Kenya and UNIDO launch 5-year biomass project. This is welcome news considering that over 68 percent of the population in Kenya use biomass for cooking, whilst Kenya’s Ministry of Energy estimates that up to 95 percent of the energy consumed in rural areas is in the form of fuel wood, agricultural residue and animal waste.
Valuing Biomass
NEWS: Cooking with Garbage in Slums is not as bad as you think
As Uganda’s woodfuel crisis deepens, slum-dwellers in the capital come up with creative solutions.
Is a forest a carbon sink or a source of low-carbon energy?
A number of new scientific studies have been released examining whether and how forests, forest management practices, forest products, and bioenergy from forests either contribute to or help mitigate climate change through carbon sequestration and emissions.
One report states that “growing more forests and keeping forests as forests are only part of the solution, because focusing solely on the sequestration benefits of the forests misses the important (and substantial) carbon storage and substitution GHG benefits of harvested forest products, as well as other benefits of active forest management.”
Greenpeace Canada: Biomass energy is a real “Biomess”
Greenpeace Canada just released a report that questions the country’s current wood energy industry, its practices, and its impact on the environment and climate change. The report suggests that “burning woody biomass on an industrial scale could severely harm Canada’s public forests and further contribute to the global climate crisis.”
Read the report and tell us what YOU think!
Wood Energy in Africa: the next gold rush?
Recent news out of Uganda about the displacement of tens of thousands of people from their land to make way for a large-scale biofuel plantations raises question about governmental oversight and corporate social responsibility on the part of of foreign investors.
It is all the more urgent that African nations, with the help of appropriate international agencies, begin putting place the regulatory framework that will lead to the responsible and sustainable exploitation of wood energy resources in the context of low-carbon economic growth and high-value export generation.