The biomass industry says that burning wood to make energy is carbon neutral. Environmentalists say biomass is a disaster for forests, biodiversity and the climate. Mongabay reviews independent scientific evidence on both sides.
Cambodians have long used charcoal to cook their food, with its use ingrained in the culture. Innovative entrepreneurs, using education and briquettes made from coconut shell and woody waste, are changing norms.
Soaring demand for charcoal, especially in urban areas, is putting intense pressure on Ugandan forests as well as on local fruit trees, which are being cut to make fuel for cooking and small-scale enterprises.
In lead up to EU forest biomass “carbon neutrality” decision, European Commission Exec. VP Frans Timmermans argues in favor of forest conservation, while also favoring burning wood to make “transition” energy.
The US, China, UK, EU, Japan, South Korea, Canada and others upped their climate ambitions at Joe Biden’s Earth Day Leaders Summit on Climate, but activists pointed to duplicitous policies on forest biomass, coal, and more.
Last fall, the ruling New Democratic Party promised to defer cutting BC’s last old-growth, but the NDP has so far failed to act and may be embracing the province’s old policy: forestry first; nature and planet a distant second.
The Netherlands has voted to stop issuing new subsidies for the burning of forests to generate heat. Though a small win for critics who say biomass is not carbon neutral, the vote could influence a June EU biomass review.
Scientists implore US, EU, Japan, South Korea and UK to stop harvesting forests to turn into wood pellets to burn as fuel at converted coal-burning power plants; a policy the UN has erroneously condoned as “carbon neutral.”
Today we’re discussing proposed solutions to the global climate crisis that could have unintended consequences and thus might not be the effective solutions they’re promoted as. Listen here: Nature-based solutions…
Michael Regan, President Biden’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, in 2019 saw no climate benefit to the production of wood pellets in North Carolina to make energy abroad; what will he do at EPA?
The survival of Europe’s most valuable – and threatened – wildlife and habitats depends on Natura 2000. Natura 2000 sites are meant to be environmental havens, shielded from the relentless…
The forest biomass industry is booming, with forests in the U.S., Canada, Russia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Eastern Europe cut to provide wood pellets for burning at former coal power plants in the UK, EU and Asia.
A UN carbon accounting loophole that replaces coal with the burning of forests to make “carbon neutral” electricity is subsidy-driven and will destroy forests vitally needed now for carbon sequestration: Critics.
The Canadian province says 23% of its forests are old growth, but a new study shows only 1% is left. And without immediate protection that could be sacrificed to supply the booming wood pellet biomass energy industry.
A letter from 200 top scientists to congressional leaders strongly urges lawmakers to reject a new draft policy which researchers say would destroy U.S. forests while adding dangerously to carbon emissions.
The government of South Korea is subsidizing the development of biomass power so heavily that it’s hindering the adoption of renewable energy technologies like solar and wind, new research finds.…
Responding to intense pressure from investors and environmental activists, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, signaled in January that it would reduce investments in coal for energy generation. Other fossil…
The continued use of wood-derived biomass could result in a potential 30% increase in worldwide forest cover — more than a billion hectares (2.5 billion acres) — by the year…
Analysts are calling the COP25 climate summit in Madrid a colossal failure — undermining the carbon reduction goals set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, leaving the world in mortal danger.
Two top officials have announced that after 2020 the EU will look at closing the biomass carbon neutrality loophole that has created a boom in emission-producing wood pellets.
Interviewed in Madrid, Will Gardiner, CEO of the UK’s largest biomass plant, said his firm leads way in energy decarbonization, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.
A company attending the COP25 climate summit says its dam will reduce Indonesia’s carbon emissions, but current science says tropical dams are greenhouse gas emitters.
Madrid negotiators plan to create rules for a global carbon market, but a failure so far to include forest incentives, and a silence on a biomass carbon accounting loophole could hinder progress.
The burning of vegetation and the release of climate-warming gases into the atmosphere are conspiring to dry out the Amazon rainforest, according to a new study. “We observed that in…
Fires razed more than 1,300 hectares (3,200 acres) of forestland in Madagascar’s Ankarafantsika National Park in August and September — four times the size of New York City’s Central Park.…
Sanu Kaji Shrestha was wandering along a Cypriot coastline 10 years ago, enjoying some downtime from a workshop he was leading on green energy technology, when he decided to collect…
The UK and EU say they plan to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, even as both pursue plans to burn massive amounts of carbon-producing wood pellets.
In a suit filed Monday, accusers say European nations burning wood pellets and chips for energy are putting the world at risk with carbon emissions greater than from coal burning.
Burning wood pellets, once deemed as carbon neutral, produces big CO2 emissions instead. But developed nations are cooking the books on bioenergy, toying with climate disaster.
Stretching across the southeastern U.S., wetland forests provide ecosystem services totaling $500 billion, according to a 2018 report by environmental watchdog group Dogwood Alliance. Today, America’s natural wetland forests exist…
