Category Archives: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy

The EU’s revised Renewable Energy Directive strengthens the sustainability criteria for biomass heat and power, but the compromise text means it might only lead to limited improvements in the short term. A provisional agreement on the Renewable Energy Directive (REDIII) was reached on 30 March 2023. …Overall, negotiators have achieved the impressive feat of agreeing on a compromise position. But the final position is exactly that – a compromise. The criteria are not as strict as they might have been, but they are stricter than they were. The detail on the cascading principle is surely a strong step towards steering limited forest biomass resources towards their highest value use – both from an economic and a carbon sink perspective. However, the proof of whether the European industry can deliver a sustainable contribution of biomass fuels will be in the implementation, and whether the strengthened REDIII criteria can be implemented without being undermined by the exemptions.

The emerging carbon offsets market is chaotic and dysfunctional. Problems need to be addressed openly, and resolved as quickly as possible. A joint investigation by the Guardian, the German weekly Die Zeit and SourceMaterial revealed in January that the vast majority of rainforest offset credits from the leading certifier – which are sold to companies that then use them to make claims about their overall emissions – do not offer the environmental benefits that they claim. Since then, scrutiny has only increased, with more questions being asked of the western businesses  …The danger of carbon offsets, frequently raised by campaigners, is that their primary function is greenwashing. …There is also evidence that some credit schemes are not only failing to promote the role of Indigenous people as stewards of important habitats, but doing the opposite. …That we can’t trade or offset our way out of the climate crisis remains the most important message. Our planet’s resources are finite.

Godefroy Harito & Jules Buker

“Almost everyone is aware of climate change, but most don’t know what they can do to fight it,” say Godefroy Harito and Jules Buker, who built a tree-planting business to change just that conundrum. The entrepreneurs reckoned there were three main barriers stopping people taking action on climate change: “that people don’t have the time, the money or know how to have an impact.” Treeapp, the tree-planting, carbon-countering app they developed, aims to circumvent all those issues. Every time one of its 105,000 users download their free app and watch a minute-worth of adverts from one of the sustainable businesses Treeapp works with, it organises a tree to be planted in one of 12 countries. …The idea germinated when Buker, who is half-Turkish, read about Turkey planting 11 million trees in 2019. “A few months later, 90% were dead. I wanted to promote planting trees the right way and make it accessible to all,” he says. 

BARCELONA, Spain — In his more than a decade battling wildfires, firefighter Manuel Rubio had never seen a blaze like the one that raged for the past week in eastern Spain. Not this early in the year. The forest fire that that broke out last Thursday near the village of Villanueva de Viver displayed an unusual ferocity for spring, when in previous years lower temperatures helped keep fires manageable. That doesn’t bode well for a country that led Europe in burned land during a record-hot 2022. “I was expecting a fire … which can consume 100, 200 hectares, not the more than 4,300 hectares (11,600 acres) that this one has burned,” Rubio said. …The Mediterranean region is warming faster than the global average … turning Spain’s vast expanses of woods into a tinderbox just waiting for the random lightning strike, spark from a tractor or saw, negligently cast cigarette, or act of arson to ignite the landscape.

The EU’s biomass sustainability rules will apply more loosely in overseas territories like French Guiana to promote economic development there, but the exception inserted in the bloc’s Renewable Energy Directive will lead to increased deforestation, environmentalists say. EU legislators reached an agreement last week (30 March) on union-wide renewable energy targets for 2030, including biomass. The EU highly regulates biomass use and prohibits, for example, the logging of primary forests, protected areas and areas rich in biodiversity. But the EU’s outermost regions – Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Réunion, Martinique, Mayotte, Saint-Martin, Azores, Madeira and Canary Islands – benefit from an exception. The exemption applies if the biomass is used for electricity generation, heating or cooling purposes to ensure “access to safe and secure energy, ” provided efforts are made to align with the sustainability criteria set out in the renewables directive.

Mary S. Booth

As final negotiations on the Renewable Energy Directive are approaching, the risk is that EU policymakers will continue to treat forest wood burning as “zero-carbon” renewable energy and reward it with billions in subsidies, writes Mary S. Booth. Just days following the publication of the IPCC’s most frightening climate report yet, EU policymakers will decide whether the EU will continue its reliance on burning trees and other forest biomass for “renewable energy” – a practice that the EU’s own scientists have concluded degrades forests and increases greenhouse gas emissions, undermining efforts to mitigate the oncoming climate disaster. …Around half the wood logged in the EU is burned for energy, and as biomass use has increased, predicted effects are emerging – including weakening and even total loss of the forest carbon sink in some EU member states.

Wildfires in Spain have forced more than 1,500 people to flee their homes and firefighters were still battling blazes in Valencia’s Castellon province into Sunday. More than 4,000 hectares of land have been engulfed by the fire. This marked an early start to the country’s wildfire season amid dry conditions and high temperatures, which exceeded 30ºC in Valencia on Sunday. “We’re looking at the first major fire, unfortunately, this year,” said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. “And it is also taking place out of season.” Last year, Spain suffered nearly 500 wildfires that devastated huge swathes of land and upended lives. As our climate warms, wildfires are burning more frequently and intensely. They are also starting earlier in the season, as seen in Spain. …Experts say conserving Spain’s forests is key to addressing the risk of wildfires.

British power generator Drax will pause its planned 2 billion pound ($2.45 billion) UK investment in bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) until it receives more clarity on government support, it said on Tuesday. Drax welcomed the UK government’s recent budget support for carbon capture and storage (CCS) but said the company required a firm commitment to BECCS before it could invest the cash to install the technology at its 2.6 gigawatt biomass power plant in Yorkshire, northern England. …Other countries are also interested in building BECCS plants and Drax says it has hosted a ministerial visit from Poland, officials and academics from Indonesia and a delegation of bipartisan U.S. state senators. …Drax is developing technology to capture and store emissions generated from burning wood-based biomass pellets. Green groups have heavily criticised the practice, arguing that it is not a carbon-neutral method of energy generation and that pellet production can contribute to deforestation.

New Zealand is reviewing its Emissions Trading Scheme to assess whether changes are needed to encourage businesses to accelerate a transition away from fossil fuels and not rely solely on carbon credits from forestry. The review follows advice from the Climate Change Commission, which has recommended that proposals be developed to strengthen incentives for gross emissions reductions. New Zealand’s ETS has been criticized because current settings encourage companies to seek carbon offsets such as tree planting in order to reduce net emissions. …The review will seek to recommend how to shift the balance between gross and net reductions in the ETS including the impacts, trade-offs and risks to society and the economy associated with that shift, Shaw said. It will also assess what levels of net emissions should come from exotic and indigenous forests, and how to improve ETS incentives for more native tree planting.

When it comes to issues around sustainability and energy, there are few subjects less controversial than biomass. Often hailed as a lower carbon option for heating or generating electricity, biomass involves the burning of wood pellets, chips or logs. Its proponents argue that biomass has a key role to play in the road to net zero, using wood that is unsuitable for other products and would otherwise go to waste. But critics have pointed out that biomass still involves burning natural materials, which can pollute the atmosphere. The campaigning group Cut Carbon Not Forest recently published a new survey, which shows 73% of respondents are concerned that burning trees in power stations could be making air pollution worse and harming people’s health. …Despite such criticisms, a survey undertaken for the U.K. government last year found almost three quarters (72%) of respondents supported the use of biomass.

New research carried out by Baringa on behalf of renewable energy company Drax Group has shown that in the late 2020s, biomass generation could play an increasingly critical role in ensuring security of UK energy supply. Baringa’s research shows that by 2027, peak demand for GB electricity will increase by 4GW but at the same time the imminent closure of coal, older gas generation and nuclear power stations will remove up to 6.3GW of secure capacity from the grid. This will mean that the dispatchable capacity which supports GB energy security will fall from 93% to 85% at times of peak demand, increasing the risk of a supply shortfall. …Whilst Drax welcomed the Government’s support for CCS in the recent Budget, it needs its BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) project to gain Track 1 status, without which, Drax Power Station may become unviable and unable to contribute secure power at a time of such critical need.

A landmark U.N. report published Monday urged governments across the globe to embark on an urgent course correction to tackle the climate emergency, warning current plans were insufficient to prevent the worst of what the crisis has in store. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the unprecedented challenge of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above  pre-industrial levels had become even greater in recent years. This has resulted in more frequent and more intense extreme weather events that have caused increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people in every region of the world, the report said. Deep, rapid and sustained greenhouse gas emission reductions across all sectors will be necessary if warming is to be limited by 1.5 degrees Celsius, the report says, noting that global emissions should already be decreasing and will need to be slashed almost in half by 2030. 

Additional coverage:

• The Hill – UN warns of ‘rapidly closing’ window to after global warming.
• The Guardian: What is the UN IPCC report and why does it matter?
• Wall Street Journal – Time is running our to curb global warming.

Just a few days ago, Canada overshot its fair share of Earth’s biocapacity and resources, as measured by the ecological footprint in 2018. By March 13, Canada had already consumed its fair share of the Earth’s bounty for the year. Collectively, humanity passed its 2022 Earth Overshoot Day on July 28. So what does this mean? …The amount of nature we have is measured in terms of a nation’s or the world’s biocapacity, which “represents the productivity of its ecological assets (including cropland, grazing land, forest land, fishing grounds, and built-up land).” It reflects “the ability of an ecosystem to produce useful biological materials and to absorb carbon dioxide emissions.” …Globally, the world had the equivalent of 1.6 hectares of bio-productive land per person in 2018, but collectively we consumed the equivalent of 2.8 hectares. In other words, at present rates of global consumption, it takes the equivalent of 1.8 Earths to meet our collective needs.

SGC Energy, a South Korean renewables company, is to work with Vietnamese power engineering consultant PECC1 to convert coal power plants into biomass-burning facilities, Bioenergy Insight reports.   The partnership was formed after Vietnam decided to phase out coal power generation. This which currently accounts for 40% of the country’s installed capacity. Last year, the country announced that it aimed to safeguard its rapidly growing economy by doubling installed capacity to 146GW by 2030 while reducing its dependence on coal. …Vietnam has a large biomass potential, particularly in the form of wood pellets and residues from rice farming. The country is the second-largest exporter of wood pellets, after the US, with an annual export volume of more than 3.5 million tonnes, which earned around $400m in 2021.

A pioneering global study has found deforestation and forests lost or damaged due to human and environmental change, such as fire and logging, are fast outstripping current rates of forest regrowth. …The research, published in Nature, highlights the carbon storage potential and the current limits of forest regrowth to addressing such crises. The findings showed degraded forests recovering from human disturbances, and secondary forests regrowing in previously deforested areas, are annually removing at least 107 million tonnes of carbon across the tropics. …Although the results demonstrate the important carbon value of conserving recovering forests, the total amount of carbon being taken up in aboveground forest growth was only enough to counterbalance around a quarter (26%) of the current carbon emissions from tropical deforestation and degradation. …The team modelled the spatial patterns of forest regrowth in the Amazon, Central Africa, and Borneo.