Category Archives: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy

The vast majority of the environmental projects most frequently used to offset greenhouse gas emissions appear to have fundamental failings suggesting they cannot be relied upon to cut planet-heating emissions, according to a new analysis.  …But there is mounting evidence suggesting that many of these offset schemes exaggerate climate benefits and underestimate potential harms.  …The 50 most popular global projects include forestry schemes, hydroelectric dams, solar and wind farms, waste disposal and greener household appliances schemes across 20 (mostly) developing countries, according to data from AlliedOffsets, the most comprehensive emissions trading database which tracks projects from inception.  …According to our research, more than a third of the top 50 projects had some evidence of three or more fundamental failings. …Four carbon markets experts said the findings were based on solid methodology and shine a light on the pitfalls of market-driven climate solutions which can enable polluters to keep polluting instead of transitioning off fossil fuels.

LONDON – Global investment of $2.7 trillion a year is needed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and avoid temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius this century, a report by consultancy Wood Mackenzie said on Thursday. Scientists have said the world ideally needs to limit global average temperature rise to 1.5C this century to avoid catastrophic effects from climate change. Many governments have pledged to reduce emissions to net zero by mid-century to help achieve this. However, most countries are not on track to even meet emissions targets by 2030, let alone 2050, the report said. …Renewables such as wind and solar power need to become the world’s main source of power supply to support the electrification of transport and production of green hydrogen, the report said.

In a move to secure a place in the emerging carbon market, two Australian forestry sector veterans have launched the International Sustainable Forestry Coalition (ISFC). The coalition will tackle climate finance and market mechanisms, pushing for coherent and implementable solutions. Comprising 10 founding companies, managing nine million hectares of forest across 27 countries, the coalition will lean on the United Nations and COP-related processes that are critical for transforming forestry into an investible asset class. Ross Hampton, a seasoned Australian forestry sector lobbyist, will lead the ISFC, along with chair David Brand, an industry executive. …forestry has remained largely unrepresented in global discussions. …By championing a unified, global voice, the coalition seeks to harness an industry set to become a vital part of a market already worth US$100 billion. It aims to fulfil the industry’s potential, not only as an asset class but as a crucial part of global decarbonisation efforts.

Dr. Matthieu Bourdon … at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research– and colleagues have taken a different approach to understanding woody biomass. They took callose, a polymer that is naturally occurring in some cell walls of plants, and successfully engineered it into the specialised secondary cell walls of plants — the wood. Published in Nature Plants, 2023, the research involving international collaborations across multiple institutes shows callose-enriched wood is much more easily converted into simple sugars and bioethanol than non-engineered wood. …the team found callose-enriched wood showed interesting new properties, like an increased hygroscopicity and porosity, which makes the polymers more accessible for extracting and converting into simpler building blocks like sugars or bioethanol. …“We foresee that our engineered wood will benefit biomaterials and biofuels production relying on biomass deconstruction and polymer accessibility, such as packaging materials or even advanced biomaterials like cellulose nanofibrils and delignified wood,” Dr Bourdon said.

GERMANY — The German government’s new building energy legislation to phase out the use of fossil fuel heating systems has generated mixed reactions from industry associations and environmental groups. The much-debated law, introduced on 8 September, “finally creates planning security in the heating transition for consumers, industry, and the skilled trades,” Simone Peter, head of the renewable energy industry association BEE, said. Peter argued that the “overdue” decision will enable a ramp-up of renewable power in the heating sector. The BEE head said green hydrogen could not play a major role in the sector’s decarbonisation due to scarcity concerns. “Only with renewable solutions – from heat pumps, solar, thermal and geothermal installations to wood, pellets and biogas – can the heating transition be successful,” she said. …Greenpeace said the law lacked ambition and fell short of meeting the climate targets for the heating sector. 

After the UK renewable energy auction that failed to garner a single offshore wind contract, the government may need to extend deals with the likes of Drax Group to keep their coal and biomass power stations going for longer. …Saying the auction had “flopped”, Investec analysts predicted that Downing Street will now need to agree on a deal with Drax. The power company has been facing some uncertainty as the existing subsidy to provide electricity from burning wood pellets ends in 2027. Though it has taken some encouragement from recent government support for some of its activities, Drax has claimed it faces a gap in its funding, with its £2bn carbon capture project not expected until 2030. The Investec analysts said: “Keeping Drax on the system post March 2027 looks ever more important.”

Steve Canny

NEW ZEALAND – South Invercargill residents can breathe a little easier, with Southland Hospital’s massive boilers now fired by wood pellets instead of coal. The conversion took effect in September. The hospital’s two 4.5 megawatt boilers run 24 hours and 365 days a year, providing steam which circulates around the hospital site, providing heating and sterilisation of equipment. EECA [Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority] said the replacement of a coal-fired boiler with a wood pellet-fired boiler would reduce its overall emissions by up to 99 per cent. “The combined emissions reduction of the Southland Hospital project is expected to be 5217 tonnes of CO2 each year, which is the equivalent to removing about 2146 cars off the road.” Great South strategic projects manager Steve Canny welcomed the burning of wood pellets instead of coal to fire the hospital’s boilers, both from a decarbonisation and community health perspective.

Discourse on the transition to net zero invariably focuses on reducing carbon. But this is too simplistic. A circular economy is not carbon-free: carbon is embedded in its products. And that is good for the climate. Plants perform photosynthesis, meaning that they sequestrate and store carbon while producing and maintaining our planet’s oxygen. What’s more, the climate benefits of forests go beyond carbon sequestration to include the carbon storage and substitution effects linked to forest-based products used in a host of applications, including construction, furniture, packaging, textiles and others. In short, what is referred to as the ‘circular bioeconomy’ is not carbon-free: carbon is embedded in its products. …Forests must not be the way to offset emissions from ‘hard-to-decarbonise’ sectors – as is currently suggested by the EU climate law. …There is a real risk of failing the overall ambition to defossilise the European economy by over-relying on forest sinks.

LONDON — Voluntary carbon markets have shrunk for the first time in at least seven years, as companies including food giant Nestle and fashion house Gucci reduced buying and studies found several forest protection projects did not deliver promised emissions savings. …The decline is also bad news for poorer nations that stand to lose if the flow of funds from multinational companies to fund climate mitigation projects slows. …Demand for carbon credits is on track to fall in 2023, according to two of the top data providers. The number of credits used by companies fell 6% in the first half of the year. …Nestle said it would stop using carbon offsets and was seeking other routes to net zero. “We are moving away from investing in carbon offsets for our brands to invest in programmes and practices that help reduce GHG emissions in our own supply-chain and operations,” it said.

The European Union consumed a record 24.8 million metric tons of wood pellets in 2022, according to a report filed with the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service’s Global Agricultural Information Network. Consumption is expected to grow to 25.6 million metric tons this year. The report attributes much of last year’s growth in EU wood pellet consumption to increased residential use. Additional consumption this year is also expected to come primarily from residential demand supported by member state (MS) incentives and the implementation of the third Renewable Energy Directive (REDIII). The report notes that EU demand for wood pellets has significantly outpaced domestic production over the past decade, resulting in increased imports of wood pellets, primarily from the U.S., Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

An international team of researchers from Ireland, China and India, led out of University of Galway, has exposed previously unrealized health and climate impacts from the use of domestic firelighters. The research reveals that they are a previously unknown source of the powerful climate change driver black carbon. Their analysis also discovered that air quality and pollution levels in Dublin, Ireland have rivaled those in Beijing. The research was published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science. The study found that firelighters used to light open fires and stoves in the home—even if used in small quantities and for a short period of time—emit more black carbon than all biomass fuels put together. …The research team describe the impact of firelighter use in home heating and the release of black carbon as a significant and previously overlooked source of air pollution. Firelighters are kerosene-based and contain hydrocarbon alkane.

The new Chief Executive of the Forest Owners Association, Dr Elizabeth Heeg, is promising to expand the vision of the forest industry. Elizabeth Heeg has just taken up the job, to replace long serving chief executive David Rhodes. She was previously working at Te Uru Rākau New Zealand Forest Service. She says New Zealand forests are a vast resource which could produce a significantly greater value for Aotearoa New Zealand. “The world economy is transforming out of a dependence on fossil fuels which accelerate climate change. Renewable resources, such as wood, are vital to powering the global bioeconomy.” “New Zealand has an opportunity to use forestry to achieve a low emissions future,” Elizabeth Heeg says.

The majority of carbon offset schemes are significantly overestimating the levels of deforestation they are preventing, according to a study in Science. This means that many of the “carbon credits” bought by companies to balance out emissions are not tied to real-world forest preservation as claimed. A team of scientists and economists led by the University of Cambridge and VU Amsterdam found that millions of carbon credits are based on crude calculations that inflate the conservation successes of voluntary REDD+ projects. Consequently, many tons of greenhouse gas emissions considered “offset” by trees that would not otherwise exist have, in fact, only added to our planetary carbon debt, say researchers. …The team behind the latest study argue that the booming trade in carbon credits may already be a type of “lemons market”: where buyers have no way of distinguishing quality… leading to a breakdown of trust and ultimately market collapse.

Japan has been dramatically increasing its wood pellet imports for its feed-in-tariff (FIT) program, with wood pellet imports expected to reach an estimated 4.25 million bone-dry tons this year, according to a report filed with the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service’s Global Agricultural Information Network in August. The report explains that Japan expanded its FIT scheme to include a wider range of renewables following the Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear power plant accident in 2011, which was caused by an earthquake and tsunami. Prior to that accident, the FIT scheme applied to only solar power. An expanded FIT scheme was adopted by Japan in 2012 that covers most sources of renewable energy, including biomass, wind, geothermal and small-scale hydro in addition to solar. …Wood pellets used under the FIT scheme are subject sustainability requirements. 

Climate impacts such as dry, hot summers reduce the growth and increase the mortality of trees in the Black Forest because they negatively influence the climatic water balance, i.e., the difference between precipitation and potential evapotranspiration. That is the central finding of a long-term study of the influence of climate and climate change on trees in the Black Forest conducted by Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Kahle and Prof. Dr. Heinrich Spiecker, who are both professors of forest growth and dendroecology at the University of Freiburg. The researchers used a consistent time series of 68 years (1953 to 2020) as the basis for their research. It covers the annual mortality of all trees in an almost 250-thousand-hectare area of the public forests in the Black Forest. They analysed these data in comparison with a second data series on the climactic water balance for the months of May to September.