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

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The South Korean government will reduce subsidies for biomass energy after rising domestic and international criticism of its link to deforestation. Environmental activists generally applauded the reforms but criticized loopholes and slow timelines for phasing out the subsidies. … Biomass power … is growing globally as countries accelerate their transition to use cleaner energy — even though many scientists and environmentalists see it as problematic. In South Korea, it’s the second-largest source of renewable energy. South Korea has subsidized biomass energy with millions of dollars for more than a decade via their renewable energy certificates program. South Korea’s biomass power industry has structured its business model around importing large volumes of wood pellets at lower prices from forest-rich nations. …Experts said South Korea’s policy change could signal a shift in how countries consider and incorporate biomass as part of their own energy transitions.

Forests in Finland were a source of emissions in 2023 because trees did not sequester enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to offset emissions from the soil, indicate preliminary data from the greenhouse gas inventory released on Wednesday by Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). The data suggest that forests added 1.12 megatonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalents to the atmosphere in 2023, accounting for roughly 10 per cent of net emissions from the land-use sector. Luke estimates based on the latest data that forests became a source of emissions in 2021. The entire land-use sector, meanwhile, turned from a sink into an emitter in 2018 as a result of increasing logging, growing emissions from forested peatlands and contraction of the sink of mineral soil. The carbon sink of the sector had begun to contract in 2010.

A research team led by the University of Oxford has carried out the most comprehensive assessment to date of how logging and conversion to oil palm plantations affect tropical forest ecosystems. The results demonstrate that these have significantly different and cumulative environmental impacts – and that logged forests should not be immediately ‘written off’ for conversion to oil palm plantations. The findings have been published in Science… In general, logging mostly impacted factors associated with forest structure and environment. Since logging in the tropics is generally selective – focusing on trees with particular commercial qualities – even low levels of logging alter the system. Converting these logged forests to oil palm plantations, however, has greater impacts on biodiversity that go beyond those of logging alone.

The quest to limit global warming and stabilize Earth’s climate hinges on achieving net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases. This goal requires balancing anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions with greenhouse gas removal. While traditional carbon capture and storage methods have been proposed, they often involve significant challenges and risks. A promising alternative lies in the materials we already use extensively: building materials such as concrete, asphalt, wood, and bricks. Civil engineers and earth systems scientists from institutions like UC Davis and Stanford University have explored the ability of construction materials to act as carbon sinks. Their findings, published in the journal Science, indicate that these materials could lock away billions of tons of carbon dioxide.

The two companies at the top of credit leaderboard paid vastly different amounts and backed very different projects to achieve their ranking… Microsoft focused almost exclusively on carbon removal credits. Close to 80 percent of the credits it retired were from projects that generate energy by burning biomass and then capturing and storing the associated emissions. Because the biomass captures carbon dioxide as it grows, the process, known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), can be carbon negative. Shell focused on projects that avoided greenhouse gas emissions. The company retires credits to offset its emissions and, unlike Microsoft, also helps clients acquire credits. It used more established credit types, retiring 9.4 million forestry and land use credits and 2.4 million renewable energy credits.

A new study by US researchers in Science shows using new, CO2-capturing concrete and other substances instead of traditional building materials could reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by more than 16 billion tonnes. …Alternatives suggested include mixing carbon-sucking substances from the earth, such as dunite, with concrete, using wood-based materials in bricks, and swapping out asphalt bitumen for bio-oil. Experts believe New Zealand has the right raw materials – such as dunite and wood – to switch out its building materials that store CO2. …Diego Elustondo of the Crown-owned wood science company Scion said the premise of the paper was promising but it appeared to favour storing carbon in masonry materials at the expense of wood-based alternatives. He said the comparison should have considered wood-based materials which were at the same stage of development as other future materials mentioned in the paper.

Globally, forests appear to be struggling. Here is some of the latest climate research:

• Global warming is drying waterways and sapping moisture from forests, creating conditions for bigger and hotter wildfires from the U.S. West and Canada to southern Europe and Russia’s Far East.
• Between 10% and 47% of Brazil’s Amazon will face combined stresses of heat and drought from climate change, which could push the Amazon past a tipping point, with the jungle no longer able to produce enough moisture to quench its own trees.
• Forests overall failed to absorb as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as in the past, due largely to wildfires in Canada. That means a record amount of CO2 entered the atmosphere.
• While the vast Arctic tundra has been a carbon sink for thousands of years, rising wildfire emissions mean the tundra is now releasing more carbon than it stores.

The Irish government’s COFORD Council for Forest Research and Development has published a paper that recommends future policies to support an expanded role of forest-based biomass. The paper, entitled “Forest Based Biomass and Modern Bioenergy, Moving to Net Zero“, complements and rounds out an earlier series of COFORD statements on the role of forests and forest products in climate change mitigation. …It is essential to have an evidence base around supply, costs, sustainability and technical feasibility of bioenergy to inform national policies and the climate action plan processes, added the document. One recommendation was that a national bioenergy strategy be developed to set out the general aims for bioenergy use into the future, and a level of ambition for deployment in the context of climate and energy goals, security of energy supply, sustainability and balanced regional development. 

Only four fines out of 5,600 complaints have been issued for illegal burning of wood in smoke-control areas from September 2023 to August 2024 in England, data has revealed… A recent survey found 22% of the UK public use an open fire and/or wood-burning stove in their home. It also found that 37% of Londoners surveyed said they use an open fire and/or a wood-burning stove in their home, despite the capital being a smoke-control area. In smoke-control areas, which have higher levels of pollution, people can only burn wood and other unauthorised fuels in government-approved stoves and other appliances. This is because the approved appliances have air control mechanisms that improve combustion efficiency and reduce the amount of harmful particles released.

The phrase “carbon footprint” is understood across the world today, but this was not the case when it was first used around the start of the 21^st century. The nature and climate crisis has resulted in a raft of vocabulary to explain new phenomena that we all need to learn. But more important than learning the words themselves is developing an understanding of the dynamics behind them, the impacts they could have and – crucially – the way to act now to limit the full scope of their potential future impacts. Here are five phrases that are rising in prominence, the stories behind them and ideas about how to tackle emerging threats.