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Wood Pellets: Green Energy or New Source of CO2 Emissions?
Wood Pellets: Green Energy or New Source of CO2 Emissions?
Burning wood pellets to produce electricity is on the rise in Europe, where the pellets are classified as a form of renewable energy. But in the U.S., where pellet facilities are rapidly being built, concerns are growing about logging and the carbon released by the combustion of wood biomass.
In 2011, Enviva — the United States’ largest exporter of wood pellets — opened its flagship pellet-manufacturing mill in Ahoskie, North Carolina. The plant annually converts 850,000 tons of trees and waste wood into tiny pellets that are shipped to Europe and burned in power plants for what is being touted as a renewable form of electricity.
Two years later, Enviva opened another mill 50 miles away in Northampton County, North Carolina, and by 2016 the company is expected to operate eight wood pellet mills from Virginia to Mississippi. Elsewhere in the southeastern United States, other companies are planning or rapidly building facilities to produce wood pellets. A mill planned by Biomass Power Louisiana in Natchitoches, La., will produce up to 2 million tons of the pellets annually. Drax, a British utility that’s taking steps to transform itself into a predominately biomass energy generator, has said it will open four of its own large mills to produce pellets in Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana.
Demand for this purportedly green form of energy is so robust that wood pellet exports from the United States nearly doubled from 2012 to 2013 and are expected to nearly double again to 5.7 million tons in 2015. This soaring production is driven by growing demand in the U.K. and Europe, which are using wood pellets to replace coal for electricity generation and heating. The European Union’s 2020 climate and energy program classifies wood pellets as a carbon-neutral form of renewable energy, and European companies have invested billions to convert coal plants to plants that can burn wood pellets.
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Ontario’s Sustainable Development Plan Is Beginning To Fall Apart | Canadian Awareness Network
Ontario’s Sustainable Development Plan Is Beginning To Fall Apart | Canadian Awareness Network.
In recent weeks reports about green energy jobs surpassing oil sand job creation, of Ontario taking big steps into the growing green bonds market, and many more stories that would lead people to believe that sustainable development is excelling in the province. Have been splashed all over the news.
Is this true? Or just stories that do not paint the whole picture?
Green energy programs have created around 1,000 more jobs than the oil sands. That part is correct, but there is several points that have been left out.
1. Clean energy programs have created 23,700 jobs compaired to 22,340 by the oil sands projects. This leaves out that overall oil production in Alberta alone, employs more than 120,000 people. If we are going to compare job creation between the two industries, would it not make sense to include all stats and figures? This is leaving out the comparision of how many of these jobs are temperary and how many are permanent as well.
2. Green energy programs would have been halted a long time ago without government subsidies. Below is a breakdown of how much is being spent to keep the programs afloat and how much it is costing the people of the province.
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Can Green Bonds Bankroll A Clean Energy Revolution? by Marc Gunther: Yale Environment 360
Can Green Bonds Bankroll A Clean Energy Revolution? by Marc Gunther: Yale Environment 360.
To slow global warming, tens of trillions of dollars will need to be spent in the coming decades on renewable energy projects. Some banks and governments are issuing green bonds to fund this transformation, but major questions remain as to whether this financing tool will play a game-changing role.
Looked at from one angle, climate change is an infrastructure problem. To limit global warming to 2 degrees C and avoid the worst effects of climate change, about $44 trillion will need to be invested in low-carbon projects like wind farms, solar panels, nuclear power, carbon capture, and smart buildings by 2050, the International Energy Agency estimates. That’s more than $1 trillion a year — roughly a four-fold jump from current investment levels.
Where’s the money going to come from? Maybe from green bonds, say bankers and environmentalists alike. Green bonds, which are also known
as climate bonds, are fixed-income investments that are designed to finance environmentally friendly projects. Pioneered by international development banks — the European Investment Bank issued the first climate bond in 2007, followed a year later by the World Bank — they are today issued by state and local governments (Massachusetts, Hawaii, New York, and the cities of Stockholm and Spokane, Washington, among others) and by big companies (Bank of America, Unilever, and the French utility GDF Suez).
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