Category Archives: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy

Mercedes’ Formula 1 team have joined forces with nature-based carbon developer Chestnut Carbon to support high-quality carbon removal projects across the Southeastern United States. Aiming to deliver “impactful climate projects that scale the rejuvenation of damaged land”, the first initiative will involve restoring 200 hectares of degraded agricultural acreage into vibrant biodiverse forests through the planting of more than 260,000 native trees. Chestnut Carbon’s projects focus on land previously used for monocrops and methane-heavy cattle production, with the developer so far planting over 10 million trees with a diverse mix of native pine and 18 different hardwood species – efforts that will capture and remove over one million tonnes of carbon by 2040. While emissions reduction remain Mercedes F1’s “primary focus”, the team note that “some areas within our carbon footprint may have residual emissions which will require removals of the highest quality”.

HELSINKI — By the end of 2024, Stora Enso achieved a 53% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions, surpassing the target of a 50% reduction by 2030 from the 2019 base year. This milestone reflects the Group’s long-term commitment to proactive decarbonisation efforts. In 2021, Stora Enso set its ambition to align with the 1.5-degree scenario of the Paris Agreement with a target of absolute Scope 1 and 2 emission reduction by 50% by 2030 from the 2019 base year. The 53% reduction by the end of 2024 is mainly attributed to mitigation measures, such as fuel switches and improvements in energy efficiency, and the impact from site closures. While Stora Enso acknowledges this progress, the Group’s target is to maintain this level until 2030 and explore opportunities to further improve. “I am pleased to share this progress on our path towards net zero,” says Hans Sohlström, President and CEO, Stora Enso.

Surprise, surprise, a mighty £7bn of subsidies since 2012 have not been enough to get Drax to stand on its own feet. More bungs are required to keep the wood fires burning at the enormous power plant in North Yorkshire. The energy minister Michael Shanks at least sounded embarrassed. He railed against the “unacceptably large profits” Drax has made, said past subsidy arrangements “did not deliver a good enough deal for bill payers” and vowed that that the definition of a “sustainable” wood pellet would be tightened. But the bottom line is that the government has agreed to crank the subsidy handle once again, just at a slower rate. Why? As he didn’t quite put it, Drax has us over a barrel if we’re not prepared to use more gas to generate electricity. A renewables-heavy system needs firm, reliable power as backup. Transporting wood pellets from North America to burn in Yorkshire is deemed the solution.

LONDON – The UK government and Drax, opens new tab have agreed a deal that will halve the energy producer’s subsidies over 2027-2031, while ensuring the group uses more sustainable sources of woody biomass, the two sides said on Monday. Drax is Britain’s largest renewable power generator. With the help of government subsidies that run until 2027, it has converted four former coal plants to use biomass to provide around 6% of the country’s electricity. Following a consultation on extending the subsidies, the government said it “cannot allow Drax to operate in the way it has done before or with the level of subsidy it received in the past”. “Biomass currently plays an important role in our energy system, but we are conscious of concerns about sustainability and the level of subsidy biomass plants have received in the past,” Energy Minister Michael Shanks said in a statement, which did not disclose the exact figures of the subsidy.

Green campaigners fear ministers are poised to award billions of pounds in fresh subsidies to Drax power station, despite strong concerns that burning trees to produce electricity is bad for the environment. Drax burns wood to generate about 8% of the UK’s “green” power, and 4% of overall electricity. This is classed as “low-carbon” because the harvested trees are replaced by others that take up carbon from the atmosphere as they grow. But many studies have shown that wood burning harms the environment, by destroying forests, and because of the decades-long time lag between the immediate release of carbon dioxide CO2 from burning and the growth to maturity of replacement trees. Drax currently receives billions of pounds in subsidies from energy bill payers, at the rate of about £2m a day according to Greenpeace, but these are scheduled to run out in 2027. A government decision to continue the support payments beyond the cut-off could come on Monday.

Swedes and Finns have long monetized their forests. EU climate goals — seen as a threat to both family wealth and the two national economies — are fast becoming a lightning rod for anger. …In Sweden and neighboring Finland, forestry is, to all intents and purposes, a retail asset class. In Sweden, some 300,000 people own, in total, half of the country’s forests. In Finland, 60% of forests belong to 600,000 individuals. Owners like Velander have been able to work their land with relatively light regulations, generally free to harvest trees when and as they chose. The way these small forest owners traditionally manage their land is, they contend, also good for the climate. But this approach, along with their investments, is under threat from a growing number of European Union regulations aimed at protecting biodiversity and reducing the bloc’s carbon emissions. In Sweden and Finland these measures have been interpreted as a potential ban on logging. [to access the full story a Bloomberg subscription is required]

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.