Topics: Land use, Policy
Summary:

WHY THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION’S 2030 CLIMATE AND ENERGY PROPOSAL IS UNFIT FOR FORESTS
As part of her bid to be European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen committed to increasing the European Union’s (EU) target for cutting greenhouse gases from 40 to 55 per cent. Now that she is President, the Commission has set about revising its climate and energy legislation to be ‘fit for 55’. They released their proposals in July 2021. This briefing looks at three key parts of that legislation package (the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry Regulation (LULUCF) and the Forest Strategy) and analyses what effect they will have on forests. Its conclusions are worrying.

Author: EPN's Forest, Climate and Biomass Working Group
Date: 2022
Location: Worldwide
Language: English
Type of resource: Briefing
Topics: Carbon accounting
Summary:

Big biomass burns wood in huge volumes for electricity and industrial heat. Large scale use of forest biomass adversely affects climate, biodiversity, communities, and the transition to low carbon renewables. Burning wood for energy is emissive. In fact burning wood for energy produces at least as much CO2 as burning coal per unit of energy produced, and usually more. Yet many countries treat biomass energy as zero carbon or as carbon neutral and therefore
give it financial and regulatory support as a ‘renewable’ energy.

Author: Solutions for Our Climate
Date: 2022
Location: Continent - Asia, Country - South Korea
Language: English
Type of resource: Video
Topics: Climate
Summary:

Biomass produces heat and electricity by burning wood reduced to pellets. These pellets are composed of roundwood and logging residues and often burned with a mixture of coal.

The Korean government sees biomass as renewables and pushes more support for this forest fuel than it does for solar or wind power. However, most of these pellets sourced within the country come from destructive clear-cutting. Science says burning trees quickly releases a massive amount of carbon in the atmosphere, which could otherwise be contained in those trees for centuries.

Mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss starts from protecting and restoring our forests back to their natural state. The future is not in flames.