CORRECT, SOUTHERN US FORESTS ARE NOT FUEL Bioenergy International No 83, 7-2015 5 INTERNATI NAL BIOENERGY INTERNATIONAL Holländargatan 17 SE-111 60 Stockholm, Sweden Tel: +46 8 441 70 80 E-mail: info@bioenergyinternational.com Twitter:BioenergyIntl www.bioenergyinternational.com PUBLISHER Kjell Andersson kjell.andersson@svebio.se EDITOR IN CHIEF Alan Sherrard alan.sherrard@bionergyinternational.com SALES, MARKETING & CO-EDITORS Dorota Natucka dorota.natucka@bioenergyinternational.com Jeanette Fogelmark jeanette.fogelmark@bioenergyinternational.com Xinyi Shen xinyi.shen@bioenergyinternational.com SUBSCRIPTION 7 issues 125 EUR. Order: info@bioenergyinternational.com PRINTING Exaktaprinting, Malmö, Sweden OWNER SBSAB/Svebio Holländargatan 17 SE-111 60 Stockholm, Sweden ABOUT BIOENERGY INTERNATIONAL Bioenergy International is produced in cooperation with the European Biomass Association, AEBIOM and published 7 times a year. COVER PHOTO Earlier this year Drax Biomass loaded its first consignment of own produced pellets at its new Port Allen facility, which is located on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, Louisiana (photo courtesy BRUKS Rockwood). No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in any form without the prior written consent of the publisher. Whilst every reasonable effort is made to check accuracy, all articles and information are published in good faith. Readers are advised to verify statements and facts direct with official sources before acting on them as the publisher cannot, under any circumstances, accept any responsibility. Opinions expressed should not be construed as being those of the publisher. SI units and ISO 4217 currency codes are used as a matter of preference. At the time of writing, Stockholm, Sweden is gearing up for this year’s Nobel Prize, paying tribute to some of the sharpest minds on the planet that have benefitted humankind with their research. Meanwhile the Conference of Parties (COP21) meeting in Paris, France is in progress. The last few months in the lead up to the event have seen a sudden proliferation of reports, studies, papers and briefings pertaining to climate change, renewable energy (read electricity) and biofuels. One important and welcome read is the Forest2Market report Wood Supply Trends in the US South 1995–2015. Commissioned by the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities, National Alliance of Forest Owners (NAFO) and the US Industrial Pellet Association (USIPA) the report is based on transaction data. It reveals that in 2014, the total removal of wood in the US South for all markets was 3.3 percent of the total forest inventory, where 0.08 percent were pellet exports. Moreover, a tripling of current pellet exports to 10.8 million tonnes still represents only 0.3 percent of total forest inventory. The how, where, when and what type of forest is “removed” is a related but different issue and regulated in forest legislation, forestry practice codes and sustainability certification schemes. It’s a distinction that organisations behind campaigns like “Our Southern Forests are not Fuel” ought to take note of as the report leaves only one conclusion, and they are entirely correct – in terms of volume removals, the US export of industrial wood pellets to meet renewable energy goals in the European Union (EU) is not a threat to the sustainability of US Southern forests. The report essentially confirms that indeed US Southern Forests are Not Fuel. Taking a fiscal approach, a global carbon tax is, as The Economist remarked in its Hot and Bothered Special Climate Report, the ”best way” to tackle climate change. It would “drive the most polluting power stations off the system”. If combined with market reforms, it would “force renewable power producers to bear the costs of their intermittency.” Biomass could FIT into the system offering reliable, dispatchable base-load and/or peak-load and/or storage. A point missed in the report, which failed to discuss biomass other than to suggest that research on cheap, clean stoves for poor countries would improve health and reduce emissions from wood. It may, but so would spending on developing decentralised renewable cooking fuel production facilities and supply chains, such as the Ethiopian ethanol project featured in this issue. William Nordhaus, a climate economist cited in the report, has calculated that if every country in the world were to tax carbon, temperatures could be held to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels at a cost of 1-2 percent of global income annually. If the scheme were confined to countries representing only half of global emissions, the 2 °C target would be nigh impossible to hit. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has calculated effective carbon rates (ECR) on CO₂ emissions from energy use for 41 countries, which together represent 80 percent of global emissions. It found that only 10 percent of CO₂ emissions from all energy use in the 41 countries are subject to an ECR rate above EUR 30 per tonne, the estimated climate damage cost from emitting 1 tonne of CO₂. The Economist report concluded that a global carbon tax is likely to remain an ”economic theory” for a long time and ”certainly nothing of the sort will be seriously discussed in Paris”. Au contraire, most certainly something of the sort was very seriously discussed with the official launch of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition at COP21. For the first time, an unprecedented alliance of Heads of State, city and state leaders, with the support of heads of leading companies, have joined forces to urge countries and companies around the globe to put a price on carbon. That is a good starting point and a great note of optimism with which to close our final issue for 2015. Xinyi Shen Alan Sherrard Jeanette Fogelmark Dorota Natucka Persson
Bioenergy International no 7 December 2015
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