Two years ago, BBC journalists visited Canada to investigate the wood pellet industry. Their findings, broadcast in the documentary Drax: The Green Energy Scandal exposed, sent shockwaves through climate politics in the UK. …In February 2024, the BBC published a follow-up story. …Drax did not dispute these findings or that it is still sourcing wood from old-growth forests, but it claimed to be undertaking work to stop sourcing wood from official “old-growth priority deferral areas.” …However, it is primarily up to Canadian authorities, not foreign nations, to investigate and regulate the country’s biomass industry. British authorities do not have the resources to effectively monitor biomass sourcing in foreign countries, as the National Audit Office has made clear. …Source countries such as Canada profit from industrial logging, leading to concerns about conflicts of interest with regulatory enforcement. …Canada’s problems go beyond one company. Current logging practices risk ecosystem collapse.
Nearly a dozen environmental groups are calling on the federal government to expand its review of Canada’s forestry sector emissions, saying the current scope fails to address their concerns about underreporting. In an open letter, the groups say the federal government’s review must consider how forestry emissions are estimated in the first place. The letter, signed by representatives from 11 environmental groups including Nature Canada, says the review’s scope undermines its credibility. The letter comes after the federal environment commissioner issued a report last year recommending Ottawa initiate an independent review to look at how it estimates and reports on emission related to logging. In response to that report, the government agreed that independent review was important but noted that the science underlying its carbon reporting was peer-reviewed.
The warmest winter on record could have far-reaching effects on everything from wildfire season to erosion, climatologists say, while offering a preview of what the season could resemble in the not-so-distant future unless steps are taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions. …Canada shattered temperature records this winter, and it wasn’t close, Phillips said, referring to national data going back to 1948. While winter’s end is typically marked by the equinox, climatologists look at what’s known as meteorological winter, the three-month period from December to February. Over that period, Canada was 5.2 C warmer than average, said Phillips. That’s 1.1 degrees warmer than the previous record set in 2009-2010. …Almost all of Western Canada, northern Ontario and parts of northern Quebec were under drought conditions as of the end of February, says a recent update from Environment Canada. Parts of southern Alberta and northern British Columbia reported conditions typically seen once every 50 years.
SAINT JOHN, NB
Natural gas made its debut in the City of Vancouver over a century ago… Today, it’s the primary way B.C. powers its buildings, and a major problem for B.C.’s pursuit to cut its emissions by 40 per cent in a mere six years. …Fortis has its own plan to cut pollution while keeping the gas lines flowing. The company’s “Clean Growth Pathway” projects a scenario where growing appetites for gas and electricity can coexist by supercharging its supply of “low-carbon gases” like renewable natural gas, hydrogen and syngas, a type of gas produced from non-fossil sources via thermal conversion. …Fortis also has plans to use syngas, likely to be produced from wood, to bolster its supply. …Syngas can’t be delivered into pipelines like RNG, but it can be used directly in some industrial facilities, like a lumber mill that uses wood-produced syngas to power a pulp mill next door, for example.
Bodies and minds are just as affected by climate change as sea ice and forests, says University of Alberta scientist Sherilee Harper. “Climate change impacts everything we care about,” she said. “It’s not just an environmental issue.” That’s why Harper, along with 30 or so colleagues from disciplines as wide-ranging as economics and epidemiology, have banded together into what she calls Canada’s first university hub to shift the view of climate change from an environmental problem to a threat to human health. “The hub is about helping people see that every climate change decision is a health decision,” said Harper. …Wildfire smoke, which last summer gave Canada some of the worst air quality on the globe. …There are mental health impacts as well, from the acute stress suffered by those forced to flee by flames. …Such hubs already exist in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, Harper said.
The operator of pellet plants in Houston and Burns Lake is calling assertions it is chipping old-growth wood for pellets “inaccurate and misleading.” But Drax, a multi-national user of wood pellets, which it burns to help turn turbines to generate electricity, admits that nine truckloads of wood from old growth areas were mistakenly taken to its plants. “For context, this was nine out of almost 8,000 truckloads delivered to Drax’s pellet plants over the three months in question – delivering equivalent to around 0.15 per cent of the material received,” the company said in a March 13 release. The assertion Drax was converting old growth into pellets came from two environmental groups said the company’s claims in 2023 it would not be taking old-growth wood did not reflect what it was actually doing. …Michelle Connolly from Conservation North said Drax received 103 loads of logs at its Burns Lake and Houston pellet plants from old growth areas as late as January 2024.
Renewable energy comes from matter that nature produces and replenishes constantly. The power generated through this source does not significantly threaten the environment, especially in comparison with fossil fuels… according to the United Nations. Renewable energy derived from wind, solar, geothermal, hydrokinetic, and hydro energy has a much lower environmental impact than fossil fuels. It harnesses the power of readily available elements and does not diminish with use. …And because wind and sunlight are inherently free, there are no ongoing feedstock costs. Bioenergy, otherwise known as biomass energy, is, however, different. This kind of power involves using living matter or matter that was recently been alive. …Trees are also used, most oftenfrom the forests of the U.S. South, including pine and hardwood species. …Supporters argue that bioenergy is a climate-friendly, sustainable power source that helps local economies. The truth is that wood pellet plants are as dirty and problematic as coal plants. 
…To an extent not widely appreciated, the world is now warming at a pace that scientists did not expect and, alarmingly, do not fully understand. At a Financial Times conference this month, Jim Skea, the chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said last year’s spike in temperatures was “quicker than we all anticipated”. “Ocean temperatures were just off the scale in terms of historic records and we still need to do more work to explain it.” …Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City warned that the… surprising heat revealed that “an unprecedented knowledge gap” had opened up for the first time since satellite data began to give scientists a real-time view of the climate system about 40 years ago. This gap may mean we have a shakier grasp of what lies ahead — which is worrying when it comes to forecasting drought and rainfall patterns. 
WASHINGTON – The USDA released a plan that will boost biomass supply chain resiliency for domestic biobased product manufacturing, while also advancing environmental sustainability and market opportunities for small and mid-sized producers. The report — 
The Sierra snowpack has reached its seasonal peak. The snowpack plays an important role in providing water to millions of Californians. Throughout the winter months, snow accumulates on the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada and slowly melts in the spring and early summer. The runoff fills dozens of major reservoirs downstream. Last year’s epic snowpack helped relieve a yearslong drought, reaching an eye-popping 252% of normal on April 8. By that date, the mountains held an average equivalent of 64.2 inches of water. The current snowpack now holds a healthy 27.3 inches of water on average after a series of winter storms alleviated concerns that California was facing a “snow drought.” The California Department of Water Resources tracks the snow water equivalent in the Sierra using a network of 130 electronic sensors. …This graphic plots a 20-year history of the Sierra snowpack, showing wet years interspersed with severe droughts.
U.S. scientists and policy experts with a broad range of expertise in the fields of climate and ecosystem sciences have outlined key recommendations aimed at bolstering the scientific foundation for implementation of nature-based climate solutions (NbCS) across the nation. These solutions, which include strategies like protecting carbon-dense forests and wetlands, improving land management, and restoring natural ecosystems, are crucial for enhancing carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The stakes are very high—getting NbCS right could mean the difference between achieving long-term global greenhouse gas reduction goals or missing those targets and further destabilizing the climate system. Although NbCS strategies have potential, on the ground implementation of NbCS has been controversial, often outpacing the scientific understanding of their long-term benefits. The group calls for a more robust, evidence-based approach for NbCS so they can be deployed when and where they are most likely to succeed as climate solutions.
In March, Enviva, the world’s largest woody biomass producer for industrial energy, declared bankruptcy. That cataclysmic collapse triggered a rush of political and economic maneuvering in the US, and in Europe. …While Enviva publicly claims it will survive the bankruptcy, a whistleblower in touch with sources inside the company says it will continue failing to meet its wood pellet contract obligations, and that its production facilities — plagued by chronic systemic manufacturing problems — will continue underperforming. Enviva and the forestry industry appear now to be lobbying the Biden administration, hoping to tap into millions in renewable energy credits under the Inflation Reduction Act — a move environmentalists are resisting. …Meanwhile, some EU nations are scrambling to find new sources of wood pellets to meet their sustainable energy pledges under the Paris agreement. The UK’s Drax, an Enviva pellet user, is positioning itself to greatly increase its pellet production in the U.S. South.
Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., and Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, on March 11 each introduced legislation that aims to allow facilities generating renewable electricity from forest biomass, such as woodchips or sawdust, to participate in the Renewable Fuel Standard. The bill, titled the “Biomass for Transportation Fuel Act,” would fully implement the eligibility for electricity generated from renewable biomass, including biogas, to participate in the RFS. The legislation directs the U.S. EPA to approve a RFS pathway for renewable electricity for biomass, but only for feedstocks already eligible under the program, such as agricultural waste, forest byproducts, and municipal/commercial food waste. The bill would make biomass removed from federal forestlands as part of wildfire hazard reduction efforts to be eligible under the RFS. Currently, only biomass collected from non-federal lands is considered eligible RFS feedstock.
State energy regulators have rejected Consumers Energy’s request to exit contracts in the coming months that would have resulted in the closure of two wood-fired biomass plants in Cadillac and the northeastern Lower Peninsula. The Michigan Public Service Commission in two separate cases rejected Consumers’ request to cancel contracts by the end of May involving power purchases from third-party owned biomass plants in Cadillac and in Lincoln in Alcona County. The plants were set to close by the end of May, as Crain’s Grand Rapids Business 
Maine’s EPR program is the first of its kind in the U.S., meaning numerous recycling and waste stakeholders are monitoring details of the program’s rollout. The latest public comment round follows a previous public comment period in October, where stakeholders reviewed a more preliminary, conceptual draft that was then revised and presented to the Board of Environmental Protection in December to kick off the formal rulemaking process. DEP expects the board to adopt the final “routine and technical” rules of the EPR program by this summer. …The draft also calls for producers to use more reusable packaging and gradually add more postconsumer recycled content. In many cases, producers will be hit with heavy fines for not complying. …Groups like the American Forest and Paper Association said Maine’s state needs assessment guidance “is still very sparse” and needs more details on the types of data the stewardship organizations should be collecting. 
Most climate-concerned people know that trees can help slow global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but a recent study published in the