Category Archives: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy

The UK could potentially take more US wood pellets to burn for electricity amid ongoing trade talks, Donald Trump’s agriculture secretary has said. Brooke Rollins, who met with Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Energy Minister Michael Shanks on Tuesday, said America is “100% confident” that its wood chips meet the UK’s sustainability requirements. Ms Rollins has been promoting US agricultural produce, including American wood pellets, on a visit to London this week as trade talks between the two countries continue following the preliminary deal struck on Thursday. But the biomass sector has long faced accusations of sourcing and burning wood from environmentally important or rare forests. Campaign and media investigations have alleged that Drax, which runs the UK’s biggest power station in Yorkshire, has used wood from environmentally important forests in North America.

Over the last decade, humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) have stabilized after a period of huge growth. Average growth is now down to just 0.6% per year, compared to 2% per year in the previous decade. But leveling off isn’t the same as declining—and we’ve leveled off at a very high rate of emissions. The Global Carbon Project estimates human activities released a record high of 10.2 gigatons of carbon (GtC) in 2024. …CO₂ concentrations are increasing because we are still pumping massive amounts of long-buried CO₂ into our atmosphere. …natural carbon sinks are struggling to keep up. …This is a crucial moment. Our current rate of emissions will only cause CO₂ concentrations and global temperatures to rise. Natural carbon sinks will not pull out enough carbon to stabilize our climate on a timeframe meaningful to humans. The earlier the action and decrease in emissions, the better our future.

As the new Biomass satellite settles into life in orbit following its launch on April 29, ESA has released its most extensive satellite-based maps of above-ground forest carbon to date. Spanning nearly two decades, the dataset offers the clearest global picture yet of how forest carbon stocks have changed over time. Developed through ESA’s Climate Change Initiative, this new long-term record integrates data from multiple satellite missions—and will soon be further enhanced by data from the Biomass mission itself. It tracks the carbon-rich woody parts of vegetation, mainly trunks and branches, across the globe for different years between 2007 and 2022, at resolutions ranging from 100 m to 50 km. Importantly, it is tailored to support climate and carbon modeling, forest management, and national greenhouse-gas reporting activities as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Paris Agreement.

Representing 27% of all forests worldwide, boreal forests are the planet’s terrestrial “second lung” after tropical forests. Encircling the North Pole, they span North America, Europe, and Asia, playing a vital role in global carbon sequestration and storage, biodiversity, and supporting societies and economies. Despite their importance, boreal forests do not receive the same visibility and attention among policymakers and the public as their tropical forest counterparts. A new study published by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), presented today at the United Nations Forum on Forests in New York, highlights the urgent need to increase the understanding of this global “treasure trove” and to safeguard its important contributions… Boreal forests, like other forest biomes, are important to global goals such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 8, 12, 13 and 15, the six Global Forest Goals and the Targets of the United Nations Strategic Plan for Forests 2030.

The United Nations Forum on Forests commenced its twentieth session today, as speakers spotlighted the connection between healthy forests and a sustainable future, the increasing threats to this important global resource and the subsequent need to invest in its protection despite a shrinking fiscal space. The Forum will hold its twentieth session from 5 to 9 May in New York. Established in 2000 by the Economic and Social Council, the Forum has universal membership and is tasked with reviewing progress in the implementation of sustainable forest management. This session — a technical one — will focus on Global Forest Goals 1 (reversing forest loss), 3 (protecting forests and using sustainable forest products) and 5 (promoting inclusive forest governance). “This Forum is unique,” observed Ismail Belen (Türkiye), Chair of the Forum’s twentieth session — noting that “it is the only global intergovernmental platform with universal membership that focuses on all forest-related issues”.

The Sustainable Biomass Program (SPB) published its Annual Review 2024, capturing a year of growth, strategic progress, and continued delivery as the biomass certification scheme of choice. With 2024 marking the second year of its current three-year strategy, SBP has consolidated its position in a rapidly evolving sustainability landscape, while laying firm foundations for the years ahead. “2024 outcomes reflect a busy and productive year for SBP. We saw significant growth in certified biomass volumes and certificate holder numbers, but equally important we took proactive steps to define our contribution to global challenges, from carbon and climate to regulatory compliance and sustainability governance. With growth comes an increased responsibility to ensure that assurance and oversight of compliance are rigorously maintained,”stated Carsten Huljus, CEO of SBP.

A UK government spending watchdog has questioned the value of the multibillion pound subsidies granted to the Drax power plant in North Yorkshire – and said plans to hand over billions more may not represent value for money. The government has provided about £22bn of public money to businesses and households that burn biomass pellets as fuel over the past three years, including £6.5bn for the owner of the Drax plant. The power plant, which generates about 5% of the UK’s electricity, is expected receive more than £10bn in renewable energy subsidies between 2015 and the end of 2026 – despite ongoing concerns that wood pellets are not always sustainably sourced. The Public Accounts Committee has said that biomass generators have been left to “mark their own homework” when it comes to proving that their fuel met the sustainability standards set by the subsidy scheme.

The assessment singled out Brazil and Australia, and warned a lack of rules around accounting for forests and other land-based carbon sinks meant countries could “game the system” when reporting their national greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists are still unclear about how carbon sinks might behave as the planet warms in future, and exactly how much heat-trapping carbon dioxide they might soak up from the atmosphere. But that has not stopped countries from making their own assumptions and using those numbers in their national climate plans, which are due to be finalised to 2035 before the next UN climate talks in Brazil in November. Climate Analytics, a policy institute that independently assesses these plans, said overly optimistic assumptions about how much CO2 forests might draw down was “masking the scale and pace of the fossil fuel emissions cuts needed”.

After almost a decade of negotiations, the agreements on carbon markets achieved at Cop29 have been broadly seen as a great success. As well as providing the basis for a global trading system, it may also unlock another source of green finance for global south countries. In Baku, important decisions on article 6 of the Paris Agreement were made and adopted. Countries have agreed on the ground framework to implement a global, centrally governed carbon market, widely seen as the successor to the clean development mechanism developed under the Kyoto protocol. There were also agreements on helping to refine the mechanisms allowing carbon trading between countries through voluntary cooperation… Given the uncertainty, carbon markets may provide an alternative vehicle to channel the funding necessary for climate adaptation and mitigation.

Like giant bones planted in the earth, clusters of tree trunks, stripped clean of bark, are appearing along the Chesapeake Bay on the United States’ mid-Atlantic coast. They are ghost forests: the haunting remains of what were once stands of cedar and pine. Since the late 19th century, an ever-widening swath of these trees have died along the shore. And they won’t be growing back. These arboreal graveyards are showing up in places where the land slopes gently into the ocean and where salty water increasingly encroaches. Along the United States’ east coast, in pockets of the west coast and elsewhere, saltier soils have killed hundreds of thousands of acres of trees, leaving behind woody skeletons typically surrounded by marsh.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing to launch its newest space satellite later this month, called Biomass. Its five-year mission is to provide detailed 3D maps of the world’s most dense and remote tropical forests. Using instruments on board, it will be able to measure the woody trunks, branches and stems of the trees. The hope is that the data it collects will help experts better understand the state of our forests and how they are changing. Biomass is the first space satellite to carry a long wavelength radar, called P-band. This special radar means that it can scan deep through the forest canopy and collect information on different parts of the forest, such as tree trunks, branches and stems, where trees store most of their carbon… If all goes well, it is due to take off on 29 April.

• Biomass fully loaded: European Space Agency press release

A new study led by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the Missouri Botanical Garden has uncovered a surprising layer of diversity in tropical forests. Not only are the forests populated by a dizzying number of tree species, but each of those species takes a different approach to chemistry, increasing the array of natural compounds that provide important functions for the plants — and potentially for humans. The research helped clarify the ecological and evolutionary forces that make tropical forests such hotbeds of biodiversity. While the team wasn’t specifically looking for compounds that could be useful for humans, their findings underscore the value of tropical forests as natural factories of plant chemicals that could have important uses in medicine and other fields, said Jonathan Myers, a professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at WashU. “Tropical plants produce a huge diversity of chemicals that have practical implications for human health.”