Category Archives: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy

Finland’s forests, once a crucial carbon sink, have become a source of emissions, raising concerns over the country’s climate policy and carbon neutrality targets. According to the latest data from the Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE), Finland’s forests emitted 1.12 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2023. This shift began gradually around 2010 and has accelerated since 2018. By 2021, Finland’s forests had transitioned from absorbing carbon to releasing it. The main causes are declining forest growth, increased logging, and rising emissions from forest soil. The land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector, which includes forests, emitted a total of 11.8 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2023. This makes it one of Finland’s largest emission sources, surpassing emissions from sectors such as agriculture. LUKE’s report highlights three key reasons behind the decline of Finland’s forest carbon sink.

Sari Maltala, a 46-year-old third-term Member of Parliament from Uusimaa, has started in her new role as minister of climate and the environment by emphasising the needs of the forest industry. Multala on Friday outlined at a press conference that the climate crisis and biodiversity loss are “fateful questions” for the planet that require “effective solutions”. She acknowledged that measures to strengthen the carbon sink of forests – the cornerstone of the national effort so achieve carbon neutrality by 2035 – are required but declined to specify the nature of such measures. When asked about the need to scale back logging volumes – one of the primary causes of the shrinking carbon sink – she took the opportunity to emphasise the needs of the forest industry. “The world’s climate can’t be saved by stopping logging in Finland,” she retorted.

A forest twice the size of Greater London would need to be planted in the UK to cancel out the extra emissions from the expansion of Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton airports, Carbon Brief analysis reveals. New runaways at these airports surrounding London would result in cumulative emissions of around 92m tonnes of extra carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) by 2050, if the number of flights increases in line with their operating company targets. For example, offsetting these emissions would require more than 300,000 hectares of trees to be planted within just a few years. This equates to all the trees planted in the UK since 2000… Reeves has stressed that “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAFs) and electric planes could help to offset these emissions. However, such technologies are still in the early stages of deployment and previous Carbon Brief analysis suggests the role of SAFs in achieving net-zero may be limited.

Drax divides opinion. Some recognise the critically important role we play in generating renewable power which keeps the lights on for millions. Others argue that we are not ‘green enough’ and need to do more to demonstrate that we are part of the solution to tackling the existential threat of climate change. …Since the Ukrainian conflict and the ongoing uncertainty around investments needed to achieve net zero, energy has overtaken many other sectors in he controversy stakes. We recognise that some people have concerns about our operations. …this year will see us make changes to further integrate sustainability across our operations. We are … taking positive action to provide greater transparency about our plans, processes and operations.  We are developing this new approach in consultation with experts to ensure that we’re on the right path to being climate, nature and people positive.

The Congo Basin is home to the largest expanse of intact tropical forest on Earth, covering approximately 3.7 million square kilometres. It retains vast areas of undisturbed forest – like the 108,000 square kilometres in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), an area about the size of Iceland. The Amazon has steadily lost its carbon storage potential, flipping from a sink to a net emitter in 2021. But, the Congo Basin is still functioning effectively as a carbon sink, a crucial planetary buffer limiting greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The Congo Basin is currently the largest and healthiest tropical forest carbon sink in the world, sequestering 1.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ annually with a peat swamp that stores 29 billion tonnes of carbon – equivalent to about three years’ worth of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The UK should stop burning wood to generate power because it is not needed to meet the government’s target of decarbonising the electricity sector by 2030, according to analysis. Ed Miliband, the energy security and net zero secretary, is expected to make a decision soon on whether to allow billions of pounds in new public subsidies for biomass burning, despite fierce opposition from green groups. Campaigners have amassed years of evidence of how much destruction burning wood causes to forests and wildlife around the world, and argue that it is not “carbon neutral” because regrowing trees takes decades to make up for the carbon emitted when burned. But ministers were thought to be reluctant to let go of the capacity for baseload power generation that biomass represents. Biomass makes up roughly 4% of the UK’s total electricity generation, and about 8% of “green” power generation, most of it coming from Drax.

See the analysis in E3G: The UK’s clean power mission: Delivering the prize