163 RESULTS
Wood pellets are sold as a clean alternative to coal. But is the subsidised bioenergy boom accelerating the climate crisis?
While it’s not now cutting BC old-growth, activists worry over the acquisition by U.K. Drax Group of BC’s largest wood pellet producer, Pinnacle Renewable Energy and its seven BC pellet mills. Drax provides up to 12% of the U.K.’s energy at the world’s largest pellet-burning plant. Its BC exports to Japan are also expected to grow.
Increasing demand for woody biomass-derived electricity in the UK and elsewhere has resulted in a rapidly expanding wood pellet manufacturing industry in the southern US. Since this demand is driven by climate concerns and an objective to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the electricity sector, it is crucial to understand the full carbon consequences of wood pellet sourcing, processing, and utilization. We performed a comparative carbon life cycle assessment (LCA) for pellets sourced from three mills in the southern US destined for electricity generation in the UK.
After millennia of human activity, most of the EU today, outside Scandinavia, is a patchwork of crop fields, tree plantations and settlements, devoid of natural forest. And although Scandinavia is still largely covered by forest, most of it is heavily managed by clear-cutting forestry. Natural-like forests are mainly found in steep terrain and low-productive areas, where logging has been difficult or unprofitable, and farming is impossible. Hence, pristine forests, seemingly untouched by human hand, remain only in minuscule patches unevenly tossed out across the EU. But this was not always the case. A large proportion of the European continent was once covered in broad-leafed, and mixed forests, broken only by meadows and savannah-like fields, mountain ranges and huge wetlands, now drained and converted to farmland. The old-growth forests of the past are now typically confined to nature reserves and national parks as hazy memories of long-forgotten European nature mystique. However, in the northern most corner of the EU, a large unbroken belt of old-growth forests remain which until this day is still largely intact – the last outpost of the EU.
More than 500 scientists and economists implored world leaders last week to stop treating as emissions-free the burning of wood from forests to make energy and heat, and to end subsidies now driving the explosive demand for wood pellets. Both actions, they write, are causing escalating deforestation in the Southeast US, Western Canada and Eastern Europe.
In January 2021, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) published an important study on the impacts of burning wood for energy in Europe. The report was commissioned as an output of the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy and aims to guide the possible revision of bioenergy policy, specifically the utilization of forest biomass in the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II). While the report contains a great deal of useful information, much of it is kept out of view, and the report’s executive summary has been articulated in ways that attempt to defuse the gravity of some of the findings. In this briefing we identify some of the report’s key findings and highlight some of its shortcomings.
Resolute implementation of science-based measures is essential to achieve carbon neutrality. One important issue is the use of biomass as renewable energy, which has shown far-reaching negative effects on biodiversity and on the achievement of climate goals themselves. Wood burning is currently the most common form of renewable energy, and its actual carbon emissions and impact on forests are under scrutiny of scientists.
We represent a group of Estonian environmental NGOs.
A documentary by TV2 ØSTJYLLAND challenging the sustainability of Estonian wood pellets used in Denmark.
Cada vez más, las plantas de celulosa y papel de todo el mundo están instalando calderas de biomasa de gran tamaño junto a unidades de cogeneración más tradicionales para aprovechar el fuerte apoyo y los incentivos a la producción de electricidad a partir de la quema de madera.
This Brief provides an overview of Vietnam’s wood pellet production and exports through August 2021 and concludes with recommendations for the sustainable development of the industry in the future. The quantitative data was sourced from the General Department of Vietnam Customs; qualitative information was derived from discussions with representatives of Vietnam’s pellets manufacture and export industry.
The Environmental Paper Network and Forest Defenders Alliance response to the Glasgow Deforestation Pledge.
Report about Germany's Bush control and biomass utilisation project in Namibia
Increasingly around the world pulp and paper mills are installing over-sized, dedicated biomass boilers alongside more traditional cogeneration units to take advantage of strong support and incentives for producing electricity from burning wood.
Biomass demand has significantly increased in many countries in recent years, as EU member states are looking for ways to fulfil their commitments under the Renewable Energy Directive (REDII) and the EU climate targets. This development can also be observed for Dutch consumption of wood pellets.
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