That decision would almost surely intensify U.S. logging for wood products used in energy production, while also encouraging the conversion of native forests to wood pellet plantations — plantation forests fall far short of the carbon storage capacity of native woodlands. It’s not climate safe. “Politicians have a tough time with issues where there are point-counterpoint arguments.… But we want Congress to know there is more to this story than what they are hearing from industry and certain scientists. Burning wood may be close to carbon neutral in some situations, such as where it is clear that cut trees are replaced with the same trees, one for one; but in others it can emit even more carbon than coal. Recent studies find that burning wood actually produces more emissions than coal. On May 5, The Hill published a rebuttal to the Perciasepe-Bonnie commentary, written by four of the congressional letter signatories. If we let them grow, they will store more and more carbon.”. Still, the UN carbon-neutrality policy remains popular with governments, energy companies and investors across the European Union, in the United Kingdom and South Korea. It conjures up … Not everyone agrees with that optimistic view. Carbon is continually cycling through all living plants and animals. We depend on support from users like you. We think so.”, Perciasepe and Bonnie write: “While it might seem counter-intuitive, timber harvesting is vital to conserving (privately owned forests) because it provides economic incentives for landowners to reforest and preserve existing forests in the face of creeping housing development.”, The pair notes that any biomass policy must account for carbon emissions from burning trees, but they argue that “U.S. “So our thinking is, we will deliver this letter to committee chairs, and we will follow up with Zoom meetings with any interested member of Congress. Justin Catanoso is a regular contributor to Mongabay and a professor of journalism at Wake Forest University. Burning wood is considered carbon-neutral because it does not increase the amount of carbon dioxide (a regularly occurring molecule but also a greenhouse gas) cycling through the atmosphere. Complicating federal conservation efforts — and prompting the letter to Congress — was a carefully written commentary in The Hill on April 26 under the headline “Wood energy as a climate change solution” by two prominent figures in environmental regulation: Bob Perciasepe, president of the Center for Climate Energy Solutions and EPA deputy administrator from 2009-2014, and Robert Bonnie, a senior advisor at Resources for the Future at Duke University, and US Department of Agriculture undersecretary for Natural Resources and the Environment from 2013-2017. They will do more harm in legislating in favor of biomass. When trees grow they absorb carbon dioxide and lock it away in wood. You may republish Mongabay content in your publication at no cost, Chinese demand and domestic instability are wiping out Senegal’s last forests, Solomon Islands environmental defender faces life sentence for arson charge, Threatened species caught in crossfire of ongoing land conflict in Myanmar, ‘Tamper with nature, and everyone suffers’: Q&A with ecologist Enric Sala, New paper highlights spread of organized crime from global fisheries, Study: Chinese ‘dark fleets’ illegally defying sanctions by fishing in North Korean waters, Game changer? Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “Forests are the one thing we have the greatest potential to protect. If you value this objective and impact-driven journalism, please consider becoming a sustaining member. Even as the COVID-19 pandemic attracts much of the world’s attention, global warming continues intensifying. Biomass is not carbon neutral. The document comes at a critical moment: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler informed federal lawmakers in April that the agency is presently drafting new rules under the Clean Air Act that will define biomass, when burned to produce energy, as being carbon neutral. “ Burning wood is CO2-neutral” is used by wood burning proponents to bamboozle Vermonters. Dominick DellaSala, president and chief scientist of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and a conservation biologist, co-authored the congressional letter with Moomaw and Chad Hanson, a forest ecologist at the Earth Island Institute in Berkeley, California. Moreover, much of the pelletized wood comes from the Southeastern U.S., where environmentalists argue that to provide wood pellets thousands of acres of native trees are being clear cut annually and sometimes replaced by tree plantations — destroying sensitive ecosystems and weakening environmental resiliency against climate change-intensified storms and flooding. The scientists urged chairs of House and Senate environment-related committees to resist claims that logging and wood consumption “represent an effective carbon storage approach, or claims that biomass logging and incinerating trees for energy represents renewable, carbon-neutral energy.”, “The growing consensus of scientific findings is that to effectively mitigate the worst impacts of climate change, we must not only move beyond fossil fuel consumption, but must also substantially increase protection of our native forests in order to absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere and store more, not less, carbon in our forests,” says the two-page letter.”. Carbon is continually cycling through all living plants and animals. Currently, biomass producers in the U.S. and Eastern Europe are gearing up to deliver millions of tons of wood pellets to the EU, Great Britain and other nations to meet a rising global demand for biomass burned at industrial-scale levels at power plants, replacing coal. The text was followed by nine pages listing signatories, including leading names in climate science and conservation. Credit: Dogwood Alliance. 2015-41595-24254 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. This work is supported by New Technologies for Agriculture Extension grant no. The industry has long maintained it uses wood waste, not whole trees to make pellets. This FAQ was adapted from Wood to Energy and used with permission. A 2019 lawsuit against the European Union, Big mammals are at risk in the world’s poorest countries, even within parks, ‘Nature is next’: Q&A with Finance for Biodiversity’s Simon Zadek, A Chilean archipelago rivaling the Galápagos fends off invasive species, Sexual harassment rife in Vietnam’s conservation sector, survey reveals, Fueled by impunity, invasions surge in Brazil’s Indigenous lands. The transaction fees of 0 for my donation every day, Mongabay reporters bring news! 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