Our vision at the Wood Pellet Association of Canada (WPAC) is two-fold. First, to grow a resilient pellet sector that creates green, renewable products at the forefront of the global transition to a low carbon economy. And second, to maximize the sector’s innovation in the bioeconomy. …WPAC is one of the few forest sector associations in Canada with a research arm. For over 15 years WPAC has partnered with the Biomass and Bioenergy Research Group (BBRG) at the University of British Columbia. The work has been so successful that in 2019 we hired one of UBC’s star graduates, Fahimeh Yazdan Panah, Ph.D., as our director of research. Fast forward to today, Fahimeh is globally recognized for her leadership in greenhouse gas solutions and research related to the safe use, storage and transportation of pellets.
WASHINGTON — In 2021, wildfires pillaged the world’s carbon-rich snow forests. That year, burning boreal forests released 1.76 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, researchers reported March 2 in a news conference at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. That’s a new record for the region, which stores about one-third of the world’s land-based carbon. “It’s also roughly double the emissions in that year from aviation,” said earth system scientist Steven Davis of the University of California, Irvine. The trend, if it continues, threatens to make fighting climate change even more difficult. …Climate change is causing the taiga to warm about twice as fast as the global average. And wildfires are growing more widespread in the region, releasing more of the trapped carbon, which in turn can worsen climate change. …There’s no data yet to show if 2022 saw a similar surge in emissions.
The world’s most northerly forests could be a “time bomb” of planet-warming pollution as expanding wildfires have released record high levels of planet-heating pollution into the atmosphere, according to a new study. Using new satellite data analysis techniques, researchers found that, since 2000, summer wildfires have expanded in boreal forests, which wrap around the northernmost parts of the Earth. Boreal forest fires usually make up 10% of global wildfire-related carbon pollution. But in 2021, their contribution soared to 23%, according to the study, as extreme drought and heatwaves in Siberia and Canada helped drive intense fires. …These forests, which cover huge swaths of Canada, Russia and Alaska, are the world’s largest land biome. They are also carbon dense, releasing 10 to 20 times more planet-heating carbon pollution for each unit of area burned by wildfires than other ecosystems. …Russia’s Siberian region burned nearly 45 million acres of Russian forest in 2021.
TORONTO — Last week, the University of Toronto announced that most university-funded air travel will be subject to a carbon-offset fee based on the distance travelled. …But offsets won’t help green the university. …There is ample evidence that many carbon offsets – particularly those not regulated by governments – are of dubious quality. …The vast majority of carbon offsets also only remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere temporarily – as long as the trees planted remain standing. Some of these “nature-based” offsets are increasingly at risk of becoming sources of greenhouse gas emissions, rather than sinks, owing to the growing threats of drought, fires and pathogens. By contrast, offsets that remove emissions and/or sequester it for centuries or millennia, make up only 3 per cent of the unregulated offset market. These permanent removals come much closer to a real solution. [the access the full story a Globe and Mail subscription is required]
Australia has decided that electricity generated by burning wood from primary forests can no longer be considered renewable energy. …Opponents also have their eyes on Europe, where wood pellet use is large and growing. Wood pellet opponents and pellet makers and users are lobbying European officials over proposed policy changes that could alter the viability, or at least the economics, of the industry here in the U.S. …Last summer, the European Parliament approved proposed revisions to the European Union’s renewable energy rules that would limit the use of biomass. …However, before it can become law the proposal has to go through a three-way negotiation between the parliament and the EU’s two other main governmental arms. …The US Pellet Association said wood is essential to meet EU climate goals and safeguards are working. The association points to several peer-reviewed studies that it says refute environmentalists’ claims.
WASHINGTON – The American Forest Foundation (AFF) announced today its new strategic direction that will focus on unlocking the power of family forests as a climate solution while helping thousands of rural landowners care for their land and improve forest health. With the voluntary carbon markets emerging as one of the primary ways to finance climate action, AFF will expand access to this market for family forest owners from all walks of life while producing high quality forest carbon credits. The strategic direction seeks to enable family forests to capture and store one billion tonnes of carbon by 2050. …Using an innovative public-private partnership model, the organization’s Family Forest Carbon Program removes barriers to the voluntary carbon market for landowners to improve their forests’ health and generate financial opportunities for their families. 
IDAHO — The idea of using biomass or non-recyclable materials to produce power has been around for a long time, but techniques for developing a consistent feedstock to produce a fuel that is economical compared to coal, resistant to moisture, and has no spontaneous combustion in storage has been a daunting challenge. Researchers at Idaho National Laboratory, working with Michigan Technological University and Convergen Energy, a company based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, have pioneered a technique for combining non-recyclable plastics and paper fiber that would otherwise end up in landfills to form pellets with an energy content like bituminous coal. …On the other side of the equation, paper products, while biodegradable, decompose in landfills to create methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Combining paper and plastic to form stable feedstocks that can substitute for coal and reduce landfill mass would be a green energy win-win.
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A global biomass boom continues unabated with Japan, the European Union and United Kingdom among those governments providing large subsidies for the burning of wood to make energy. All three governments have developed life cycle greenhouse gas emission standards for biomass power plants, but forest advocates say those standards rely on multiple loopholes to avoid any real carbon savings. Those loopholes include not counting carbon discharged from power plant smokestacks, the biggest source of emissions in the biomass life cycle, while continuing to erroneously count biomass as carbon neutral, according to industry critics. Another loophole grandfathers in existing biomass power plants, not requiring them to meet new greenhouse gas life cycle emission standards and, in Japan’s case, asking those plants to count but not reduce emissions.
Wood pellet production in Russia has fallen sharply since EU sanctions came into full force last July. Prior to that, Russia exported more than 90% of the pellets produced in the country. In 2022, the supply of fuel pellets abroad, according to Lesprom Analytics, fell by 29% to 1.7 million tons. Wood pellet producers in the North-West of Russia, traditionally focused on the European market, suffered the most from the sanctions. The pellet plants of the ULK Group with a capacity of 220 thousand tonnes and Region-Les were closed. Lesozavod-25 (180 thousand tonnes of pellets), which is part of the Titan Group, has significantly reduced its production volume. According to the owner of the ULC Group Vladimir Butorin, the Russian government intends to allocate 20 billion rubles in 2023-2024 to convert municipal boiler houses from fossil fuels to wood pellets. However, these funds will not be enough to provide demand for all wood pellet production, which is left without the European market.
Nippon Paper Industries Co. Ltd., Sumitomo Corp. and Green Earth Institute Co. Ltd. agreed to look into the production of wood-based cellulosic bioethanol in Japan and its development into products including sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, Nippon Paper said in a statement. Under the agreement the companies will study the possibility of producing “several tens of thousands of kiloliters per year of bioethanol” derived from domestic timber at Nippon Paper’s mills in the fiscal year 2027. Nippon Paper said the bioethanol’s main use will be as a feedstock for SAF. Earlier this year the International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimated that total production of sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, tripled in 2022, reaching at least 300 million liters, or about 79.3 million gallons compared with 100 million liters, or 26.4 million gallons, the previous year.
Genesis Energy and Fonterra want to use wood biomass to generate electricity and heat. Genesis interim chief executive Tracey Hickman said the companies signed an agreement to work together and explore the viability of biomass as a substitute for coal. The possibility of a domestic biomass supply chain would also be investigated. The companies had signed a biomass collaboration agreement as they looked for an alternative fuel source to help decarbonise the businesses, she said. The agreement came ahead of a trial to burn biomass at Genesis’ Huntly Power Station next week, Hickman said. …The biomass used in the trial was black torrefied biomass was made from tree sawdust. The process created a solid and uniform pellets that had about 30% more energy than raw biomass, Hickman said. Burned torrefied biomass generally produced less than 10% of the emissions of coal, she said.