Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Company Earns Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) Certification

http://www.einnews.com/pr_news/175535517/beijing-shougang-lanzatech-new-energy-science-technology-company-earns-roundtable-on-sustainable-biomaterials-rsb-certification

LanzaTech's Joint Venture With Shougang Jingtang Iron and Steel United Company and the Tang Ming Group, Earns First-Ever RSB Certification for Waste-Gas to Biofuel Process

WASHINGTON, DC and BEIJING, CHINA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/05/13 -- Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd. and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials Services Foundation, the implementing entity of the RSB, announced today that Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd. has earned RSB's sustainability certification for the joint venture's facility that converts waste steel mill gases to sustainable biofuels.

The RSB is a global sustainability standard and certification system for biofuels and biomaterials production. The facility, which utilizes LanzaTech technology, is the first RSB-certified biofuel plant in China, and the first of its kind anywhere to receive this key certification for industrial carbon capture and utilization.

"The joint venture uses a process that creates a sustainable biofuel and does so by efficiently reusing greenhouse gases that would have otherwise been released into the atmosphere," said Peter Ryus, RSB Services' CEO. "This solution, which does not impact the food chain or land use, meets the RSB principles and practices and serves as an example of how continued innovation in the industry will lead to sustainable biofuels in the future. We are honored to be working with LanzaTech and their joint venture partners on greenhouse gas reduction and global sustainability improvements."

RSB certification shows the joint venture's commitment to environmental improvements through a novel biological approach that converts waste carbon emissions from steelmaking into biofuels and chemicals. Using the RSB methodology and assumptions based on commercial production, it is estimated that ethanol from the process may reduce life cycle greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent compared to petroleum fuels.

In addition, the joint venture partners anticipate that the process will improve local air quality by materially reducing nitrogen oxide (NOx) and particulate emissions. The technology has the potential of making a significant global impact by reusing up to 150 million tonnes of CO2 from the global steel industry alone.

The use of novel gas fermentation technology to convert industrial waste gases into biofuels is aligned perfectly with the RSB Principles and Criteria, which go beyond greenhouse gas emissions reductions to focus on economic and social sustainability. By using a widely available waste resource located in areas typically unsuitable for agriculture, LanzaTech's process reduces overall emissions without negatively impacting the food chain or causing land use changes. By enabling the production of fuels from available steelmaking waste, Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd. will help China balance economic growth with sustainability, as well as increase its supply of domestic biofuels.

RSB certification provides assurance that biofuels and biomaterials deliver on their promise of sustainability. Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd. chose to work with RSB because of its rigorous sustainability standard, auditing approach, and its broad acceptance. The RSB standard provides a comprehensive approach that incorporates the standard with other operational, management and physical standards such as ISO risk management and environmental management to ensure every base is covered.

"The RSB certification is an incredibly important step for the development of our commercial production facilities which we expect to bring online in 2014," said Dr. Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech. "In addition, we trust this certification will help accelerate the acceptance of biofuels made through carbon capture technologies and serve to showcase the possibilities opened up by thinking of carbon emissions as an opportunity, not just a problem."

RSB is a preferred standard of major airlines globally, including LanzaTech's partner Virgin Atlantic and the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group, an aviation industry-led coalition that is supporting the development, certification, and commercial use of lower carbon renewable fuels, derived from sustainable sources.

Virgin Atlantic President Sir Richard Branson previously described the LanzaTech process as "one of the most exciting developments of our lifetime and a major breakthrough in the war on carbon." Reflecting on this latest development, he says "RSB's certification of the Beijing facility is a crucial step to ensure this revolutionary new fuel will meet the highest possible environmental standards and will result in a radical reduction in our carbon footprint."

Virgin Atlantic Chief Executive Craig Kreeger notes: "Our partnership with LanzaTech is a key part of our Change is in the Air sustainability program. Beyond our significant fleet upgrades and our comprehensive fuel efficiency programme, this breakthrough opportunity to pioneer away from fossil fuels offers us the best possible chance of substantially reducing the carbon emissions associated with our flying programme. Key to that has always been ensuring that any new fuel meets the highest possible sustainability standards, and we view RSB as the gold standard scheme to help us to achieve this. We're excited and committed to help hasten the day when we are using LanzaTech's RSB-certified fuel to power our aircraft."

The audit summary report is available on the RSB website, www.rsbservices.org. The audit was conducted by SCS Global Services (SCS), www.scsglobalservices.com, a leading global provider of third-party environmental and sustainability certification, auditing, testing, and standards development for nearly 30 years.

About LanzaTech

LanzaTech is a leader in gas fermentation technology. It provides novel and economic routes to fuels and high value chemicals from waste gas streams. LanzaTech's unique process provides a sustainable pathway to produce platform chemicals that serve as building blocks to products that have become indispensable in our lives such as rubber, plastics, synthetic fibers and fuels.

LanzaTech's technology solutions mitigate carbon emissions from industry without adversely impacting food or land security. With commercial facilities in China slotted for construction in 2014, LanzaTech, a company founded in New Zealand, is now a global organization. More information is available at www.lanzatech.com.

About Shougang Group

Shougang Group is a large enterprise group founded in 1919. While Shougang's main business is iron and steel, the Group is also engaged in mining, machinery, electronics, construction, real estate, services and international trading. Shougang has made great progress, especially since economic reforms began in China 30 years ago.

Entering the new century, the steel industry is facing unprecedented pressure and challenges, as well as unprecedented development opportunities. Shougang has created a first class iron and steel enterprise by actively promoting optimization of the industry's structure, promoting continuous innovation and pioneering new product development and production processes. Shougang has also changed its traditional product line to produce high-grade sheet metal, an historical change. In the past thirty years, Shougang steel's production capacity has increased from 1.79 million tons to 12.19 million tons and sales income has increased from 1.443 billion yuan to 132 billion yuan. The Group has paid more than 57.66 billion yuan in tax revenue and has made a significant contribution to the development of the modern Chinese iron and steel industry. More information is available at http://www.shougang.com.cn/shougang_cn_web/
 
About Tang Ming Group 

Tang Ming Group Ltd was established in November 1999. It was successfully formed into a corporation with China Shougang Group in 2003 to establish Shougang Tangming (Auckland) Corporation Ltd. In 2011, Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd was established in Beijing.

About RSB Services
The Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) certification system helps farmers, feedstock processors and biomaterial producers prove their sustainability to the world. Certified entities demonstrate that their operations comply with ambitious yet practical safeguards, including the protection of natural or rare ecosystems, food security, and respect for human rights to land, water and decent work conditions, and the management of water resources. With unmatched NGO support, global market compatibility across all feedstocks, practical guidance and tools for an ongoing sustainability system, RSB Services Foundation, the implementing entity of the RSB, helps companies manage their risk and increase shareholder and consumer confidence through the certification of their businesses. More information about RSB certification can be found at www.rsbservices.org. 

Media Contacts:
John Williams
Scoville PR for LanzaTech
jwilliams@scovillepr.com
+1-206-625-0075

Helena Kennedy
Director of Communications at RSB Services Foundation
hkennedy@rsbservices.org
+1-703-725-4626

European climate policy drives wood pellet boom in NC

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/08/17/4244134/european-climate-policy-drives.html

By Bruce Siceloff: bsiceloff@newsobserver.com

Posted: Sunday, Aug. 18, 2013

• 
  Chris Seward - cseward@newsobserver.com

  A worker shows a handful of the finished product at the Enviva facility in Ahoskie NC on August 12, 2013. Enviva makes wood pellets from North Carolina forest products and ships them to Europe for use in power plants there. The pellets are trucked to the Hampton Roads, VA ports and then put on ships bound for Europe..

  
  

AHOSKIE In the searing August heat, big yellow logging machines pile up the harvest from 153 acres of sweet gum, red oak and maple trees.

A roaring log loader grabs the trunks to slice off 16-foot logs and stack them for one of the sawmills that provide a traditional market for Eastern North Carolina timber. These logs are worth $20 to $40 a ton and will be turned into plywood, cabinets and veneer.

In a second woodpile, there’s new money. Limbs and leafy treetops are stacked alongside trees as big as 16 inches across. They cannot be sold as saw logs because they’re forked or knotty, crooked or hollow.

This pile will be fed into a chipper and milled at an Ahoskie factory that makes 1,000 tons, every day, of a minor American fuel product suddenly in hot demand on the other side of the Atlantic: wood pellets.

Two years ago, everything in this second pile would have been left on the ground to rot, said David Jennette, a Windsor forester who is managing this timber harvest. Now it brings $2 to $8 a ton.

“When you’re talking about 50 to 75 tons of chips to the acre, and maybe more, that’s a significant amount of money going back to the landowner that we weren’t able to get before,” Jennette said.

The wood pellet industry is enjoying a speedy, zero-to-60 growth surge across the southeastern United States. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in factories – some of them converted from old lumber mills – in coastal plain forests from Virginia to Louisiana.

They are serving a market created, almost overnight, by paradoxical environmental policies that are driving European electric utilities to burn imported wood in their boilers instead of coal.

Maryland-based Enviva LP, the nation’s biggest pellet maker, opened its Ahoskie mill in 2011 and a second one in Northampton County this year. Together, they produce 865,000 tons of pellets annually to be shipped out of the port at Chesapeake, Va.

In 2015, Enviva expects to start exporting an additional million tons from a planned $40 million terminal at the Wilmington port. The company is scouting sites for two new pellet mills in southeastern North Carolina, one of them in Sampson County.

At the same time, California-based International WoodFuels has said it will produce 285,000 tons a year from a planned pellet mill in Wilson County and a new export terminal at the Morehead City port.

The pellet industry is founded on a climate-friendly, carbon-neutral rationale. Our forests use photosynthesis to soak up carbon dioxide, enough to compensate for 14 percent of all emissions in the United States. This stored-up carbon is released into the air when wood pellets are burned, but wood is called a renewable fuel because that carbon eventually is recaptured by new trees that grow in place of the old ones.

Conservationists are attacking the pellet industry’s green-energy luster on two fronts.

They worry that the booming market for pellets will encourage industrial logging and sully the sensitive ecosystems of bottomland hardwood forests. And they counter European government carbon-cycle calculations with their own assessment that burning trees is, in the words of a British environmental group’s campaign, even “ dirtier than coal.”

“It just doesn’t make sense that we’re logging the world’s forest ... burning it into the atmosphere and calling it clean, green, renewable energy,” said Danna Smith of the Asheville-based Dogwood Alliance, a network of Southern conservation groups.

A push toward pellets

The European Union and Great Britain have adopted aggressive targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. They have created incentives for electric utilities to cut back on their use of coal and will require renewable sources to provide 20 percent of all energy by 2020. Wind and solar power are expected to meet only a small share of that demand.

Power companies are looking to close the gap with biomass – primarily with imported wood pellets. Biomass use in Great Britain, 3 million tons last year, is expected to grow tenfold over the next five years.

Britain’s biggest carbon emitter is the Drax Group, a Yorkshire utility that operates the largest power plant in western Europe. Drax is converting half its plant from coal to wood pellets. Coal is one-third the price of pellets, but Drax CEO Dorothy Thompson said her company is responding to renewable-energy credits and a British carbon tax, introduced this year at $7 a ton, that will grow by 2020 to more than $60 a ton.

“And that is very substantial,” Thompson told a BBC-TV interviewer in July. “When we burn biomass, we don’t pay that. Because biomass is carbon-neutral. When we burn coal, the cost is very high.”

With coastal forests close to its seaports, the South has become the top pellet source for Drax and other European utilities. Pellet makers also are taking advantage of declines in the region’s pulp and paper industry, which uses some of the same low-grade wood. Loggers in northeastern North Carolina lost their main buyer for hardwood pulpwood a few years ago when International Paper closed a mill in Franklin, Va.

“We generally fill that void that was historically used by the pulp and paper industry,” Thomas Meth, Enviva’s executive vice president and co-founder, said during a tour of the Ahoskie mill. “We generally site our locations where we’ve had a lot of plant closings, to avoid most of the competition.”

Enviva built on the site of a Georgia Pacific sawmill that closed in 2005. Residents of a nearby Ahoskie neighborhood say they never had problems with Georgia Pacific, but they are complaining now about noise and occasional clouds of sawdust wafting from Enviva’s pellet mill.

Anne Williams, a retired hospital aide in her 70s, said she sweeps her porch once or twice a day to clean off the fine, dark sawdust that blows from Enviva across a tobacco field to her comfortable manufactured home. Dust coats cars and clogs air-conditioners in the neighborhood, she said. She keeps her windows closed.

“They claim it won’t hurt you,” Williams said. “But the way it sticks to everything out there, you know it’s got to be sticking to your lungs.”

Meth said Enviva has reduced the dust problem and hopes to eliminate it later this year.

“We have always been within our permitted limits,” Meth said. “But in order to have a good relationship with the neighbors, we’ll take an extra step and build some extra dust protection.”

Pellet makers won’t bid against sawmills for valuable timber that has higher uses, Meth said. He guided visitors through a woodlot stacked 20 feet high with treetops and whole trees, many with crooked or diseased trunks that he said make them unsuitable for saw timber.

“We use by-products of the normal harvesting process in wood fiber,” Meth said. “And residues, in the broadest sense. There’s a lot misperception as to what we actually use. The value of what we take is 10, 20 percent of the whole harvest.”

Carbon calculations

Enviva gives delivery truck drivers a flier explaining that the company won’t accept valuable saw logs, and it rejects logs wider than 26 inches at the base.

Critics say the company uses big trees that cannot be considered mere “residue.”

“Their yard was not filled with log waste,” said Debbie Hammel of the Natural Resources Defense Council, looking at photos taken by environmentalists at the Enviva site earlier this year. “It was filled with whole trees. It meant that their sourcing activity has a bad carbon profile associated with it.”

The carbon calculations are complicated. After the pellets from a single tree are burned, Hammel and the Dogwood Alliance’s Smith said, it takes 50 years for a replacement tree to absorb enough carbon to offset the pollution.

But some economists and foresters look at this differently. They argue that a healthy demand for lumber encourages woodland owners to keep planting more trees, which will absorb more carbon from the air. A landowner unhappy with the economic return from forestry is more likely to cut down the trees and divert the land to farming or urban development.

“Losing timberland to agriculture is a worse carbon story than the cycling of trees that probably would have been harvested anyway,” said Bob Abt, a forestry professor at N.C. State University.

“The carbon accounting is messier than saying that the tree is going to take 50 years to replace.”


Enviva said switching from coal to wood pellets reduces carbon emissions by more than 74 percent.

British government standards say that pellet makers must draw only on environmentally sustainable logging sources. But Abt said he agrees with environmentalists who say “the wording there is vague.”

Meth said Enviva meets the sustainable forestry standards set by professional certification organizations, including the Forest Stewardship Council.

British officials say they are taking a closer look at their pellet policies. Ed Davey, the British energy secretary, recently called biomass an interim solution.

“Making electricity from biomass based on imported wood is not a long-term answer to our energy needs,” Davey told the BBC.

Jennette, the Windsor forester, said the new pellet market brings both economic and environmental benefits. Enviva accepts more of the logging leftovers than the hardwood paper mills did in the old days, he said.

“The whole tree goes to Enviva,” Jennette said. “And the tonnage goes way up when you start doing tops and limbs and everything else.”

It can be enough money to make a difference in the profitability, and the timing, of a timber sale.

Jennette’s Hertford County client expects to clear about $1,000 an acre – most of it from valuable saw timber, but somewhere between $150 and $300 for those chips.

Replanting will be easier, too, he said.

“As clean as this site will be, we’re able to reforest for less money,” Jennette said. “As long as we reforest what we cut and we do a good job of the sustainability piece of it, we’ll never stop.”

More Information


The pellet economy:
 

Enviva estimates the economic impact of its pellet mills in Ahoskie and Garysburg and its planned export terminal at the Wilmington port:

       • Ahoskie: 74 workers, average salary $35,000. Enviva buys timber worth $21 million from North Carolina and Virginia loggers. Produces 365,000 tons of pellets for $170 a ton.

       • Garysburg (Northampton County): 79 workers, average salary $35,000. Enviva buys timber worth $35.4 million from North Carolina and Virginia loggers. Produces 500,000 tons of pellets for $170 a ton.

       • Wilmington: $40 million to build export terminal, to begin operation in 2015 with 23 workers, average salary $37,783. One million tons of pellets to be exported on 25 to 30 vessels per year.


Not included here: Two mills that will produce pellets for export through Wilmington.
 
Source: Enviva LP

Policy changes should not affect wood-pellet plans at port

http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20130722/ARTICLES/130729922

By Wayne Faulkner, Wayne.Faulkner@StarNewsOnline.com

Published: Monday, July 22, 2013 at 3:14 p.m.

A worker piles wood pellets at a holding facility at the Georgia Ports Authority in Brunswick, Ga., in 2011. Courtesy photo

 

Energy policy changes across the Atlantic could affect how long the boom in the U.S. wood pellet industry will last, forestry experts and industry opponents say.

But the company that plans to invest millions into building a pellet-exporting facility at the Port of Wilmington says those changes were long anticipated and have provided certainty for the industry to continue rapid growth.

The United Kingdom, where North Carolina's pellets will be shipped, is changing some of its rules that favor use of pellets in place of coal. It is cutting out subsidies for new power plants that would burn pellets while eventually ending them for plants that are converting from coal to pellets, according to news reports. 

The U.K.'s decisions "give certainty to the major utilities there so they can make good investments in converting existing coal-fired plants to biomass (wood products) plants," Enviva Chairman and CEO John Keppler said Monday.

"We have some pretty aggressive plans under way" for the Port of Wilmington and elsewhere in North Carolina, he said.

Enviva has two pellet-producing facilities in North Carolina, at Ahoskie and Northhampton, and has identified several sites in the state for a possible third facility, Keppler said.

Enviva plans to build two concrete storage domes, rail and truck unloading stations and a ship loader/dock-conveyer system at Wilmington. Enviva is not involved in pellet-exporting plans at the Port of Morehead City, which have been scaled back. The cutback is unrelated to European environmental policies, said Laura Blair, spokeswoman for the N.C. State Ports Authority.

U.S. production of pellets is expected to increase from 3 million tons in 2009 to 10 million by 2015, according to a study by Daniel Saloni of the Department of Forest Biomaterials at N.C. State University. 

There are or will be six Atlantic ports handling wood pellets between Norfolk and Brunswick, Ga., according to the Southern Environmental Law Center, an environmental advocacy organization based in Charlottesville, Va.

Pascagoula, Miss., is joining the push, planning to spend $30 million to accommodate future pellet exports.

Viable business?

But some question the limits of the wood-pellet export boom.

Opponents of the industry are arguing that burning wood pellets to produce energy not only doesn't make environmental sense but that it eventually won't make economic sense, either.

In addition to the U.K.'s new biomass subsidy policy, Europe is looking at whether it will require stricter requirements that the wood it receives from the United States is third-party-certified as sustainable, according to Dennis Hazel, associate professor and extension specialist for the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at N.C. State University.

One of the largest certifying groups is the Forest Stewardship Council, which originated from the Rain Forest Alliance, Hazel said.

"If your forest is certified, every product" that comes from it is certified, including pellets, he said Monday.

Problem is, there is little third-party-certified land in North Carolina, Hazel said.

If Europe decides to require strict certification, it may cloud the long-term viability of the pellet industry in the state, he said.

Lack of certification by either independent or industry groups is not to say the state's forests are managed badly.

The U.S. Forestry Service thinks "we do forestry pretty well in the Southeast. Most of our land is adequately regenerated" after trees are cut, Hazel said. That means that most cutting, even clear-cutting, allows the forests to come back. That, in turn, shrinks the relative carbon footprint of using North Carolina pellets for power production, he said.

But the forest watchdog group Dogwood Alliance says using the state's forests to produce pellets for power production is far from the European goal to be carbon neutral – producing no more carbon dioxide than is absorbed by regenerated forests.

The alliance's executor director, Danna Smith, said burning pellets for electricity may actually increase carbon emissions compared to coal. 

But she also argued that pellet companies are limited in their ability to make money from selling to the United Kingdom.

"It is not a long-term strategy for (the companies)," Smith said. "This is not going to be a long-term development opportunity.

"The justification for this (pellet) market is emission reductions. When you burn a tree that is, say, 20 years old, all that carbon is going into the atmosphere. If that tree had not been logged it would have been storing that carbon plus absorbing more carbon from the atmosphere."

In other words, the forests just can't regenerate fast enough to make the harvesting-burning process carbon neutral, she added.

But the pellet-burning process is never going to be carbon neutral, Hazel said. It, however, can be relatively beneficial.

In the short term, burning pellets may be less advantageous than burning coal. But in the long term it looks good compared to coal, because the forests have time to regenerate, he said.

Regardless of the arguments, Keppler is confident in his company's and the pellet industry's course of high investment and growth.

Nothing, he reiterated, has changed in Enviva's ambitious plans for the Port of Wilmington.

The Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels Recognizes Forests Certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)

http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2013/03/06/roundtable-sustainable-biofuels-recognizes-forests-certified-forest-stewardship-council-f


RSB now recognizes FSC which certifies responsibly managed forests.

Geneva, Switzerland (PRWEB) March 06, 2013 

The Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB) is pleased to announce its decision to recognize the standard of the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) which certifies responsibly managed forests.

As RSB and FSC standards are aligned on most sustainability aspects, FSC certified forests and operators will now be able to access biofuel and bioenergy markets by receiving RSB certification through a simplified audit process to demonstrate compliance, therefore saving costs and time. This process will enhance the development of advanced biofuel pathways by increasing the supply of sustainable forestry products and ligno-cellulosic material to biofuel and bioenergy producers.

“This move, which recognizes the high level of sustainability of FSC-certified operations, offers them increased access to bioenergy markets,” said Barbara Bramble, Board Chair of the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels. “It is part of the ongoing project of the RSB to streamline certification requirements for established sustainability standards, and we are delighted that the benchmarking report found our standards to be comparable.”

“We are very pleased to be recognized by RSB as this demonstrates our leadership role in forest certification and responsible forest management. This is also an important signal how like-minded, best-in-class organizations can collaborate across sectors and create additional value for their beneficiaries,” said Kim Carstensen, Director General of the Forest Stewardship Council.

This recognition builds upon a benchmarking process conducted by RSB to compare the respective sustainability requirements of the RSB Principles & Criteria and the FSC Principles & Criteria (Versions 4 and 5). The comparison revealed that FSC certified forests could be de facto considered compliant with all 12 RSB Principles & Criteria, with the exception of RSB Principle 3 (Greenhouse Gas) and RSB Principle 6 (Food Security – Not applicable to natural forests). The complete gap analysis is available upon request via info(at)rsb(dot)org.

About RSB

The Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels has developed a global sustainability standard and certification system for biofuel production. The RSB sustainability standard represents a global consensus of over 100 organizations including farmers, refiners, regulators and NGOs, and was designed to ensure the sustainability of biofuels production while streamlining compliance for industry. More information: http://www.rsb.org 

About FSC

The Forest Stewardship Council is an independent, non-governmental, not-for-profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the world's forests. Established in 1993, FSC is a pioneer stakeholder forum convening global consensus on responsible forest management through democratic processes. FSC has developed the FSC Certification Scheme, based on the FSC Principles & Criteria, and the related FSC Accreditation Program delivered through Accreditation Services International. More information: http://www.fsc.org 

RSB and FSC are both members of the ISEAL Alliance, which defines codes of good practices for standard-setting organisations.

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For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2013/3/prweb10473989.htm

Read more: http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2013/03/06/roundtable-sustainable-biofuels-recognizes-forests-certified-forest-stewardship-council-f#ixzz2NRTW7RdS

WBA disputes forest biomass carbon payback, debt theories

http://www.biomassmagazine.com/articles/8405/wba-disputes-forest-biomass-carbon-payback-debt-theories

By Erin Voegele | December 11, 2012

 

The World Bioenergy Association released a new biomass fact sheet at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP18) in December. The fact sheet, titled “The carbon neutrality of biomass from forest,” asserts that theories on carbon debt and “payback time” of biomass are not credible. According to the WBA, these assumptions are based on the unrealistic assumption that trees are burned before they are grown.

The fact sheet notes that replacing fossil fuels with sources of renewable energy must be the core strategy utilized within future climate policies. Utilizing biomass from sustainably managed forests can play an important role in this strategy,” said the WBA in the document. “Several countries have demonstrated that a buildup of carbon in forests and an increase of forest biomass for energy is simultaneously achievable by good forest management practice.”

While some organizations have argued that woody biomass should not be harvested in an effort to increase carbon dioxide storage, the WBA stresses that strategy isn’t feasible because forests stop growing as soon as their trees mature. In addition, the stored carbon in those mature forests will be released through decay, even if the biomass isn’t burned for energy.

In the fact sheet, the WBA outlines four stages of growth that each tree experiences, including planting and first establishment, growth, maturation and decay. According to the paper, each tree constantly absorbs carbon dioxide by photosynthesis and release carbon dioxide through respiration.

“Until a tree progresses to its mature stage it is growing and absorbs more CO2 by assimilation than it releases by breathing,” said the association in the document. “In this phase the tree is a carbon sink. In the mature phase CO2 uptake and release are in equilibrium, the tree is carbon storage. As follows, during the decay phase, a tree will become a net carbon source.”

Rather than preventing the harvest of woody biomass, the association is urging governments to enforce sustainable forest management policies. According to the WBA, this can be accomplished through the use of sustainability criteria it has developed in combination with a biomass certification system.

A fully copy of the fact sheet can be downloaded from the WBA website.

New association to address U.S. industrial pellet export issues

http://www.biomassmagazine.com/articles/5441/new-association-to-address-u-s-industrial-pellet-export-issues

 

By Anna Austin | April 22, 2011

• 
  
  

A new trade group has formed to address specific industry issues faced by U.S. manufacturers of industrial grade wood pellets that are being exported to Europe.

According to Executive Director Seth Ginther, the U.S. Industrial Pellet Association will focus on three main issues: certification standards for industrial wood pellets, sustainability and uniformity of contracts.  There are other pellet trade groups in the U.S., he said, but none that address those specific issues.

The group was officially formed in February by Enviva Biomass, Fram Renewable Fuels, Green Circle Bio Energy Inc. and the Westervelt Company, according to Ginther, and interest has been extremely high.

“We’re looking for other producers to become members, or anybody who is involved in the value chain or supply chain of industrial wood grade pellets. That includes landowners, transporters, equipment manufacturers, ports, European utilities and trading groups.”

On U.S. pellet export activity right now, Ginther said it’s not just talk. “It’s happening, and during the next five years, pellet demand in Europe will continue to rise dramatically. There’s an enormous demand for this product and that will continue.” 

Though in the future the largely residential-based U.S. pellet market may begin to expand more to industrial-scale use, Ginther said the domestic wood pellet market as a whole is very small right now compared to Europe’s.

The USIPA plans to work with Canada on policy issues, he added, as Canada currently exports the vast majority of wood pellets imported to Europe.

Getting UNC coal-free: When big plans are made, they should be made with foresight and demand continued attention

http://www.dailytarheel.com/index.php/article/2011/04/getting_unc_coalfree_when_big_plans_are_made_they_should_be_made_with_foresight_and_demand_continued

 

By Editorial Board | The Daily Tar Heel

Updated: 04/15/11 12:44am

           

UNC’s energy transition seems not to be going as smoothly as was hoped. A few bumps in the road are hardly worth despairing over. But the obstacles highlight a lack of foresight in the energy plan — and the student body is left unclear as to when the transition will happen, or whether it will actually be sustainable.

Whether UNC can create the market it needs with its own demand remains to be seen. At the very least, the University must diligently work to ensure the few suppliers it can use have the proper certification.

The Energy Task Force, which was formed more than a year ago and presented its recommendations to the University last October, suggested wood pellets as a more sustainable alternative to coal.

Many of the delays to the project were beyond the control of the parties involved. First, UNC couldn’t get enough wood pellets to its energy plant because it couldn’t secure proper railcars. By the time this was resolved, it was too far into the winter to test a new source of energy.

The initiative’s current problems surround the difficulty of verifying the sustainability of the distributor’s practices. After ruling out N.C. distributors, the University settled on a company in Virginia.

It’s not exactly what the Energy Task Force had in mind. The final recommendations explicitly stated preference for biomass taken from N.C. forests through certified sustainable practices.

UNC’s supplier, WoodFuels Virginia, says it is “aggressively pursuing” certification, but does source its own wood. In the meantime, it’s unclear whether or not using biomass would actually be degrading another natural resource.

The creation of the Energy Task Force was the culmination of admirable efforts by student environmental groups. They succeeded in bringing problems with coal to the forefront of the University’s attention.

For their part, administrators responded promptly and took the concerns seriously. When the 10-person task force was assembled, two students were included.

But implementing the plan seems to be harder than creating it. We understand the immense complexity of energy issues, especially with a budget that offers little wiggle room for expensive experimentation.

It’s all the more reason to aggressively ensure that we are not just meeting a time line, but making truly sustainable choices. We’d like to see the plan’s original advocates sustain their initial passion to see the plan through.

Biofuels transport targets are unethical, inquiry finds

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/13/biofuels-targets-unethical

Damian Carrington

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 April 2011 07.00 BST

Independent inquiry concludes that the production of biofuels to meet UK and European directives violates human rights and damages the environment

A woman cuts sugarcane for ethanol production in Brazil. The need to meet rising biofuel targets has led to exploitation of workers, the loss of wildlife and higher food prices, the inquiry found. Photograph: Nelson Almeida/AFP/Getty Images

The legal requirement to put biofuels in petrol and diesel sold in the UK and Europe is unethical because their production violates human rights and damages the environment, a major new inquiry has concluded.

"Biofuels are one of the only renewable alternatives we have for transport fuels, but current policies and targets that encourage their uptake have backfired badly," said Prof Joyce Tait, at Edinburgh University, who chaired the 18-month inquiry by the independent Nuffield Council on Bioethics (NCB). "The rapid expansion of biofuels production in the developing world has led to problems such as deforestation and the displacement of indigenous people."

The need to meet rising biofuel targets has also led to exploitation of workers, the loss of wildlife and higher food prices, the inquiry found. Under the European Union's renewable energy directive, 10% of transport fuel must come from renewable sources such as biofuel by 2020. Alena Buyx, assistant director at the NCB, said: "If you look at food prices and they go up and incomes do not, then more people will probably die from hunger, and biofuels are one contributing factor to those price rises." Biofuels also contribute to poor harvests, commodity speculation and high oil prices which raise the cost of fertilisers and transport, she added.

"But doing nothing is also immoral," said Prof Ottoline Leyserof Cambridge University, and another member of the NBC working party. There is a clear need to replace liquid fossil fuels to limit climate change and if a new biofuel technology meets ethical conditions, there is a duty to develop it, she said.

The main transport biofuels that are currently used – bioethanol, made from maize and sugar cane, and biodiesel, made from palm and rape seed oil – both come from food crops and can have substantial ethical problems, the inquiry concluded.

But future generations of biofuel, made from agricultural waste such as straw, fast-growing perennials such as willow or miscanthus grass, or even algae grown in tanks, could avoid many of the problems by not competing directly with food. "These are very exciting technologies," said Leyser. "The potential is huge."

In the UK, 5% of transport fuel must come from renewable sources by 2013. Today, 3% of the UK's petrol and diesel comes from biofuel, mostly produced in Argentina, Brazil and other European countries. But in January, it was revealed that two-thirds of the biofuel being used in the UK today failed to meet environmental standards. Government cuts to the budget of the Carbon Trust also saw a flagship algal biofuels project cancelled.

The Department of Transport is currently consulting on changes to the UK's biofuels regulations. Transport minister Norman Baker said: "It has already been agreed that no biofuel will count towards European renewable energy targets unless it meets certain sustainability requirements. But we are pushing the European commission to go further. Be in no doubt, we consider the sustainability of biofuels to be paramount."

An international certification scheme, like the Fairtrade scheme for food, must be introduced, the NCB inquiry concluded. It would guarantee that the production of biofuels met the five ethical conditions identified by the NCB: observing human rights, environmentally sustainable, reduced carbon emissions, fairly traded and equitably distributed cost and benefits.

Targets for biofuels had driven a rapid expansion, in parts of the world with lower ethical standards, the researchers said. They cited the destruction of rainforest in Malaysia to produce palm oil, forcing people off their land and endangering orangutans, and a 2008 report by Amnesty International which found conditions near slavery for workers in some sugarcane plantations.

"We should slow down [the targets] if it is not possible to meet ethical standards," said Buyx. "But we think it is possible to do that [meet such standards] if enough pressure is applied." The inquiry found positive examples too, such as small-scale biofuels initiatives that provide energy, income and livelihoods in fuel-poor areas, such as in rural Mali.

Existing certification schemes, such as that run by the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels were a good start, the researchers said, but remained entirely voluntary. There was also problem of responsible biofuel producers having to conform to many different standards. At present, said Buyx: "the EU says each member country should make their own voluntary scheme - that is madness."

Tait added: "An international certification scheme will not add to red tape, it will simplify it with one overarching standard."

RWE’s Coal-Power Plant in Tilbury to Become Britain's Largest Wood Burner

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-08/rwe-s-coal-power-plant-in-tilbury-to-become-britain-s-largest-wood-burner.html

By Catherine Airlie - Apr 8, 2011 7:40 AM ET

RWE AG (RWE), Europe’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, plans to convert its 1,050-megawatt coal-power station in southeast England to run entirely on wood pellets.

The U.K. is encouraging utilities to burn biomass, such as wood pellets and other plant-matter, to help reach a European Union target of getting 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources. Britain changed subsidies known as Renewable Obligation Certificates in July 2010 to support biomass plants.

“There are great benefits in turning from coal to biomass from an environmental point of view,” Dan Meredith, a Swindon, England-based spokesman for RWE, said yesterday by telephone. Testing the ability to convert the coal-power station at Tilbury completely to biomass “allows us to put the investment in without committing to a new plant.”

Tilbury is one of nine U.K. power plants with a limited number of hours left to operate under EU laws to curb the release of gases linked to acid rain. The stations must close by 2016 or when the allotted hours are used.

RWE will operate the converted plant under the same European restrictions and may decide to re-license the power station if burning biomass proves profitable, Meredith said. That may allow the power station to operate outside the EU’s so- called Large Combustion Plant Directive.

“It’s very much dependent on the electricity market reform and what that’s telling us to do,” Meredith said.

Renewable Certificates

British generators that mix biomass with coal are eligible for at least half a renewable certificate for every megawatt- hour they produce. These are tradable and were worth about 49.89 pounds a megawatt-hour in the last certificate auction on March 29. The U.K. is considering changing aid later this year and may create a new band of subsidy to accommodate conversions.

The U.K. introduced a carbon-dioxide tax on power emissions starting in 2013 and plans further changes to encourage investment in low-carbon power generation. RWE may also consider whether to close the Tilbury plant and build a natural-gas fed station, Meredith said.

The Tilbury station emitted 2.8 million metric tons of CO2 last year, EU emissions data compiled by Bloomberg show. While burning biomass spews about the same amount of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as coal, it doesn’t require emissions permits under the EU’s cap-and-trade program because trees and plants absorb carbon-dioxide when they are growing.

Emissions Permits

In the five years through 2012, power stations get a portion of EU allowances for free. Tilbury receives an annual allocation of 1.5 million permits in those years. These can be sold in the market if unused.

The power station will continue to receive free EU permits through the end of 2012, said Isaac Valero-Ladron, a climate spokesman at the European Commission in Brussels.

“This is an inherent and important feature of cap-and- trade,” he said by e-mail. “If one would take away allowances once emissions are reduced, it would take away the incentive to invest.”

Ships carrying coal up the River Thames to dock at Tilbury will switch to transporting wood pellets after RWE converts the facilities at the power station to handle plant material, Meredith said. A “large proportion” of fuel for the plant will travel across the Atlantic from RWE’s wood-pellet plant in Waycross, Georgia, he said.

RWE will use Green Gold Label wood pellets, an independently certified standard to assure the fuel is sourced sustainably, Meredith said.

The conversion, which would make Tilbury the largest biomass plant in the U.K., will be completed by the end of the year, he said. RWE plans to halt the entire station until the end of November, data submitted to National Grid Plc show. The power station will be able to produce 750 megawatts by the end of the year, the data show.

To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Airlie in London at cairlie@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net

PFI poised to release new pellet standards

http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/5173/pfi-poised-to-release-new-pellet-standards

By Lisa Gibson | December 16, 2010

The Pellet Fuels Institute is just months from implementation of its new pellet fuel standards, including for the first time third-party verification for compliance. Participation in the program comes complete with a new label for bags of pellet fuel, illustrating adherence.

John Crouch, director of public affairs for PFI, will give a presentation on PFI’s new fuel standards and how they’ll affect pellet manufacturers in the west at the Pacific West Biomass Conference & Trade Show Jan. 10-12 at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel in Seattle, Wash.

PFI fuel standards have always been voluntary and nonmembers are also welcome to participate, but third-party verification will offer another aspect of quality control, according to John Crouch, director of public affairs for PFI. “If you use the new label on your bag, it says, ‘There is a quality control program in place at my mill and someone physically comes and audits me on this periodically,’” he said. “This is the first standard that people would think of as a standard. It’s more accurate to say that there hasn’t really been a standard.”

PFI has been working on its standards for the past three years, keeping consumer interests in the forefront of decision making. “The standard is based around the consumer who is going to use it,” Crouch said, speaking dominantly about smaller, residential-sized heating systems. PFI has kept its standards consistent with that of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which is also working on pellet fuel criteria.

PFI rolled out standards last year, but pellet manufacturers thought they were too lax, Crouch said. “If they were going to participate, they wanted to know that others who participated had third-party verification,” he said.

Besides the periodic verification, PFI’s new standards tighten up the length and diameter parameters and specify a 1 percent ash content limit in order to be classified as premium fuel. “What consumers with small appliances care about is ash content because that’s how often they have to empty their ashes,” Crouch said. “As long as ash removal is manual in the appliances, consumers notice differences that are modest from a producer’s point of view.”

PFI will begin implementing the standards in the spring, once the third-party inspectors are in place, Crouch said, adding that he intends to use the same kind of companies that inspect lumber mills. “We believe that by next summer, when a costumer searches out bags of fuel, they will see some bags with the new standards label on them and obviously we hope that they will respond favorably to that.”

Crouch will be joined by three other speakers discussing biomass fuels on the panel Fuel Characteristics: Improving Stability, Flowability and Uniformity.

 For more information or to register for the conference, visit http://pacificwest.biomassconference.com/.