Crude palm oil and palm fruit. Photos by Rhett A. Butler Instead of wisely investing the windfall generated by cutting petrol subsidies, Indonesia is poised to squander funds by increasing…
Biomass burning takes many forms: wildfires, slash-and-burn agriculture, clearing forests and other vegetation, and even industrialized burning for energy production. Yet this burning—mostly manmade but also natural—takes a massive toll…
Sugar cane in the tropics. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. If Brazil wants to respect its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions it should target low productivity cattle pasture rather…
Wetland forests in the southern U.S. are becoming the victims of a drive for so-called green energy in Europe, according to activist group Dogwood Alliance, which has produced a new…
Logging in temperate zones may release more greenhouse gases than previously thought by destabilizing carbon stored in forest soils, argues a new paper published in the journal Global Change Biology-Bioenergy.…
In coming weeks Brazil will vote on a bill that would lift a ban on sugar cane mills across a large extent of the Amazon region, sparking fears that ethanol…
In order to meet the European Union's goal of 20% renewables by 2020, some European utility companies are moving away from coal and replacing it with wood pellet fuel. The…
Intensification of Brazil's sugarcane industry in response to rising demand for sugar-based ethanol could have impacts on the regional climate reports a new study by researchers from Arizona State University,…
Neste Oil, a Finnish energy giant, has announced a new "no deforestation" policy [PDF] for sourcing palm oil. The company, which is one of the world's largest buyers of palm…
Though Obama has frequently spoken of the need for more “green jobs,” he has failed to acknowledge the inherent environmental advantages associated with a curious plant called hemp. One of…
Not long ago biofuels were seen as one of the major tools to combat climate change, but a large number of studies in recent years have shown that many first…
Palm fruit. Photo by Rhett Butler. The European Commission has approved palm oil-based biodiesel for the renewable fuels standard provided it is certified under the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil…
Palm oil facility in Sumatra, Indonesia. The palm oil industry has hired lobbying powerhouse Holland & Knight to help overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that palm oil-based biodiesel fails…
Scientists have devised a new way to produce ethanol directly from seaweed, offering the potential to generate biofuels that don't compete with terrestrial food production and won't suck up scarce…
Europe's biofuel push could exacerbate climate change unless policies are in place to accounts for emissions from indirect land use change, warns a letter signed by more than 100 scientists…
Map of the Herakles/SGSO plantation in Cameroon. Courtesy of SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund Industrial palm oil production is coming to Africa, its ancestral home. And like other places where expansion…
This article is a longer version of story that appeared at Yale e360: In Brazil, Palm Oil Plantations Could Help Preserve Amazon. For years now, environmentalists have become accustomed to…
White Marsh Clearcut, outside of the Green Swamp, North Carolina, US. Photo by: Abigail Singer, courtesy of Dogwood Alliance. More people, less forests: that's the conclusion of a US Forest…
Converting cattle pasture and cropland in Brazil to sugar cane helps cool local climate reports research published in Nature Climate Change. Scientists with the Carnegie Institutions’s Department of Global Ecology…
Vale, a Brazilian mining giant, will buy palm oil producer Biopalma da Amazonia SA Reflorestamento Industria & Comercio, reports Bloomberg. The deal, valued at $173.5 million, will enable the mining…
