Canadian wood pellet production for 2022 remained stable with the previous year, according to a report filed with the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service’s Global Agricultural Information Network. Exports were up an estimated 5 percent due to increased demand from Europe and Asia. Canada produced an estimated 3.5 million metric tons of wood pellets last year, flat with 2021, but up from 3.3 million metric tons in 2020. The country currently has 47 pellet production facilities, flat with 2021 but up from 46 in 2020. Total nameplate production capacity was at 4.79 million metric tons in 2022, down from 5.054 million metric tons in 2021 and 4.856 million metric tons in 2020. Capacity use was estimated at 73.1 percent for 2022, up from 69.3 percent in 2021 and 68 percent in 2020. …Virtually all the wood pellets imported into Canada in 2019, 2020 and 2021 came from the U.S. A full copy of the report is available on the USDA FAS GAIN website.
Canada’s climate adaptation strategy is underfunded and does not clearly align its goals with the country’s top climate change risks, a new report says. The Canadian Climate Institute put out the report, which makes 11 recommendations for improvements to the federal government’s draft $1.6-billion strategy it released in November. The report says while it’s good that the strategy establishes clear, high-level priorities like disaster resilience, health and biodiversity, there hasn’t been work done to assess which risks are most significant and urgent. Ryan Ness, the institute’s director of adaptation research, said other countries with similar national strategies, like New Zealand and Germany, did assessments to define the top issues that need co-ordinated national attention.
OTTAWA, ON — 
HALIFAX — Nova Scotia Power said it wasn’t consulted about new renewable electricity regulations which are being criticized by a provincial environmental group. On Dec. 19, the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables said new regulations requiring more renewable electricity means that NSP will be using more “sustainably harvested” biomass over the next three years. Under a new standard in Renewable Electricity Regulations under the Electricity. “This is very similar to the previous directive. …NSP spokesperson Jackie Foster said, “While we were not consulted, given the province’s clean energy goals, we were aware government was looking at updating with the regulation.” The province said, “Biomass is renewable, readily available and burns cleaner than coal,” said Tory Rushton, Minister of Natural Resources and Renewables. …The Sierra Club said the announcement is evidence that the province is playing politics rather than trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new standards for how much of the nation’s fuel supply should come from renewable sources. The proposal calls for an increase in the mandatory requirements set forth by the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS. The program, created in 2005, dictates how much renewable fuels — products like corn-based ethanol, manure-based biogas, and wood pellets — are used to reduce the use of petroleum-based transportation fuel, heating oil, or jet fuel and cut greenhouse gas emissions. The new requirements have sparked a heated debate between industry leaders, who say the recent proposal will help stabilize the market, and green groups, which argue that the favored fuels come at steep environmental costs. …Alternative fuels, like biogas and biomass, have gained steam thanks to the ethanol boom of the renewable fuel category. The biogas industry is set to boom thanks to tax incentives created by the Inflation Reduction Act. 
The global population is rising, and cities, particularly, are taking the strain. Each week
BERLIN, New Hampshire — Since the mid-1800s, the economy of Berlin, New Hampshire, known as “The City that Trees Built,” revolved around the paper mill located in the heart of the city. Therefore, it was a devastating blow when the Fraser Paper pulp mill closed in 2006, as the community of Berlin and the rest of the region were dependent on the mill as a critical employer. “In 2008, an opportunity arose to bring new life to the shuttered mill by converting its existing black liquor boiler into a state-of-the-art, 75-MW biomass power generating facility, and Burgess BioPower was born,” says Sarah Boone, vice president of public affairs for Burgess BioPower. “Today, Burgess BioPower delivers 500,000 megawatt hours of local, clean and reliable power to New Hampshire annually, along with acting as an economic driver in the state’s North Country and beyond.” …Today, Burgess BioPower is the largest single buyer of biomass in the state. 
BETHESDA, Md.–Enviva Inc., the world’s leading producer of sustainably sourced woody biomass, today issued the following statement regarding the 
…Soaring energy costs have made wood heat an attractive proposition. The cost of heating with wood can be cheaper and less volatile, but wood heat experts say it can be an uphill battle to convince people to switch to a less mainstream fuel. Rebates and tax credits are available that can make the equation more favorable. “We have so much of this as a resource, but for some reason it hasn’t caught on the way solar has caught on or energy efficiency,” said Andy Duncan, who runs the New Hampshire Rural Renewables program. …Duncan and those in the forestry industry have argued there are environmental benefits to using wood heat, like promoting sustainable forest management. It creates a market for low-grade wood and an incentive for taking that wood out of the forest to make space for healthy trees to grow in its place.
Mississippi is becoming one of the premier sources of sustainable and renewable wood pellets in the world. Major international wood pellet producing companies are investing billions in the Magnolia State, taking advantage of the state’s tremendous supply of wood and forest products and the state’s unique access to water transportation. Almost 20 million acres, about 65% of Mississippi’s landmass, is covered with pine and hardwood timber. …The 234-mile Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway runs from the northeast corner of the state, through the industry-rich “Golden Triangle,” to Mobile’s deep-water port and into the Gulf of Mexico. …The emergence of Mississippi as a major wood pellet producer creates a new source of income for tree farmers in an environmentally sensitive and sustainable manner./cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/R2T2ELYF2BAQNCZTP3IPWWO2TU.JPG)
On December 15, Australia became the first major economy to reverse itself on its renewable classification for woody biomass burned to make energy. Under their new policy, wood harvested from native forests to produce energy cannot be classified as a renewable energy source, while the U.S., Canada, Eastern Europe, Vietnam and others continue to harvest their woodlands to supply biomass-fired power plants in the UK, EU, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere. In the EU, forest advocates continue with last-ditch lobbying efforts to have woody biomass stripped of its renewable energy designation, and end the practice of providing subsidies to the biomass industry for wood pellets. Science has found that biomass burning releases more carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy produced than coal. Australia’s decision, and the EU’s continued commitment to biomass, creates a conundrum for policymakers: How can major economies have different definitions of renewable energy when it comes to biomass?
In its current form, the EU’s renewable energy directives encourage the use of primary woody biomass from forests as an energy source. However, the directive gives a completely wrong picture of the associated greenhouse gas emissions, write a group of academics. The debate around using wood from forests, so-called primary woody biomass, as a substitute for fossil fuels is a heated one but turns, essentially, on an obvious question: are the greenhouse gas emissions associated with either burning primary woody biomass as a source of fuel less than the emissions avoided by not using fossil fuels? …The problem is that the methodology currently used by REDII for judging greenhouse gas balances is far too narrow to provide an accurate answer and, as such, often gives the wrong answer, encouraging the harvesting of forest wood instead of the protection of forests (which would better serve the EU’s climate goals).