Mongabay: Netherlands’ largest forest biomass plant canceled, forest advocates elated

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.

Mongabay: Forest biomass growth to soar through 2030, impacting tropical forests

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.

Mongabay and COP16.2: Indigenous leaders optimistic after resumed U.N. biodiversity conference in Rome

Indigenous Leaders and local communiites had plenty to cheer about at the outcomes of COP16 CBD in both Cali, Colombia and Rome, Italy. Image by IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis..

Outcomes of international environmental meetings are always hailed as grand achievements but almost always produce unrealistic or unreachable results, most involving the promises of raising billions in annual funding that always falls far short of stated goals.

But at the 16th United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, started in Cali, Colombia, in October 2024 and finished in Rome, Italy, in February 2025, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs), actually had new and tangible breakthrough achievements to celebrate, as this story of mine illustrates.

Highlights include the kind of official recognition from now on that enables IPLC leaders to be active, at-the-table negotiators on issues that involve them for the first time, and a new funding mechanism — the Cali Fund — that does not depend on donations but rather fees from global corporations who use nature-based genetic materials for commercial products. If companies contribute, as they are urged to do by COP16 final language, it could mean hundreds of millions annually for conservation projects identified specially by IPLCs.

“COP16 has been a great success and is historic for us,” Viviana Figueroa, a global technical coordinator with the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity, told me from Rome.

The scene in Rome where the COP16 delegates reconvened to complete negotiations that began in Colombia in October 2024. Image by IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis.

Mongabay: COP16.2 biodiversity summit in Rome OKs finance pathway; big obstacles loom

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.

Mongabay podcast: What’s the TFFF? A forest finance tool ‘like no other’ shows potential

An Indigenous park guard on forest patrol in Suriname. A new funding mechanism aims to pay tropical countries like Suriname to keep trees standing and forests intact. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

It’s always a pleasure to join the Mongabay podcast with my colleague Mike DiGirolamo, who is now based in Australia. He was interested in discussing, in part with me, the most significant story I reported from Colombia in October 2024 from the United Nations biodiversity summit, or COP16.

The podcast is linked here.

Here’s what Mike writes: The Brazilian government in 2023 announced a novel funding mechanism to incentivize forest preservation: the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF). In an episode of Mongabay’s weekly podcast Newscast, host Mike DiGirolamo explored what experts think about the TFFF, what it can do, and what it can’t.

Mongabay contributor Justin Catanoso, who has written previously about the new fund, also known as the Tropical Forest Finance Facility, told DiGirolamo a key component that makes it different is that the money is neither a loan nor a donation. Instead, it’s an investment fund, where the “investors get paid back first, and the money that is generated by the investments above what the investors get is what will be given to the tropical countries,” Catanoso said.

Charlotte Streck, co-founder of advisory firm Climate Focus, also joined the podcast. She told Mike that the TFFF “has great potential because it is put forward and supported by tropical rainforest countries.”

Mongabay: Our investigation exposed biomass giant’s greenwashing in 2022—here’s the latest in 2025

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.”

The Innovator: A podcast I host for Wake Forest’s Center for Entrepreneurship with new-business leaders and innovators

In Spring semester 2020, I was asked by Dan Cohen and Greg Pool, both leaders of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Wake Forest University, if I would consider hosting a podcast in which I interview guests to campus about the companies they had founded or are in the process of building.

I said yes. And the result has been The innovator, hosted on Spotify and linked here. It is similar in focus to the popular podcast How I Built This, hosted by NPR’s Guy Raz. Like Raz, I engage a wide rage of entrepreneurs in their origin stories – both personally and business wise. Here’s why I didn’t hesitate to take on this new challenge.

Before I starting covering environmental issues in 2013 first as a freelancers and by 2015 almost exclusively for Mongabay, I was the executive editor of the Triad Business Journal from its founding in 1998 until I left for full-time teaching at Wake Forest in 2011.

During those 13 years leading coverage of the Triad economy and writing a weekly column, I learned a great deal about the entrepreneurship — the special leadership qualities, vision and risk tolerance necessary to start something from scratch, often with other people’s money. We covered new-business startups closely and the personalities behind the companies. We covered the investors, too, those willing to underwrite good ideas and risk millions in the process.

Hosting the Innovator was simply a natural extension of a knowledge base I had developed over a long period of time. When you put that together with the 15 years I was on public radio each week with WFDD-88.5 FM, shifting to a long-form podcast format was pretty seamless. Special thanks to Greg Pool for being the producer of The Innovator.

Mongabay @ COP16/CBD: Cities are climate solution leaders: Interview with Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson

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.

Mongabay: COP29: With public climate finance shortfall, is investment capital a way forward?

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.

Mongabay: U.S. policy experts confident of future climate action despite Trump election

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.