Monthly Archives: November 2017

A combined heat and power plant in Sweden is using clothing discarded by well-known retail chain Hennes & Mauritz AB (H&M) instead of the conventional coal and oil fuel previously used. The Vasteras plant, outside Stockholm, has decided to go with (unsellable) clothing and wood-based power as part of its strategy to go fossil-fuel free by 2020. “For us it’s a burnable material,” said Jens Neren, head of fuel supplies at Malarenergi AB, a utility which owns and operates the 54-year-old plant. “Our goal is to use only renewable and recycled fuels.” …“H&M does not burn any clothes that are safe to use,” Johanna Dahl, head of communications for H&M in Sweden, told Bloomberg. “However it is our legal obligation to make sure that clothes that contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals are destroyed.”

OXFORD, ENGLAND – In response to climate change, land is key. Today, agriculture, forestry and other land uses account for roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. But adopting sustainable land management strategies could provide more than one-third of the near-term emission reductions needed to keep warming well below the target. …Some of the most promising ways to mitigate climate change are what we call “natural climate solutions”: the conservation, restoration and improved management of land, in order to increase carbon storage or avoid greenhouse gas emissions in landscapes worldwide. …Supporting innovation and entrepreneurship can also help power change. New processes… changes in the construction industry, which is turning to more efficiently produced products like cross-laminated timber, can help reduce carbon pollution.

While it seems common sense that planting more trees should help remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and thereby cool the planet, Europe’s forest management strategies have actually not helped to fight climate change, according to Professor Sebastiaan Luyssaert, from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He looked back to 1750 to see the effect of planting different types of trees on the amount of carbon that is absorbed and heat that is produced. …‘The main finding (is that) if you manage the carbon cycle, although it is unintended, you also change albedo (reflectivity) and transpiration (transfer of water from plants to the atmosphere). So if you manage the carbon cycle by choosing a different tree species, that tree species comes with its own albedo and its own transpiration.’

Victoria, through projects such as the biomanufacturing plans of Australian Paper in the Latrobe Valley, could lead Australia’s push into the emerging bio-economy, according to the annual report of the state’s forestry industry. In the interim, a key achievement of the past year was the opening of the new Radial Timber mill at Yarram in South Gippsland, said the Victorian Association of Forest Industries report, released on Friday. “The mill is a real boost for the local community, the wider Gippsland region and the timber industry in general,” said the report. …”The practice of sustainable harvesting and regeneration stores carbon in wood products, as well as in regrowth forests,” VAFI chief executive Tim Johnston said. Low emissions timber products also reduced demand for alternatives such as steel and concrete, which embody far greater carbon emissions in their manufacture, he said.

THE National Parks Association of NSW (NPA) is urging Premier Gladys Berejiklian to resist calls to burn North Coast forests for power. NSW Department of Primary Industry (DPI) advisors touted this “innovative” strategy but ecologist Dr Oisín Sweeney said it’s hard to imagine a worse idea. “Given we know biomass use overseas is driving deforestation, and the evidence that burning forests for power is driving climate change, this is reckless in the extreme,’ he said. “The Australian Government tells us logging removes carbon stores from forests and that North Coast forests have huge carbon storage potential. “Yet here’s a suggestion to log forests and burn them for power.