In 2020, two years after the Vattenfall wood pellet energy plant was proposed, forest advocates organized a youth protest outside Vattenfall headquarters as part of the National Children’s Climate March. Image courtesy of the Clean Air Committee in the Netherlands.
As this stories describes, forest advocates were able to take significant credit in The Netherlands when one of its largest energy providers canceled plans in February 2025 to build the largest wood-pellet-only power plant just outside Amsterdam. It took six years and a circuitous route through the Dutch court system, but on a rare occasion, the environmental argument that burning forest biomass is not the climate-friendly solution it is touted to be until won out.
While the Dutch, like the South Koreans, appear to be inching away from industrial-scale forest biomass energy, neither is close to giving up entirely on wood burning, or subsidizing the burning, as they both try to meet 2030 legal deadlines to phase out all coal burning.
In fact, the elusive promises of BECCS — Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage — is now being touted as the reason to continue burning wood pellets because, it is theorized, that emissions can be easily trapped and permanently buried underground.
There is a significant flaw in that plan in that the scientific consensus illustrates that BECCS technology is years, if not decades, away from effective implementation.
“The irony is that my country (The Netherlands) and the EU have called burning biomass carbon neutral, right?” Dutch forest advocate Fenna Swart told me. “Now the claim with BECCS is that the air will be even cleaner. But in our view, it’s just another flawed policy to allow business as usual.”
A close-up image of one of the posters held aloft by demonstrators to protest plans by Vattenfall to build the Netherlands’ largest woodburning energy plant. Image courtesy of the Clean Air Committee in the Netherlands.
Tree felling on an energy plantation concession in Indonesia where wood has been used to supply wood pellets to South Korea. Image courtesy of FWI.
This story here, my latest on the issue of global forest biomass for energy, sends a bit of a mixed message. Projected supply and demand for wood pellets appears to be rising dramatically through 2030, with more wood coming from tropical forests than every before.
On the other hand, there appear to be a few cracks forming in the long-term viability of an industry that has been on a steady, upward trajectory for 15 years or more — save for Enviva’s self-inflicted business wounds that led to its 2024 bankruptcy. Subsidies are being inched back on South Korea and Japan. Drax is still getting a ton of British subsidies for five more years, but far less than the previous 10. Germany’s second-largest city, Hamburg, nixed a conversion of a coal-burning plant to wood, admitting that it was not a climate friendly move. And a highly regarded investment think tank is raising a bright red flag to investors to think twice before investing in wood-pellet manufacturing stocks.
A source and forest advocate in South Korea went as far as to tell me he believes we are beginning to see that beginning of a paradigm shift regarding forest biomass for energy. The scientific arguments and journalistic reporting, including my own, that challenge industry line that it a climate-friendly alternative to coal, grow stronger every year. Is the tide really turning?
Meanwhile, in the near-term, the industry continues to grow, and native forests across the US Southeast, British Columbia, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, will continue to be diminished and degraded, many replaced by tree farms, to feed immediate demand.
Estimate of global wood pellet production and use in metric tons by nation by 2030. Data sourced from the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Scenario study. Image courtesy of the Environmental Paper Network.
COP16 President Susana Muhamad. Top environmental groups and NGOs were largely complimentary of the outcomes achieved in Rome under the leadership of Muhamad. Image by IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis.
I spent eight days in Cali, Colombia in October 2024 covering my first UN Convention on Biological Diversity summit. I left before the final day, but as this story illustrates, it ended up not being the final day.
Delegates left the hardest work for last — specific strategies by which nations and non-government actors could reach $200 billion annually in finance to protect nature and stave off deforestation and species extinctions. They ran out of time. Delegates fled to catch flights at the Cali airport. And the COP16 president, Susana Muhamad, was forced to close the biennial meeting prematurely.
Delegates did agree to meet for three days in February in Rome (Feb. 25-27) to complete their work. And they did. As best they can. My story overviews what they accomplished and the difficulty they will have in reaching their ambitious and critically important goal. Alas, I reported from home in North Carolina, not from Rome, my favorite city in the world.
Felled hardwood and pine cut from a dense forest and piled high on a 52-acre lot in Edenton, North Carolina. Image by Bobby Amoroso.
It’s not often that a news organization reflects on its coverage over recent years to evaluate the impact that that coverage has had on a region, a group of people, and in this case, an industry. But in making the case to our global readers and funders, Mongabay recaps important stories or series of stories to let people know that independent environmental journalism can and does make a difference in the world.
In this story penned by Mongabay editors, they recap my coverage of the forest biomass industry over the last several years and explain the impact it has and continues to have. The story rightfully focuses on one of the most prominent and impactful stories of my long career in journalism — the one and only whistleblower to ever come forward from inside the forest biomass industry (from Enviva, once the world’s largest producer of wood pellets for industrial-scale energy) and his candid, verifiable attack on his company’s climate- and environmentally friendly claims of the product it produces. That story, which has a complementary video, was published in December 2022.
Here’s an excerpt from Mongabay’s story of my reporting:
“This case demonstrates how independent journalism can expose greenwashing, inspire tangible action, inform public policy, and create ripple effects across sectors. Mongabay’s reporting uncovered the troubling realities of the biomass energy industry, and it empowered governments, financial institutions, and legal advocates to take decisive action in the pursuit of accountability and environmental justice.”
Gregor Robertson served as the mayor of Vancouver in Canada for 10 years, earning an international reputation for leading efforts to reduce city carbon emissions through energy efficiency and by creating green economy jobs. He now leads global coalitions of mayors and governors who advocate for more resources for subnational entities to carry out climate action as national governments continue to fall short. Photo by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
This story came about on my second day in Cali, Colombia, as I scrambled to find stories at my first UN summit on biodiversity. Late morning, I stopped in the large plenary hall where I knew there was a daylong session on the role of cities and states — subnational entities — in conservation and climate action.
By luck, I entered as one of the panelists was talking about the work that had been accomplished in his city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I asked an event organizer who was speaking and she told me: Gregor Robertson. I looked him up on my phone, and up came a long list of impressive credentials as a former mayor and current leader of two large subnational coalitions on the issues being discussed from the stage. I waited until the panel concluded, introduced myself to Robertson and asked if he had time for an interview.
My idea at the time is what became this story: a Mongabay Q&A. Late afternoon, Robertson joined me in the media center where I was set up and answered my questions for about 45 minutes. His enthusiasm for the role that subnational entities are already playing in climate action and conservation was immediately evident. So was his frustration with the lack of action by national governments who control much of the finances that enables these urgent local efforts to take place.
The interview became, as my editor Glenn Scherer wrote to me after he completed his edits, “The first really sensible, and doable climate solution story I’ve read in awhile.” The story was published just as another UN climate summit, COP29, was wrapping up in a corrupt petrostate and predictably, failing once again to meet the urgency of the moment in this ongoing climate crisis.
I took this photo in Amsterdam after covering COP26, the UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021. The city is this interesting paradox — a place with more bicycles than people (1.2 million vs 821,000) — but also one that burns more wood (largely from North Carolina and the US Southeast forests) than coal for energy. It made a nice complement to my interview with Robertson and ran with the Q&A.
The 29th United Nations climate summit was held in Baku, Azerbaijan, or COP29, the third consecutive major oil producer to host the international meeting of 196 nations. In each, the fossil fuel industry presence has been larger than most nations, and their influence far greater than the small, vulnerable nations suffering the most from climate impacts. Photo by David Akana/Mongabay
Between 2014 and 2021, I traveled to cover seven UN climate summits. I considered traveling to Azerbaijan for my eighth, but opted instead to cover my first UN biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia. I was, however, asked by Mongabay editors to write a pre-story for COP29. I agreed. Because the overriding issue in Baku will be identifying the trillions needed for climate action (transition to renewable energy, low-carbon transportation, forest and wetlands protections, paying vulnerable nations for loss and damage), this story focuses exclusively on the issue of finance.
I was fortunate in Colombia to meet two experts in finance who agreed to be primary sources for my story: Andrew Deutz of World Wildlife Fund and Valerie Hickey of the World Bank. Deutz connected me with another exceptionally good source, economist Barbara Buchner with the Climate Policy Initiative.
The story hinges in large part on this reality: the wealthy nations of the G-20 have year after year failed to come close to meeting their promises of contributing billions of dollars to a range of COP-approved funds for climate action. For example, about $116 billion has been mobilized from wealthy nations, but the need is estimated at $2 trillion. Thus, the question becomes whether independent financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, plus a host of private investment houses will step in and fill the gap, or at least some of it. Some experts say the money is there if institutions can secure a modest return on investment; critics howl that loans and investments only serve to burden poor countries — entirely blameless in the climate crisis — with more debt. My story explains the issues and opportunities.
The once and future president of the United States continues to mock climate science as if it’s fashion not reality.
No single president U.S. history, just Donald Trump, did more to undermine the trajectory of conservation, forest and species protections, clear air and clean water regulations, and most critically of all, climate action connected to promoting zero-carbon renewable energy while reducing fossil fuel burning during his first term in office. Remarkably, but not surprisingly, none of those issues was discussed much at all during the chaotic, and for Democrats, truncated campaign for the presidency in 2024.
In an election that was suppose to be razor thin but ended up being far less so, American voters decided among many other things that the candidate who still insists climate change is a hoax (residents of Asheville, North Carolina, word like a word with Trump) is the candidate they want back in charge of federal environmental policy. They did so even as he demanded a quid pro quo from US oil barons to fund his campaigns with billions in return for unrestrained drilling and extraction permits. He also vowed once again to remove the United States from the historic Paris Agreement, the only country on earth to do so.
Meeting the urgency of the moment, this story was published on the day it was written: three says after the US election; three days before the start of the COP29, the United Nations climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan (just north of Iran). In it, two U.S. government experts on climate policy shared during an global virtual press conference what they think the impact of another four years of Trump policies on climate and the environment will be on the U.S. and the world. The fact that they believe it will be less impactful than before is in itself an indictment of a miserable U.S. record of leadership amid the worst crisis humanity has ever collectively faced — accelerating climate change and global warming.
Uncontrollable wildfires in California and across Canada are a deadly reality of worsening climate change, not a political hoax.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres spoke at COP16 on Oct. 30: “Human activities have already altered three-quarters of Earth’s land surface and two-thirds of its waters. And no country, rich or poor, is immune to this devastation,” he said. “To survive, humanity must make peace with nature. We must transform our economic models — shifting our production and consumption to nature-positive practices. Renewable energy, sustainable supply chains and zero-waste policies are not optional. They must become the default option for both governments and businesses.” Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
This wrap up story from Cali, Colombia — an overview of the outcomes, good and bad, from the 16th United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (COP16) — started coming together on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, my last day at the summit. I focused on a half-dozen or so major issues, interviewed about that many sources one-on-one, attended several press conferences and generally took in the mood of the penultimate day of the two-week meeting.
By Saturday, November 2, after COP16 was gaveled to a premature close, the press releases started rolling in, as did WhatsApp messages from a variety of sources eager to weigh in with final thoughts. One comment from an event I covered days earlier stuck with me: delegates at this biodiversity COP need to celebrate positive outcomes, not simply wallow, however appropriately, in all the measures falling short.
“You can’t rally a constituency around dread and fear,” said Valerie Hickey, global director for the World Bank’s division on environment, natural resources and oceans.
So in consultation with my editor, I organized this story around highlighting what went right and almost- right before describing critical items that fell demoralizingly short. I ended by giving voice to an 27-year-old Indigenous woman from Chile — a courageous and outspoken advocate for human rights and the environment — whom I met by chance on a crowded shuttle bus one evening.
There were some legitimately promising outcomes from Cali, two of which center on regenerating pools of funding for conservation efforts throughout the tropical world. But overall, as one NGO leader from England put it: “The pace of COP16 negotiations did not reflect the urgency of the crisis we are facing.”
True enough, but the progress made is still welcomed. The problem is, so much more is needed in a vanishingly short amount of time to, at best, slow the rate of climate calamities and biodiversity extinctions around the world.
In the plenary hall, delegates from 177 nations debated the language and intent of the principles and rules guiding the global protection of forests, oceans and biodiversity. The meeting ended abruptly on Saturday, Nov. 2, when too many delegates had to leave to catch flights as COP16 ran past its designated end time. Negotiations are to resume at an unspecified date in Bangkok. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
Barry Gardiner is a Labour Party member of the British Parliament who has been speaking out against public subsidies for forest biomass energy in the United Kingdom for more than a decade. He spoke at a side event at COP16 and showed a photo of the cooling towers at Drax, a UK energy company that is one of the world’s single-largest consumers of wood pellets for energy. The company has received roughly $9 billion in subsidies over the years from British taxpayers. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
In this story from Cali, Colombia, my second from the United Nations biodiversity summit (COP16), I draw a sharp distinction between this meeting and the four UN climate meetings I’ve covered since I began reporting in 2018 on the issues related to forest biomass for energy.
The difference is stark. Climate meetings to my questions? Don’t ask. This biodiversity meeting to my questions? Let me show you in the text where bioenergy is discussed.
Aside from interviewing forest campaigners, including two new sources from India and South Korea, I include again in this second story earlier reporting on Target 18 and comments made by Barry Gardiner. The British member of parliament has argued against the billions that has subsidized Drax’s burning of US and Canadian wood pellets in place of coal in its enormous energy plant in central England.
“The company has claimed almost $9 billion from British taxpayers to support its biomass energy generation since 2012, even though burning wood pellets for power generation releases more emissions per unit of electricity generated than burning gas or coal,” Gardiner says in my story. “That’s $9 billion in public money spent making our air pollution and our carbon emissions worse. More than that, Drax has been responsible for destroying some of the most precious old-growth, virgin forests in Canada, where some of the pellets come from.”
My COP16 wrap-up story details whether or not the text on biomass plantations remained in the final document. During negotiations, Souparna Lahiri, my source from India, told me Brazil argued adamantly to remove the language (Brazil is beginning to provide wood for pellet production) but somewhat remarkably, the European Union, which is dependent on wood pellets as a “renewable energy” source to replace coal, did not.
Souparna Lahiri, a climate campaigner with Global Forest Coalition in India, has been speaking out against forest biomass for energy on various panels at COP16 and tracking the language in a key summit document pertaining to issues related to bioenergy. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
The 16th United Nations biodiversity summit, called COP16, is being held in Cali, Colombia, near the country’s mountainous Pacific coast. The motto for the meeting is also its goal: Paz con la Naturaleza — Peace with Nature. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
Since 2014, I’ve covered seven of the last nice United Nations climate summits, the last one in Glasgow, Scotland, during the pandemic, in 2021. In 2024, I decided against traveling to Baku, Azerbaijan, for COP29, and go south instead, to Cali, Columbia, to cover my first UNConventiononBiologicalDiversity, the 16th such biennial Conference of the Parties. I’m glad I did.
COP16 is a far smaller meeting than any of the climate COPs I’ve covered, with 23,000 attendees instead of the 50,000 in Glasgow and more than 100,000 in 2023 in Dubai. The venue outside of Cali felt spacious and easier to navigate. The pace was significantly less harried. The two media centers were conveniently located not far from the entrance, and the press conference room was nearby (the last several climate meetings seemed intent on locating journalists are far from their sources and press conference rooms as physically possible). Some drawbacks: fewer NGOs provided daily briefings of the day-before’s happenings and fewer contextual press conferences were held until the very end. This made it difficult for this newcomer to the CBD to get a handle on what was happening. But with some diligent (perhaps manic) sourcing, I moved up the learning curve and spotted stories I needed to pursue.
Here’s my first one, which I started reporting on before I left for Colombia: a daylong, side event that focused on a crucial element of the CBD agreement approved during COP15 (in Montreal in 2022) — a vow to identify the more than $1.7 trillion paid out in subsidies and tax breaks that actually harm and destroy forests, oceans and species ($650 billion to fossil fuel companies alone), and redirect that money to conservation initiatives. The morning session produced a clear and substantive panel discussion, with a keynote speech by a British member of parliament, BarryGardiner. He has been pushing back for a decade against the UK subsides paid to Drax ($1 billion annually) to burn wood pellets largely from North Carolina. I’ve heard about him for years. It was a pleasure to finally hear him speak and talk with him afterwards. My first few days in Cali — the lush, friendly home of salsa dancing — proved a solid start to my week at COP16.
Barry Gardiner, a Labour Party member of the British Parliament since 1997, was the keynote speaker on Sunday, Oct. 27, at a daylong meeting to discuss concrete plans to phase out $1.7 trillion in global economic subsidies known to cause environmental damage around the world. The trick of course, will be getting it done. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
