Rotary drum dryers are a key component of wood pellet production, but they can pose significant fire and explosion risks if operators do not manage conditions carefully. Although these systems are often viewed as standalone equipment, incident investigations across the sector show that dryer-related events frequently involve the entire drying line, including furnaces, ducts, cyclones, induced-draft fans and quench systems. Safer operations depend on understanding how these components work together and ensuring safety barriers are in place, functional, and continuously verified. Whether you work in operations, maintenance, engineering or process safety, this webinar will provide practical guidance to help reduce risk, improve reliability and support safer dryer operations across the facility.
During the Wood Pellet Association of Canada 2026 Conference in Victoria, B.C., the Emerging Competition & Market Dynamics panel discussion focused on the global wood pellet market and how it is entering a period of rapid change and intensifying competition. …the panel was comprised of Hannah Adler, Argus Media; William Strauss, FutureMetrics; Manolis Karampinis, Bioenergy Europe; and Didzis Palejs, Latvian Biomass Association. The panel addressed the potential for long-term oversupply in the wood pellet market caused by the expected reduction in demand from the Drax Group’s power station in the U.K. …While the wood pellet sector is expected to go through a few rough years, Strauss believes the future for the sector remains bright. …While Japan remains a key customer of wood pellets for Canada, Adler said that demand has slowed down with the phasing out of the Feed-in-Tariff and Feed-in-Premium schemes.
Taking the stage at Climate Week in New York City, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his authorization to move forward with linking Washington into its carbon market that’s shared with Quebec, Canada, the next-to-last step in California’s process to complete the merger. On the same day, Washington state officials completed the rulemaking process to allow the linkage. California and Quebec will still need to complete regulatory changes, the final step, before merging can occur. In June, the three jurisdictions signed a linkage agreement to fully join operations in 2027. Washington hopes that joining the older and well-established carbon market will stabilize prices for businesses, which have swung wildly in recent years on the state’s 5-year-old market. …For more than a decade, California’s carbon market has sought to cut climate pollution by setting a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and requiring major polluters to buy allowances to cover their share of emissions. In 2014, its market linked with Quebec. 
As Canada confronts a trade war with the US, climate action risks becoming collateral damage. But the same economic shock could also allow Canada an opportunity to rethink its energy future. This tension was at the centre of Canada’s National Observer’s 
New research suggests climate change could leave Canada’s forests increasingly vulnerable to pests and disease in the coming decades, while a federal climate report projects a sharp increase in the area burned by wildfires across the country. A federal government report warns average temperatures in Canada could rise by at least 3.5 C by the end of the century, even if the world achieves net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, researchers at the University of British Columbia say climate change is expected to increase pest and disease damage across much of North America’s forests. The UBC study found more than 80 per cent of the forest area examined could experience higher levels of damage by the middle of the century. “Climate can influence the performance of both trees and the pests,” said Dr. Zihui Wang, a researcher in UBC’s Department of Botany.
Canadians will have to prepare for a future that’s 5 C hotter, according to a new report summarizing the latest science on climate change. The second edition of 
Donald Trump’s trade war is accelerating Canada’s retreat from climate policy. When trade talks between Canada and the United States broke down on August 22 and Trump imposed tariffs of 50 per cent on almost $30 billion of Canadian goods, Canada had to respond. And it is responding. Prime Minister Mark Carney is standing up to Trump. I admire him for that. Canada cannot allow an American president to threaten our economy every time he doesn’t get what he wants. We need new markets, new trading partners and far less dependence on the United States. But something else is happening in the rush to protect ourselves. Climate policy is getting trounced. The oil-and-gas emissions cap has been abandoned. The Clean Electricity Regulations and other climate measures have been weakened. The federal government has moved toward expedited approvals for energy infrastructure.
Mark Carney government is arguing in court that the signature piece of Justin Trudeau’s climate action plan — the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act — is unenforceable. Also, that it’s not the job of the courts to rule on federal climate policy. That may come as a shock to Canadians who remember the Trudeau government crowing when the Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that Trudeau’s carbon pricing law was constitutional, after it was challenged by Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan as an intrusion into provincial authority. But that was then, and this is now.
Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada – Dense evergreen plantations in Canada’s boreal forest absorb so much winter sunlight that the resulting surface warming can offset 6 to 20 percent of the climate benefit they are credited with. Canada’s current carbon accounting frameworks measure the carbon stored but largely omit the heat absorbed by these forests, according to a new Policy Brief from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH). The result is inflated mitigation estimates and public investment in forests that may not deliver the cooling they promise. The Policy Brief “
There have been more than 800 wildfires across Canada so far this year and nearly four million hectares of land has been burned. …In addition to the fires’ immediate damage to our natural landscapes and well-being, there’s another way to think about their climate implications: a healthy forest spends decades pulling carbon out of the air and locking it away in tree trunks, branches and roots. A wildfire undoes that long-term work almost overnight, and releases all of that carbon. …Carbon removal is distinct from carbon capture… it’s a distinct process that pulls carbon already in the atmosphere back out, rather than just capturing it as it’s produced, and this deserves a policy environment to catalyze it. …Some carbon-removal companies take fire-killed trees that have no other use, which would otherwise decompose or fuel the next fire, and bury it in engineered, low-oxygen sites where its carbon stays locked away for a century or more. [to access the full story a Globe and Mail subscription is required]
The 2023 wildfires in Canada burned a record-breaking area, contributing 23% of global wildfire carbon emissions that year. Yet, the relative contributions from live biomass versus soil and peat organic matter combustion were previously unknown. Our analysis reveals a total of 554 million tonnes of carbon released by the 2023 wildfires in Canada, with 76% originating from soil and peat combustion, and 24% from live biomass burning. As Canada stores about one-fifth of the world’s soil organic carbon, these findings underscore the growing vulnerability of northern soil carbon stocks to intensifying wildfires, amplifying climate feedback risks.
The long-anticipated El Niño is here. …In its monthly update in June, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), issued an El Niño advisory, confirming that the warmer conditions had developed in the specific part of the Pacific Ocean known as Niño 3.4. In order to be considered an El Niño, temperatures need to be 0.5 C above the average. Ocean temperatures are now close to 2 C above average. …The strongest El Niño in recent years was the one in 2015-2016, where the ocean temperature anomaly was roughly 2.75 C. ….Nat Johnson, a meteorologist at NOAA’s geophysical fluid dynamics laboratory, said the transition from a La Niña to El Niño has been very quick. …Meanwhile, in Canada, the effects will be seen in the winter months, bringing milder temperatures, but also drier conditions, something that is of great concern for wildfire development in the spring in Western Canada.
BC’s wildfire emissions in 2023 exceeded those of seven of the world’s ten largest national emitters. …At the same time, provincial policy has systematically reduced the managed forest harvest and shuttered 21 mills since 2023. …The policy of locking forests away from active management—while presented as environmental protection—is contributing to the very climate outcome it claims to prevent. Decadent, unmanaged stands are the fuel that feeds catastrophic wildfire. A well-managed, productive forest economy would reduce Canada’s climate impact more than any policy of exclusion. …The argument for locking forests away from harvest assumes that standing forests are always a carbon sink—absorbing more CO₂ than they release. This is true for young, actively growing forests. It is not true for old, decadent stands. …The solution is not less forestry. It is more forestry—done well, done sustainably, and done with the explicit goal of reducing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions: uncontrolled wildfire in unmanaged forests.
ARC Bio has successfully demonstrated a pathway to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from Canadian forest residues through refinery co-processing. The project connects Canada’s forest sector with existing refining infrastructure, demonstrating how residual woody biomass can be converted into a refinery-ready biocrude and processed alongside conventional feedstocks to produce transportation fuels, including SAF. “Canada has the biomass feedstock, forest sector expertise, industrial capability and refining infrastructure to build an important new clean fuel value chain,” said Serge Mercier, President of Bioénergie AECN. “This work creates a direct connection between Canada’s forest economy and the growing need for low-carbon fuels in aviation and marine transportation markets.” The demonstration began with fast pyrolysis oil produced from Canadian forest residues by Bioénergie AECN in Port-Cartier, Quebec. The bio-oil was upgraded into barrel-scale quantities of Alder Renewable Crude (ARC), a transportable biocrude designed for integration with existing refinery infrastructure.
NB Power is pushing ahead with the conversion of its Belledune Generating Station from coal to biomass. A Thursday announcement is expected to reveal the proponents that will supply the repurposed power plant – one of New Brunswick’s largest – with 300,000 tonnes of wood pellets annually. Among them is expected to be a partnership proposing to build a torrefied wood pellet production facility at the Port of Belledune. “Once it’s officially confirmed, we are going to have a plant right at the port,” said Pabineau First Nation Chief Terry Richardson in an interview. “What’s great about this project is it’s Canadian technology, Canadian companies, and First Nations all partnering together.” Brunswick News reported in May on a partnership between Pabineau First Nation, Eel River Bar First Nation, Arbec Forest Products, and Airex Energy, a Quebec company proposing to build a torrefied wood pellet production facility at the Port of Belledune. [A Telegraph-Journal subscription is required for full access]
For generations, Nova Scotia’s forests have been a foundation of the province’s economy. But the traditional business model built around sawmills, pulpwood and large-scale paper production has been under growing pressure. The closure of the Northern Pulp mill in Pictou County in 2020 exposed just how vulnerable the sector had become. …Now, industry leaders are looking toward an emerging opportunity: turning branches, bark and other low-grade fibre into energy. …Nova Sustainable Fuels is planning a multibillion-dollar renewable-energy project that would use biomass from Nova Scotia’s forestry and forest-based industries to produce sustainable aviation fuel, providing an alternative to conventional petroleum-based aviation fuel. For an industry struggling to find markets for its fibre, projects such as that could represent an important new customer. Stuart said a biomass market could also complement efforts to improve the health of Nova Scotia’s forests. [A Chronicle Herald subscription may be required for full access]
The planet’s warming had a strong influence on destructive wildfires in Canada that have raged across Ontario and the Northwest Territories since late June, making the extreme fire weather that fueled them at least twice as likely, according to 
The wildfire situation in northwestern Ontario has drawn growing global attention. There have been extraordinary stories of close calls and narrow escapes from the rapidly advancing fires. Complaints are coming (ironically) from the United States over the impacts of the resulting fire smoke on American cities. In the short term, attention is rightly focused on the immediate responses to the fires. …At the same time, the fires need to be viewed in a longer-term context. Increased incidences of large-scale forest fires, particularly in the boreal region stretching across Canada from Labrador to the Yukon, have been a predicted impact of climate change in Canada for more than three decades. …The province needs to both adapt to the reality of a changing climate and its consequences and develop a serious strategy for not making the problem worse. So far, Ontario is failing on both fronts.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court kicked off a new term, with the justices wrestling with an attempt by oil companies to throw out lawsuits alleging they should pay damages for the impacts of climate change. Although the case concerns a specific lawsuit the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, brought against Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy, the ultimate decision could have broad ramifications. …Boulder officials say they face increasing costs because of the impacts of climate change, including efforts to minimize risks from wildfires. …The lawsuit says Exxon and Suncor misled consumers about the impact that greenhouse gases produced by their products would have on the climate. The companies deny the allegations and warn that if the Boulder lawsuit moves forward… energy companies could face crippling damages. They also argue climate change is an international issue that cannot be the subject of litigation in state courts.
The Supreme Court appeared divided and searching for consensus Monday in a major case involving climate change that could determine whether local governments can sue producers of fossil fuels for potentially billions of dollars in damages over alleged marketing deception and the impacts of global warming. Boulder, Colorado brought the case against Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy. …A victory for the city would clear the way for its claims — and dozens of similar cases elsewhere — to move forward in state courts but would likely not be the final word in the dispute. “This case involves an unprecedented effort to use state law to regulate global conduct,” argued Kannon Shanmugam, an attorney for the energy companies. “If Boulder’s claims are allowed to go forward, some 90,000 municipalities across the country will have the ability to make national and international energy policy by asking juries to impose catastrophic damages on selected fossil-fuel producers.”
Our government could do something about climate change, but it refuses. In fact, most elected leaders and political candidates don’t even talk about it. As the fossil-fuel industry increasingly allied itself with Republicans to block climate action over the decades, Democrats became the party more willing to address it. But now, even many Democrats have gone quiet. As the November midterms approach, think tanks and consultants are advising them to avoid the topic global warming because “it is not a priority for voters.” The silence is called “climate hushing,” the strategic choice to avoid talking about global warming to avoid political backlash, polarization or economic anxiety. In other words, our elected leaders should avoid mentioning the huge elephant in the room, even as it gets more dangerous. Hardly an evening newscast goes by today without reports of major weather disasters and millions of Americans under threat of fire, flood, killer heat or other calamity. 
For decades, mature forests have been treated as if their ability to store additional carbon gradually fades toward a biological ceiling. Once trees fill the available space and their canopies close, conventional satellite measurements often suggest that forest biomass changes very little. A new analysis, however, indicates that this apparent stability may be partly an illusion created by the way satellites observe forests. Across the conterminous United States, mature forests continue to accumulate carbon over large areas, but much of that growth is being missed by current satellite-derived biomass estimates. …The researchers compared several independent ways of detecting forest change, including satellite-derived biomass estimates, lidar observations, forest inventories and ecosystem models. …The contrast between the measurements was striking. Satellite estimates indicated that biomass in mature forests had undergone nearly neutral change over recent decades, implying little overall gain or loss. Forest inventories, by comparison, estimated that mature forests were accumulating about 102 teragrams of carbon each year. 
For decades, the economics of a pulp mill have centered primarily on fiber, energy and established byproducts. But as low-carbon markets develop, another potential source of value is emerging from the mill itself: biogenic carbon dioxide. Biogenic CO₂ is generated from biomass rather than fossil sources. As governments and companies look for ways to reduce emissions, captured biogenic CO₂ can potentially serve two very different low-carbon markets: as feedstock for synthetic fuels and as a source of permanent carbon dioxide removal. That is beginning to change the conversation around carbon capture. Rather than viewing CO₂ solely as an emissions-management challenge, some pulp mills may increasingly be able to view it as a potential product. For pulp mills, that creates an important strategic question: Which market offers the greatest value for each ton of captured CO₂? …Biogenic CO₂ is just one of several emerging opportunities reshaping the economics of pulp production.
The European Union Deforestation Regulation has been postponed, amended and simplified since it came about in 2023, yet the central compliance challenge confronting wood pellet producers has barely changed. Producers shipping into the European Union will need to demonstrate that their fiber is legal and deforestation-free, identify the plots where the wood was harvested and preserve the connection between those plots and the finished product. That requirement reaches beyond conventional sustainability certification and deep into supplier networks that were not designed to provide plot-level information. …The delay has given the industry a longer runway, but the remaining work lies at the hardest end of the supply chain: beyond the pellet plant, beyond direct suppliers and back to the land itself. Producers that can make that connection auditable will enter the next phase with more than a completed due diligence statement; they will possess a clearer view of the fiber networks on which their businesses depend.
Under U.S. federal policy, wood pellets are classified as carbon neutral renewable energy. That label, assigned in an overlooked 2018 rider buried in a massive appropriations bill, is worth billions of dollars. The people who lobbied hardest to put it there were investors who may make billions as a result of that controversial decision. Enviva, the world’s largest wood pellet producer, was built with private equity money. Riverstone Holdings first invested in 2010 through its $4.3 billion Riverstone/Carlyle renewable energy fund, then led a recapitalization worth more than $1 billion in 2020, bringing in money from investment firms Goldman Sachs, Mubadala, Fortress, and Neuberger Berman. None of them were betting on wood, but on a label. Take away the renewable designation and the business disappears. It only works when governments agree to count pellets as “clean.” …Congress should immediately strip the carbon neutrality language from spending bills, keep biomass out of clean energy tax credits, and let the EPA follow the evidence.
BOULDER, Colorado — To walk deep into the mountain forests at the doorstep of the Rocky Mountains, is to encounter the fragrant majesty of century-old ponderosa pine trees famous for lining ski slopes, National Park trails and residential neighborhoods. Now, those iconic Colorado trees — already under strain from record heat and prolonged drought — are threatened by a rapidly growing outbreak of silent killers: the mountain pine beetle. The mountain pine beetle is the size of a grain of rice but can inflict colossal harm to forests. …More than 700,000 acres in Colorado are affected, officials say. Climate change is blamed for supercharging the emerging outbreak, with no end in sight. …The cost of responding to the pine beetle outbreak, along with the financial impacts from other climate-change influenced environmental threats, are at the heart of a major 
The wildfires that have raged across Oregon and Washington this year burned millions of acres. But beyond the immediate destruction, the fires have destroyed something less visible: tens of millions of dollars in California carbon credits, paid for by businesses and consumers under the state’s climate mandates. The fires have scorched tens of thousands of acres enrolled in forest-carbon projects under California’s cap-and-trade program. The system allows companies to meet part of the state’s climate rules by purchasing credits from forest owners… sometimes outside of the state. The destruction is the latest evidence that California’s forest-offset program is ineffective at best, counterproductive at worst. …California has tried to account for wildfire risks by establishing a “buffer pool,” to which each project is required to contribute as a kind of insurance policy. When a fire destroys a forest-carbon project, credits from the pool are canceled to cover the loss. But this approach has proven inadequate. 
PORT ANGELES, Washington — The Clallam County commissioners are set to throw their support toward a company exploring the possibility of repurposing the former McKinley Mill site. The commissioners discussed a letter of support for Candelaria Industries’ Biopower Redevelopment Proposal with the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities’ request for proposals for repurposing closed wood products facilities for bioenergy development. Candelaria Industries purchased the former McKinley Mill site in June and is evaluating potential reuse of the industrial property and existing infrastructure. …On June 15, the endowment launched a funding opportunity to assessed closed wood products facilities for bioenergy development, the site states. Up to $500,000 in funding is available “to test the renewable energy and economic potential of idled industrial sites in forest-dependent regions,” according to the site.
GEORGIA — A peer-reviewed University of Georgia study has found that rural forest landowners in the southeastern United States do not assess wood-based bioenergy or climate change solely through economic considerations. Their views are shaped by political beliefs, cultural values, personal experience, trust in markets and perceptions of local communities, the researchers reported in 2025. The study, published in the journal 
New Zealand’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority on Oct. 1 announced it is investing in five new wood energy aggregation facilities and four projects that aim to produce torrefied biomass and wood pellets. Funding awarded to the torrefied biomass and wood pellet projects is in the form of repayable grants that will help cover costs associated with developing detailed information required for final investment decisions (FID). If brought to market, the four projects could produce more than 500,000 metric tons of wood fuel annually, spread across torrefied biomass and white wood pellets. Awards made to torrefied biomass and wood pellet projects include… five wood energy aggregation facilities to secure low-grade wood from commercial forestry alongside the private sector. According to EECA, the sites will provide a central repository for nearby forest operations to collect, store and prepare wood that would otherwise go unused or left in the forest. 
Aden Pellet Enerji, a subsidiary of Pasifik Holding, has completed an export shipment of 3,375 tonnes of Green Planet branded wood pellets from its production facility in Giresun’s Espiye district, dispatched via 125 containers through Giresun Port to buyers across the European Union and the United Kingdom, with Italy and Slovenia identified as primary destinations. The shipment forms part of an ongoing export programme rather than a standalone transaction, with Pasifik Holding indicating that Aden Pellet’s international commercial operations continue on an established basis. This positions the company within Turkey’s growing wood pellet export sector, which has increasingly targeted European biomass markets as demand for solid biofuel continues to be shaped by EU renewable energy directives and member states’ efforts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels for heating and power generation.
With the impacts of climate change being felt across the globe, forests are under pressure as never before. While agriculture is the main driver of permanent deforestation, wildfires contributed 30% of tree cover loss and logging accounted for a 25% loss, according to WRI. This loss may be temporary, but forests can take decades to recover and may never return to full health. …Five years after countries pledged to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030, there has been scant progress. And demand for timber, which is expected to grow 37% by 2050, could rise even higher if more wood is used for construction – a climate solution to replace high-carbon steel and cement. The most ambitious regulatory solution on offer is the EU’s deforestation regulation (EUDR), which will come into effect at the end of this year. …Supply chain leakage risks pushing illegal timber into less regulated markets. …Just 11% of timber firms can prove 90% of sourcing is deforestation-free.
Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reached a record high of 55bn t/CO2 equivalent (CO2e) in 2025, up by 0.9pc on the year, data from the EU’s independent emissions database for global atmospheric research (Edgar) show. These figures include the land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector — which can act either as a source of carbon or a carbon sink. Excluding LULUCF, global GHG emissions rose to 54.1bn t/CO2e in 2025, an increase of 0.7pc on the year, Edgar found. The highest-emitting countries in 2025 were China, the US and India, with shares of 29.5pc, 11.1pc and 8.3pc of the global total, respectively, Edgar data show. …Of the top six emitters, the US and Indonesia recorded the most substantial increases in emissions in 2024-5 — a rise of 2.2pc or 131.5mn t/CO2e for the US and one of 1.2pc or 16.1mn t/CO2e for Indonesia.
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Almost 4 million hectares of land burned across Canada during this summer’s fire season, much of it in the remote boreal forests. …some of the world’s largest and fastest-growing wildfires now occur in the Arctic and boreal region, across eight countries to form a ring around the North Pole and making up the world’s largest biome. Primarily triggered by lightning strikes and exacerbated by global warming, which is warming the Arctic boreal forests at up to four times the global average, these fires are becoming a major source of worldwide carbon emissions. …Arctic and boreal regions store an immense amount of carbon. Boreal forests alone house roughly two-thirds of global forest carbon. …Protecting the boreal from wildfire is not only about safeguarding northern communities and ecosystems. It is an essential part of tackling climate change, protecting public health and building resilience for a warming world.
Scientist, Tim Searchinger, has resigned from the World Resources Institute amid disagreement over how to tally forest carbon in accounting rules that are under development. Those rules, which are being drafted by Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) — a global standard-setting body overseen in part by the non-profit — will shape how companies in the forest industry report their carbon footprints. A senior research scholar at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, Searchinger said that he will be leaving his role as technical director of land-related issues this month because of what he said are shortcomings in the GHG Protocol’s process in drawing up the new rules. …Danny Cullenward, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, stepped down from his seat on the body’s Independent Standards Board in June over the same issue. …The argument centers on two competing approaches to calculate carbon stores and emissions from forests.