Biomass burning News

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Smoke rises from a coal-burning power plant. Refuse-derived fuel (RDF), which includes large amounts of plastics, is replacing fossil fuels in some energy and industrial furnaces. But critics say this practice is merely replacing one dirty fuel for another.

Boom in burning waste for fuel could put human health and environment at risk

Sean Mowbray 10 Dec 2025
Watcharakon Jatoenpun, AKA Sprite, showed reporters the expansive maize farms he works on in Mae Cham district, where seasonal air pollution is tied to agricultural burning. Image by Gerald Flynn / Mongabay.

Karen community fighting corn and coal for clean air in northern Thailand

Gerald Flynn 6 Nov 2025

Drax pellet mill wins appeal to raise pollution limits in small Mississippi town

Justin Catanoso 28 Oct 2025
Waste burning in the Maldives. Open burning of plastic is a cheap way of reducing waste volume, but the practice is rife with health and environmental risks.

Global South bears growing burden of health threats from plastic burning

Mongabay.com 25 Aug 2025
Drax is the largest consumer of wood pellets for energy in the UK.

Sustainable biomass certification scheme is flawed, degrades forests, report finds

Annelise Giseburt 21 Aug 2025
2017's Jones Fire in Oregon, U.S.

Old forests, new fires, and a scientific standoff over active management

John Cannon 18 Aug 2025
A crew of firefighters fights the Vees Fire near Ten Sleep, Wyoming, in July 2025.

Fixing forests or fueling fires? Scientists split over active management

John Cannon 13 Aug 2025
Greater Greener Gloster community members stand in front of the state capitol in Jackson, Mississippi, as they demand the cleanup of the Drax pellet mill

Wood pellet maker Drax denied pollution permit after small town Mississippi outcry

Justin Catanoso 1 May 2025
Banana crop in Uganda.

Ground-level ozone pollution poses growing threat to planetary health

Sean Mowbray 2 Apr 2025
Dutch forest advocates Maarten Visschers and Fenna Swart (right) protest the burning of forest biomass for energy outside Vattenfall's headquarters in Amsterdam in 2021.

Netherlands’ largest forest biomass plant canceled, forest advocates elated

Justin Catanoso 27 Mar 2025

Forest biomass growth to soar through 2030, impacting tropical forests

Justin Catanoso 6 Mar 2025
Smoke billows from an incinerator at the Sheng Huang Industries Co., Ltd garment factory in Kampong Speu province. Credit: Andy Ball/Mongabay.

Fashion has a coal problem, but the solutions are electrifying (commentary)

Peter Ford 28 Jan 2025
The Hadong power plant in South Korea co-fires coal with woody biomass, allowing it to claim it is reducing emissions under the UN loophole.

South Korea slashes forest biomass energy subsidies in major policy reform

Annelise Giseburt 20 Dec 2024

Indonesian forests put at risk by South Korean and Japanese biomass subsidies

Annelise Giseburt 12 Dec 2024
Drax is the largest consumer of wood pellets for energy in the UK.

Action against forest biomass subsidies gains momentum at COP16

Justin Catanoso 29 Oct 2024

Global biodiversity financiers strategize at COP16 to end ‘perverse subsidies’

Justin Catanoso 28 Oct 2024
Tarsiers in the rainforests of northern Sulawesi.

Indonesia biomass zone for Japan and S. Korea energy razes rainforest in Sulawesi

Sarjan Lahay 28 Oct 2024
Greater Greener Gloster community members stand in front of the state capitol in Jackson, Mississippi, as they demand the cleanup of the Drax pellet mill

New survey puts human face on pollution caused by U.S. wood pellet mills

Justin Catanoso 24 Oct 2024

Revealed: Biomass firm poised to clear Bornean rainforest for dubious ‘green’ energy

Hans Nicholas Jong, Philip Jacobson 21 Oct 2024
A deforestated site in Edenton, North Carolina.

Delay of EU Deforestation Regulation may ‘be excuse to gut law,’ activists fear

Justin Catanoso 17 Oct 2024
Trees cut down for biomass.

Biomass power grows in Japan despite new understanding of climate risks

Annelise Giseburt 29 Jul 2024

Burning wood is not ‘renewable energy,’ so why do policymakers pretend it is?

Mike DiGirolamo, Rachel Donald 11 Jun 2024
Farmers burning cleared forest land after harvesting. Photo courtesy of Buu Nguyen.

Can Vietnam’s forests survive the spread of acacia and eucalyptus plantations? (commentary)

Buu Nguyen 4 Jun 2024

UK’s Drax targets California forests for two major wood pellet plants

Justin Catanoso 6 May 2024
Rescue efforts in the aftermath of the GLOF event in Sikkim on October 4. Photo by Press Information Bureau, Government of India.

Multilateral development banks must prioritize clean & community-led energy projects (commentary)

Alessandro Ramazzotti, Vaishnavi Varadarajan, Anggita Indari 1 May 2024
Wood pellets for biomass energy. Image courtesy of Dogwood Alliance.

Enviva bankruptcy fallout ripples through biomass industry, U.S. and EU

Justin Catanoso 2 Apr 2024
The PLTU 1 Indramayu, which previously used entirely coal, has now mixed it with biomass.

Biomass-burning coal plants leave the air even dirtier, Java communities say

Rabul Sawal 25 Mar 2024
People holding wood pellets.

Study: Burning wood pellets for energy endangers local communities’ health

Justin Catanoso 18 Jan 2024
Aerial view showing a massive ring of thousands of whole trees at Enviva’s Sampson County, North Carolina

Enviva, the world’s largest biomass energy company, is near collapse

Justin Catanoso 20 Nov 2023

Can land titles save Madagascar’s embattled biodiversity and people?

Malavika Vyawahare 14 Aug 2023
A Cambodian man rides a minivan loaded with timber destined for a garment factory.

Forests in the furnace: Cambodia’s garment sector is fueled by illegal logging

Gerald Flynn, Andy Ball 11 Jul 2023
Logging operation in the Amazon.

Timber harvests to meet global wood demand will bring soaring emissions: Study

Justin Catanoso 10 Jul 2023

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