topic: Carbon Negative Bioenergy

topic: Carbon Negative Bioenergy

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Circular economy poised to go beyond outdated oil, gas and coal, experts say
- The exploitation of oil, gas and coal is now destabilizing all nine planetary boundaries and driving a triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. The solution, experts say, is to move from a hydrocarbon-based linear economy to a diversified circular economy. This is Part 3 of a three-part miniseries.
- To step back from dangerous environmental thresholds, humanity needs to cut its use of fossil fuels, petroleum-based synthetic fertilizers and petrochemicals (especially plastics), with many analysts unequivocal about the unlikelihood of utilizing oil, gas and coal resources to implement a global circular economy.
- To achieve a circular economy, fossil fuels need to be phased out and alternative energy sources put in place. Bio-fertilizers need to be adopted and scaled up, and nitrogen fertilizers must be managed better to prevent overuse. Plastic production needs to be curbed, with a ban of single-use plastics as a start.
- Unfortunately, the world isn’t on target to achieve any of these goals soon, with surging oil and natural gas production by the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Russia expected to push the planet past the maximum 2° C (3.6° F) temperature increase agreed to in the 2015 Paris Accord — putting Earth at risk of climate catastrophe.

Study: Tricky balancing act between EV scale-up and mining battery metals
- A recent study finds rapidly switching to electric vehicles could significantly cut emissions but also increase demand for critical battery metals like lithium and nickel.
- Mining metals like lithium has major environmental impacts including deforestation, high water use, and toxic waste.
- Electrifying heavy-duty vehicles requires substantially more critical metals than other EVs and could account for 62% of critical metal demand in coming decades despite making up just 4-11% of vehicles.
- The researchers recommend policies to support recycling, circular economies, alternative battery chemistries, and coordinated action to balance environmental and material needs.

Forests in the furnace: Can fashion brands tackle illegal logging in their Cambodian supply chains?
- Global fashion brands touting sustainability claims continue to buy from their contract factories in Cambodia that burn illegally logged wood in their boilers.
- Mongabay reached out to 14 international brands that listed factories identified in a report as using illegal forest wood, but they either didn’t respond or evaded questions on illegal logging in their supply chains.
- One prominent brand, Sweden’s H&M, has developed an app that allows its partner factories to identify deliveries of forest wood, but industry insiders say there are ways to circumvent it, and that the government should be playing a bigger role in the issue.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn was a fellow. *Names have been changed to protect sources who said they feared reprisals from the authorities.

As Exxon bows out, industry takes step toward sustainable algae biofuels
- In February, ExxonMobil gave up its decade-long attempt to cultivate algae as a profitable and scalable feedstock for biofuel — a liquid alternative energy source needed to power aviation, ocean-going ships, and long-distance trucking, while also combating climate change.
- That corporate setback was offset by advances elsewhere in the industry: California-based algae biofuel company Viridos, which lost ExxonMobil as its partner, raised $25 million this year as it gained United Airlines, Chevron and Breakthrough Energy Ventures as investors to keep its algae project moving toward commercialization.
- Also, this year, the U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) funded four major algae biofuel and biomass projects to chart scalable production processes and achieve low-carbon intensity efficiency.
- Several of these algae initiatives are now moving from basic R&D into pilot programs, with scaled-up commercial production possibly just a few years away, according to industry experts. Environmentalists are concerned about future land, energy and fertilizer impacts during production, though say it is too early to assess potential commercialization effects.

Climate-positive, high-tech metals are polluting Earth, but solutions await
- Green energy technology growth (especially wind, solar and hydropower, along with electric vehicles) is crucial if the world is to meet Paris climate agreement goals. But these green solutions rely on technology-critical elements (TCEs), whose production and disposal can be environmentally harmful.
- Mining and processing of TCEs requires huge amounts of energy. Mines use gigantic quantities of fresh water; can drive large-scale land-use change; and pollute air, soil and water — threatening biodiversity. TCEs may also become pollutants themselves when they are disposed of as waste.
- We know relatively little about what happens to TCEs after manufacture and disposal, but trace levels of many critical elements have been detected in urban air pollution, waterways and ice cores. Also of concern: Rare-earth elements have been detected in the urine of mine workers in China.
- Green mining technologies and new recycling methods may reduce the impacts of TCE production. Plant- and microbe-based remediation can extract TCEs from waste and contaminated soil. But experts say a circular economy and changes at the product design stage could be key solutions.

Cooking with the sun: Entrepreneurs help launch Mexico’s solar revolution
- Much of Mexico gets 300 days of sunshine out of the year which is helping make the country a solar energy pioneer. With the current government showing little interest in the clean sustainable technology, a range of entrepreneurs is leading the way, especially in the food industry.
- In the southern state of Oaxaca, Victoria Aguilera studied sustainable energy at the regional university and founded Sazón del Sol, a grassroots project that includes a solar farm, solar restaurant, and solar food processing workplace. She designed and now sells a solar kitchen for use in homes and restaurants.
- In central Mexico’s Hidalgo state, Gregor Schäpers’ company, Trinysol, achieved initial success with solar-powered water heaters. Now he’s experimenting with solar cooking using Scheffler modules — solar dish reflectors to run kitchens in restaurants, hotels, mezcal distilleries and tortilla bakeries.
- In the state of Jalisco, Angel Mejía and Aldo Agraz co-founded Inventive Power in 2010, specializing in thermal solar systems. Local food factories and dairies were their first clients. Since then, Mexican and international companies Nestlé, Barcel, Unilever, and tequila producer José Cuervo have all commissioned projects.

Playing the long game: ExxonMobil gambles on algae biofuel
- Algae biofuel initially looked promising, but a few key problems have thwarted major research efforts, including development of a strain of algae able to produce plentiful cheap fuel, and scaling up to meet global energy demand.
- Other alternative energy solutions, including wind and solar power, are outpacing algae biofuel advances.
- Much more investment in money and time is needed for algae biofuel to become viable, even on an extended timeline out to mid-century. While big players like Shell and Chevron have abandoned the effort, ExxonMobil continues work.
- In 2017, ExxonMobil, with Synthetic Genomics, announced they had used CRISPR gene-editing technology to make an algal strain that could pave the way to a low-carbon fuel and a sustainable future. But many environmentalists met the claim with skepticism, suspecting greenwashing.

Biofuel in Mexico: Uphill battle against bureaucracy, organized crime
- Biofuels based on pressed plant oils, and made especially from used cooking oil, could help Mexico’s public transport sector transition to a cleaner and climate-friendly energy era, according to researchers and industry entrepreneurs.
- But there is a lack of government regulatory support, while the nation’s new president is betting on fossil fuels and neglecting biodiesel options and nature-based climate solutions.
- As a result, small biodiesel producers have to operate in a legal gray zone, while industry entrepreneurs are held back in the development of the technology and the market.
- Mexico isn’t alone: Many nations large and small are struggling with hurdles imposed by fossil fuel-friendly governments and a lack of supportive regulations to create a level playing field for the rapid development and deployment of biodiesel and other climate-friendly alternative energy solutions.

Converting biowaste to biogas could power cleaner, sustainable Earth future
- Biogas made from organic materials — including food and agricultural waste, and animal or human manure — is a renewable, sustainable, affordable and inclusive energy alternative becoming increasingly available to households, farms, municipalities and nations.
- Converting biowaste into biogas, via anaerobic digestion technology, is a strategy that could contribute to multiple U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris climate agreement. Biodigesters are already in use to meet a range of energy needs around the world.
- Current limiting factors to the sector’s growth include technical and adaptive challenges, lack of awareness in many regions, and unsupportive policy instruments that can discourage biogas adoption.
- Ahead of COP26, the critically important U.N. climate meeting coming this November, the World Biogas Association is urging governments to integrate biogas into their Nationally Determined Contributions — their voluntary emissions reduction targets, as agreed to under the Paris Agreement.

Burning down the house? Enviva’s giant U.S. wood pellet plants gear up
- An outdated Kyoto Climate Agreement policy, grandfathered into the 2015 Paris Agreement, counts electrical energy produced by burning biomass — wood pellets — as carbon neutral. However, new science demonstrates that burning forests for energy is dirtier than coal and not carbon neutral in the short-term.
- But with the carbon accounting loophole still on the books, European Union nations and other countries are rushing to convert coal plants to burn wood pellets, and to count giant biomass energy facilities as carbon neutral — valid on paper even as they add new carbon emissions to the atmosphere. The forest industry argues otherwise.
- It too is capitalizing on the loophole, building large new wood pellet factories and logging operations in places like the U.S. Southeast — cutting down forests, pelletizing trees, and exporting biomass. A case in point are the two giant plants now being built by the Enviva Corporation in Lucedale, Mississippi and Epes, Alabama.
- Enviva and other firms can only make biomass profitable by relying on government subsidies. In the end, forests are lost, carbon neutrality takes decades to achieve, and while communities may see a short-term boost in jobs, they suffer air pollution and the risk of sudden economic collapse if and when the carbon loophole is closed.

COP25: EU officials say biomass burning policy to come under critical review
- At a COP25 climate summit press conference on Thursday, December 12, Frans Timmermans, executive vice president of the EU and a Dutch politician answered a Mongabay question concerning the UN biomass carbon accounting loophole.
- When asked if the EU would close the loophole, he said: “The issue of biofuels needs to be looked at very carefully. We have to make sure that what we do with biofuels is sustainable and does not do more harm than that it does good.” A second EU official expressed a similar view. The issue won’t likely be reviewed until after 2020.
- This is perhaps the first acknowledgement by a top developed world official that the biomass loophole is a potential problem. The loophole encourages power plants that burn coal (whose carbon emissions are counted) to be converted to biomass — the burning of wood pellets (whose carbon emissions are counted as carbon neutral).
- Recent science shows that burning wood pellets is worse than burning coal, since more pellets must be burned to produce equivalent energy levels to coal. Also replacing plantation forests to achieve carbon neutrality takes many decades, time not available to a world that needs to quickly cut emissions over the next 20 years.

COP25: Wood pellet CEO claims biomass carbon neutrality, despite science
- Research has conclusively shown that burning biomass for energy is not carbon neutral. However, a biomass carbon accounting loophole currently enforced by the UN and the Paris Agreement says that burning trees in the form of wood pellets produces zero emissions, and so is classified with solar and wind power.
- Mongabay gained an exclusive interview with Will Gardiner, CEO of Drax, the United Kingdom’s largest biomass energy plant. He dismisses the science and asserts that his firm and $7.6 billion industry are meeting “a responsibility to our community, our shareholders and our colleagues to be a part of the escalating climate crisis.”
- Bill Moomaw — an international researcher on biomass-for-energy, and author of forest reports for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — counters Gardiner’s arguments: “It’s all about the money. The wood pellet industry is a monster out of control,” he said when interviewed at COP25.
- Despite repeated pleas from scientists, COP25 climate summit negotiators in Madrid failed to address the biomass carbon accounting loophole, as they did at COP24 — a lapse that, if allowed to persist, could help push emissions above a 2 degree Celsius planetwide average increase that the UN says could bring climate catastrophe.

UN and policymakers, wake up! Burning trees for energy is not carbon neutral (commentary)
- On September 23, the signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement will gather at the United Nations for a Climate Action Summit to step up their carbon reduction pledges in order to prevent catastrophic climate change, while also kicking off Climate Week events in New York City.
- However, the policymakers, financiers, and big green groups organizing these events will almost certainly turn a blind eye toward renewable energy policies that subsidize forest wood burned for energy as if it is a zero emissions technology like wind or solar.
- Scientists have repeatedly warned that burning forests is not in fact carbon neutral, and that doing so puts the world at risk of overshooting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target.
- But that message has fallen on deaf ears, as lucrative renewable energy subsidies have driven exponential growth in use of forest wood as fuel. The world’s nations must stop subsidizing burning forest biomass now to protect forests, the climate, and our future. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author.

Carbon to burn: UK net-zero emissions pledge undermined by biomass energy
- The United Kingdom and the European Union are setting goals to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But that declaration is deeply flawed, analysts say, due to a long-standing United Nations carbon accounting loophole that turns a blind eye toward the conversion of coal burning power plants to burning wood pellets.
- While the cutting of trees to convert them to wood pellets to produce energy is ultimately carbon neutral — if an equal number of new trees are planted — the regrowth process requires 50 to 100 years. That means wood pellets burned today, and in coming decades, will be adding a massive carbon load to the atmosphere.
- That carbon will add significantly to global warming — bringing more sea level rise, extreme weather, and perhaps, climate catastrophe — even as official carbon counting by the UN provides a false sense of security that we are effectively reducing emissions to curb climate change.
- Unless the biomass loophole is dealt with, the risk is very real that the world could easily overshoot its Paris Agreement targets, and see temperatures rise well above the 1.5 degrees Celsius safe limit. At present, there is no official move to address the biomass loophole.

EU sued to stop burning trees for energy; it’s not carbon neutral: plaintiffs
- Plaintiffs in five European nations and the U.S. filed suit Monday, 4 March, in the European General Court in Luxembourg against the European Union. At issue is the EU’s rapid conversion of coal-burning powerplants to burn wood pellets and chips, a process known as bioenergy. Activists see the EUs bioenergy policies as reckless and endangering the climate.
- Bioenergy was classified as carbon neutral under the Kyoto Protocol, meaning that nations don’t need to count wood burning for energy among their Paris Agreement carbon emissions. However, studies over the last 20 years have found that bioenergy, while technically carbon neutral, is not neutral within the urgent timeframe in which the world must cut emissions.
- In essence, it takes many decades for new tree growth to re-absorb the amount of carbon released from burning mature trees in a single day. But the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change last October said that the world has just 12 years – not decades – to drastically cut emissions or face likely disastrous temperature rise and climate impacts.
- The activists filing suit face a difficult fight. Only EU member states and EU institutions are generally given standing to challenge legislative acts. To gain standing, they will have to prove that they are being impacted by the EU’s bioenergy policies. The activists say that ending bioenergy coal plant conversions is vital if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change.

COP24: Summit a step forward, but fails to address climate urgency
- COP24 ran into overtime over the weekend as delegates rushed to approve the Paris rulebook to set up a detailed mechanism for accomplishing and gauging the carbon reduction pledges made by the world’s nations in Paris at the end of 2015.
- But considering the urgency of action needed – with just 12 years left to act decisively to significantly cut emissions, according to an October IPCC science report – the COP24 summit proved to be less successful than many participants had hoped.
- On the negative side: the U.S., Russia and Saudi Arabia tried to undermine the gravity of the IPCC science report. Brazil successfully scuttled plans for an international carbon market. And COP24 failed to address the bioenergy carbon counting loophole, which incentivizes the harvesting and burning of trees to make energy by calling the process carbon neutral.
- On the positive side, “1,000 tiny steps” were made, including an improved transparency framework for reporting emissions; regular assessments called Global Stocktake to gauge emissions-reduction effectiveness at national levels starting in 2023; and an agreement to set new finance goals in 2020 to help vulnerable nations adapt to a warming world.

COP24: Nations complicit in ignoring bioenergy climate bomb, experts say
- Twenty years ago science told policymakers that bioenergy – the burning of woody biomass – was a sustainable form of energy that was carbon neutral. The current United Nations carbon accounting system follows that guidance. However, new science has found the hypothesis to be wrong: bioenergy has been found to add significantly to carbon emissions.
- However, national delegations at the UN climate summit in Poland, COP24, as they wordsmith the Paris Rulebook, are stonewalling on the matter, doing nothing to close the bioenergy carbon accounting loophole. But nature can’t be fooled, which means that the undercounting of emissions could push the world past a climate catastrophe tipping point.
- Still, with the problem unaddressed, developed nations in the European Union and elsewhere continue burning woody biomass as energy, with the U.S., Canada and other nations happy to profit from the accounting error. Tropical nations like Brazil and Peru are eager to jump on the bioenergy bandwagon, a potential disaster for rainforests and biodiversity.
- Meanwhile, NGOs and scientists at COP24 have sought earnestly to alert the media and COP delegations to the bioenergy climate bomb and its looming risks, even going so far as to write language closing the loophole that could be inserted into the Paris Rulebook now being negotiated, but to no avail.

UN forest accounting loophole allows CO2 underreporting by EU, UK, US
- Emissions accounting helps determine whether or not nations are on target to achieve their voluntary Paris Agreement reduction goals. Ideally, the global community’s CO2 pledges, adjusted downward over time, would, taken together, help keep the world from heating up by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 from a 1900 baseline.
- But scientists are raising the alarm that this goal may already be beyond reach. One reason: a carbon accounting loophole within UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines accepting the burning of wood pellets (biomass) as a carbon neutral replacement for coal — with wood now used in many European Union and United Kingdom power plants.
- Scientists warn, however, that their research shows that replacing coal with wood pellets in power plants is not carbon neutral. That’s partly because burning wood, which is celebrated by governments as a renewable and sustainable energy resource, is less efficient than coal burning, so it actually produces more CO2 emissions than coal.
- Also, while wood burning and tree replanting over hundreds of years will end up carbon neutral, that doesn’t help right now. Over a short timeframe, at a historical moment when we require aggressive greenhouse gas reductions, wood burning is adding to global emissions. Analysts say that this loophole needs to be closed, and soon, to avoid further climate chaos.

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