The UK and EU were the primary users of woody biomass for energy. But Japan and South Korea have drastically stepped up their burning of wood pellets — potentially threatening forests, biodiversity, and the climate.
For the first time, a portion of the EU government has challenged the sustainability of burning forest biomass to make energy, a controversial policy pushed by the forestry industry but condemned by environmentalists.
Japan and South Korea are increasingly burning biomass, such as wood pellets, to make energy, with potentially adverse impacts on the global climate, deforestation and biodiversity.
When Milan Klöwer spoke to Mongabay, he was fresh off the train in Germany. As a postdoctoral researcher and climate scientist at the University of Oxford, Klöwer said he does…
Current pledges to cut emissions won’t be enough to slow climate change, according to a new report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). U.N. Secretary-General António…
The EU remains committed to burning forests to make energy, despite conclusive scientific evidence of its climate destabilizing impacts. In a new strategy, forest advocates plan to take the EU to court to fight that policy.
Of the nine critical planetary boundaries that humanity is transgressing, climate change is the best known and understood, while atmospheric aerosol pollution may be the least, but aerosols are already having climate impacts and polluting Earth’s skies, killing millions.
Achieving net-zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century was one of the goals of the COP26 U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, last November. Guyana claims to have…
Recovering Together, Recovering Stronger. Indonesia adopted this tagline when it took over the rotating chair of the club of the world’s 20 largest advanced and emerging economies, the Group of…
Thousands of companies around the world have made pledges to reduce carbon emissions in the coming decades in response to the climate crisis, including initiatives to reduce reliance on carbon-heavy…
With vulnerable nations enraged as oil nations censor critical COP26 Glasgow accord language, the world is struggling mightily today to hammer out an agreement to truly curb climate change.
Some 1,800 lawsuits attempting to hold nations and corporations responsible for their climate change pledges — assumed to be non-legally binding — are wending their way through the legal system.… And some are being won.
The E.U. continues to struggle with the irony of a commitment to conserving forests, while also burning forest biomass and ignoring the carbon emissions that causes — all in order to achieve a mandate to end burning oil, gas and coal.
The Glasgow climate summit is failing to address the danger of burning forests to make energy — a practice classified as carbon neutral, though science shows that its emissions exceed that of coal per unit of energy produced.
International forest and climate experts have released a “playbook” for ecosystem restoration with a set of 10 principles that they say, if followed, could be a game-changer. The Political Ecology…
With COP26 showing no sign of a CO2 reduction breakthrough, researchers are touting various atmospheric methane removal strategies. But is there the time, money and commitment to implement? And what are the risks?
More than 100 scientists have issued a letter urging U.S. President Biden and Congress to remove provisions promoting logging, forest biomass and fossil fuels from the multitrillion-dollar infrastructure and reconciliation (Build Back Better) bills.
It is a commendable goal to end and reverse deforestation within a decade, one which if met would protect both people and the planet, but this is a crisis now.…
The Glasgow Declaration on Forests pledges to end deforestation by 2030. But critics say there’s a catch: Will natural forests continue being cut, and land converted to plantations, causing CO2 emissions to rise and biodiversity to fall?
With humanity emitting more carbon skyward, nature-based climate solutions — and their ecosystem carbon storage capacity — are put at risk by agribusiness and extraction industries. Will world leaders act in time to conserve forests?
New research has tracked biomass industry carbon emissions, finding that U.S. wood pellet production, transatlantic shipping, and U.K. and E.U. pellet burning, plus a loss of stored forest carbon, combine in substantial unreported emissions.
JAKARTA — Indonesia has terminated a long-standing agreement with Norway, in which the latter agreed to pay US$1 billion if the forest-rich tropical country is able to slow its emissions…
The EU and the forestry industry say burning wood to make energy is carbon neutral and cleaner than coal. But critics say biomass is a disaster for forests, biodiversity and the climate. Mongabay reviews the evidence on both sides.
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s plan to phase out coal is a mere rebranding of an existing timeline to decommission aging plants, with no meaningful shift toward actually quitting the fossil fuel,…
New agri-technologies and traditional farming practices done right could combine to offer significant benefits and hope for the global environment and health.
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.
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.
JAKARTA — Indonesia says it will begin retiring coal-fired power plants for good — while still continuing to build more than a hundred new ones, in the latest mixed message…
JAKARTA — Experts have criticized Indonesian President Joko Widodo for not announcing a more ambitious climate target at last month’s leaders’ summit called by U.S. President Joe Biden. During the…
JAKARTA — Indonesia could lose an area of tropical rainforest bigger than Belgium to oil palm plantations over the next three years without existing measures to slow this loss, activists…
