Wood pellets are sold as a clean alternative to coal. But is the subsidised bioenergy boom accelerating the climate crisis?Kalev Järvik stands on a bald patch of land in the heart of Estonia’s Haanja nature reserve and remembers when he could walk straight from one side of the reserve to the other under a canopy of trees.Järvik has lived in the Haanja uplands in the southern county of Võru fo...
Improving productivity and lipid concentration in microalgae is important for the economic success of both biofuel and microalgae coproducts production. Nannochloropsis spp. are marine microalgae currently being grown at large-scale for the production of biofuel and lipid coproducts. Here we demonstrate improvements of growth and omega-3 production in Nannochloropsis gaditana CCMP526 and Nannochlo...
Our Australian economy is going through a relatively tough time at the moment, including in regard to COVID-19 and trade actions. There are current issues across Australia in regard to timber exports to China, an important Australian export market and there have been export restrictions applied across all States, resulting in harvesting and export impacts. In contrast to the export sector, there a...
JAKARTA — An Indonesian government program to phase out diesel for an alternative made from palm oil could spur massive deforestation for palm plantations spanning an area a fifth the size of Borneo. The biodiesel transition program, the world’s most ambitious, will require 15 million hectares (37 million acres) of new oil palm plantations, according […]...
Today we are launching a report analyzing the self-reinforcing cycle of the corporate capture of government policy-making and finance related to the livestock and forestry sectors, and the perverse incentives and subsidies that result from it. The report includes analysis by seven of our member groups on incentives for the expansion of unsustainable livestock farming, commercial plantations and bi...
The Federal Government will prioritise its focus on securing carbon credits from establishing new plantation forests, the Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor announced on Friday. Source: Timberbiz In his keynote address to the Climate Markets Institute Summit on Friday Mr Taylor said that in 2021, the Federal Government would be prioritising five key Emissions Reduction Fund metho...
Unlike its European neighbours such as the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark, Germany had so far comparatively low capacities for industrial energy production from forest biomass. Up to now, wood has played a relevant role as an energy supplier mainly for stove firing in private households in Germany. However, because of the coal phase-out […]...
As the Global Environment Facility embarks on it’s civil society consultations today ahead of its 59th Council Meeting, we’re publishing an open letter to GEF CEO Carlos Manuel Rodriguez and UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner. We’re asking them to acknowledge two investigations that reveal how GEF and UNDP money to address climate change is promoting commercial monoculture tree pla...
South America’s French Guiana, a French overseas department, is slated for major new liquid biofuel power stations, fueled by soy plantations that will cause largescale Amazon deforestation, say environmentalists....
In 2019, the production of wood pellets in the EU-28 countries increased by about 5% compared to the previous year and amounted to 17.84 million tons. In other European countries, the growth rate was 17% to 4.16 million tons. According to data published in the 2019 Pellet Market Report by Bioenergy Europe and the European Pellet Council, […]...
Swedish forest group Södra has launched Liquid Forest, a range of bioproducts: biomethanol, tall oil and turpentine. The Liquid Forest brand is a concept that offers an opportunity to choose climate-smart products derived from sustainably managed forests from the company’s 53,000 forest-owning members in southern Sweden. Source: Timberbiz Bioproducts have the potential to play an important role...
Long-term poplar phytoremediation data are lacking, especially for ecosystem services throughout rotations. We tested for rotation-age differences in biomass productivity and carbon storage of clones Populus deltoides Bartr. ex Marsh × P. nigra L. ‘DN340 and P. nigra × P. maximowiczii A. Henry ‘NM60 grown for landfll phytoremediation in Rhinelander, WI, USA (45.6◦ N, 89.4◦ W). We evaluat...