International Paper Launches “Down to Earth” Website

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - March 3, 2010 -- International Paper today launched down2earthonline.com, a new company website featuring information from the well-received Down to Earth™ educational series of brochures. The series covers the most important environmental issues and trends in the paper and printing industries and uses facts gathered from reputable sources to address many myths and misperceptions surrounding paper and the environment. For convenience, there is a ‘Media Center’ tab with banner art and linking instructions to make it easy for customers and other key stakeholders to use the new website to help supplement their own environmental message.

Visitors to the site will learn, for example, that using paper actually helps to keep forests growing and how one of the biggest dangers to North American forestlands is urban development. Paper and digital communications are compared by: energy usage, renewability of materials and recycling -- showing that paper communications can often be the more responsible choice.

“Our customers and the public deserve to know the truth about paper products. They are bombarded with misleading and false information every day,” said Teri Shanahan, IP’s vice president, Commercial Printing. “Our goal is to provide facts so people can feel great about their environmentally-friendly choices, especially paper. The Down to Earth website was created as a companion to the printed series to make it easier to share this valuable information, and to give readers the facts to support when and why it’s worth printing.”

Environmental issues in the paper and printing industries are very complex, can be easily misunderstood and, consequently, often misrepresented. Myths and misperceptions have altered some public thinking and have led to campaigns for a paperless society. The Down to Earth educational series presents a balanced and fact-driven picture in a thought-provoking manner that shows how choosing paper products protects the environment, supports communities and keeps our forests growing.

The brochures in the “Down to Earth” series include:

  Certification: Where does your paper come from?
  Recycled vs. Virgin: Is recycled paper the best you can do?
  Carbon Footprint: How big is your carbon footprint?
  Pixels or Paper: Are pixels greener than paper?
  Labels & Logos: How do certification labels and logos benefit you?
  Responsible Forestry: How does using paper lead to more trees?
  Print on Paper: Is it worth printing?

For more information on International Paper’s sustainability efforts, please go to: ipsustainability.com.

International Paper (NYSE: IP) is a global paper and packaging company with manufacturing operations in North America, Europe, Latin America, Russia, Asia and North Africa. Its businesses include uncoated papers, industrial and consumer packaging and distribution. Headquartered in Memphis, Tenn., the company employs about 56,000 people in more than 20 countries and serves customers worldwide. 2009 net sales were more than $23 billion. For more information about International Paper, its products and stewardship
efforts, visit internationalpaper.com.

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Media Contact: Rick Ouellette, 901-419-4274
 

Seeing the Hidden Services of Nature

Released: 3/2/2010 10:30 AM EST
Source: McGill University

Newswise -http://www.newswise.com/

Following an intense study of agricultural ecosystems near Montreal, a new tool that enables the simultaneous analysis and management of a wide range of ecological services has been developed by Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne of McGill University’s Department of Geography, Elena Bennett of the McGill School of Environment, and Garry Peterson of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. Environmental management typically focuses on nature’s resources like food, wildlife and timber, but can miss hidden ecosystem services such as water purification, climate moderation and the regulation of nutrient cycling.

The researchers show that ecosystems that maximize agriculture offer fewer hidden ecosystems services than more diverse agricultural landscapes. Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne says “Landscapes managed to provide a lot of one service, such as pig production, can be costly because they have fewer of the hidden services, such as the regulation of nutrient pollution, which are also important to people.” They also show that in some areas high amounts of agricultural production can go hand in hand with the production of other ecosystem services. The researchers framework can be used to help identify “best-practice areas” and contribute to developing effective resource policies.

Bennett believes Quebec manages its environment fairly well, but that there are still trade-offs and costs to be recognized. She says “the big local message is that in terms of the landscape we have to be thinking about more than just one thing – we can’t just see corn, we have to see deer hunting, nutrients, and tourism, too.”
The area surrounding Montreal was selected because it is typical of near-urban agricultural landscapes in many parts of the world. “I hope these methods can be applied to many other landscapes around the world,” Peterson says, adding the tool will help decision makers trying to balance the goals of farmers, rural villagers and exurban commuters.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science on March 1, 2010.


http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/561879/?sc=swtn
 

Quake to Keep Pulp Prices High

By LESTER ALDRICH

Wall Street Journal

3/3/10

World pulp supplies have tightened substantially following the massive earthquake in Chile, putting upward pressure on a market that has seen prices rise nearly 30% over the past year.  Prior to the earthquake in Chile, world market pulp supplies already were tight. In the wake of the temblor, most wood and pulp mills in Chile, which accounts for about 8% of global pulp production capacity, have been shuttered owing to damage and power outages.

RISI, a market analysis firm, said at least 3.75 million metric tons of Chile's 4.8 million tons of annual capacity is closed due to aftereffects of the earthquake.

Mark Wilde, research analyst at Deutsche Bank, said the Chilean supply disruption, at a time of lean pulp stocks, "makes it more likely that the rally will continue." Meanwhile, "weather-related fiber issues in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere make it unlikely that other parts of the world can pick up the slack," he said.

Over the last 11 months, prices for most pulp grades have risen more than $200 a ton. Finland index provider FOEX this week said its U.S. list price index for northern bleached softwood kraft pulp, the benchmark grade, was $875.23 a metric ton, up $1.10 from a week earlier and $45.23 higher than on Jan. 1.

A continued rise in prices would add to the profits of world pulp producers, but could hurt paper makers that are struggling with demand that is marginal at best. Some paper producers could shut down machines in response to continually higher raw material costs.

Celulosa Arauco, part of Chilean fuel and forestry conglomerate Empresas Copec SA, said some of its units suffered "important" damage. Because of transportation and communications problems, it is unclear when operations will restart, the world's second-largest pulp producer said in a statement.

CMPC Celulosa SA, Chile's second-largest pulp producer after Arauco, said none of its plants appeared to have suffered severe damage. Still, the company, a unit of Brazil's Fibria Celulose SA, closed all facilities because of a lack of potable water and electricity, while declaring a 30-day force majeure. Under a force majeure, a typical clause in contracts, producers don't have to honor certain terms if operations are affected by extraordinary events such as natural disasters.

"The epicenter of this earthquake is located close to our pulp mills and as a result the whole supply chain has been heavily affected," CMPC Chief Executive Sergio Colvin and Sales Manager Guillermo Mullins said in a letter to customers dated March 1, a copy of which was obtained by Dow Jones. "Therefore it is very difficult to have clear picture as to when we could restart our operations."

Brian McClay, principal at TerraChoice Market Services, a paper and pulp consulting firm, said the Chilean production losses could have some paper makers either looking for alternative sources in an already very tight world market or they could stop making paper because they will run out of pulp.
  

  

Forests Are Growing Faster, Ecologists Discover; Climate Change Appears to Be Driving Accelerated Growth

ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2010) — Speed is not a word typically associated with trees; they can take centuries to grow. However, a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found evidence that forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years. The study offers a rare look at how an ecosystem is responding to climate change.

For more than 20 years forest ecologist Geoffrey Parker has tracked the growth of 55 stands of mixed hardwood forest plots in Maryland. The plots range in size, and some are as large as 2 acres. Parker's research is based at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, 26 miles east of the nation's capital.

Parker's tree censuses have revealed that the forest is packing on weight at a much faster rate than expected. He and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute postdoctoral fellow Sean McMahon discovered that, on average, the forest is growing an additional 2 tons per acre annually. That is the equivalent of a tree with a diameter of 2 feet sprouting up over a year.

Forests and their soils store the majority of the Earth's terrestrial carbon stock. Small changes in their growth rate can have significant ramifications in weather patterns, nutrient cycles, climate change and biodiversity. Exactly how these systems will be affected remains to be studied.

Parker and McMahon's paper focuses on the drivers of the accelerated tree growth. The chief culprit appears to be climate change, more specifically, the rising levels of atmospheric CO2, higher temperatures and longer growing seasons.

Assessing how a forest is changing is no easy task. Forest ecologists know that the trees they study will most likely outlive them. One way they compensate for this is by creating a "chronosequence" -- a series of forests plots of the same type that are at different developmental stages. At SERC, Parker meticulously tracks the growth of trees in stands that range from 5 to 225 years old. This allowed Parker and McMahon to verify that there was accelerated growth in forest stands young and old. More than 90% of the stands grew two to four times faster than predicted from the baseline chronosequence.

By grouping the forest stands by age, McMahon and Parker were also able to determine that the faster growth is a recent phenomenon. If the forest stands had been growing this quickly their entire lives, they would be much larger than they are.

Parker estimates that among himself, his colleague Dawn Miller and a cadre of citizen scientists, they have taken a quarter of a million measurements over the years. Parker began his tree census work Sept. 8, 1987 -- his first day on the job. He measures all trees that are 2 centimeters or more in diameter. He also identifies the species, marks the tree's coordinates and notes if it is dead or alive.

By knowing the species and diameter, McMahon is able to calculate the biomass of a tree. He specializes in the data-analysis side of forest ecology. "Walking in the woods helps, but so does looking at the numbers," said McMahon. He analyzed Parker's tree censuses but was hungry for more data.

It was not enough to document the faster growth rate; Parker and McMahon wanted to know why it might be happening. "We made a list of reasons these forests could be growing faster and then ruled half of them out," said Parker. The ones that remained included increased temperature, a longer growing season and increased levels of atmospheric CO2.

During the past 22 years CO2 levels at SERC have risen 12%, the mean temperature has increased by nearly three-tenths of a degree and the growing season has lengthened by 7.8 days. The trees now have more CO2 and an extra week to put on weight. Parker and McMahon suggest that a combination of these three factors has caused the forest's accelerated biomass gain.

Ecosystem responses are one of the major uncertainties in predicting the effects of climate change. Parker thinks there is every reason to believe his study sites are representative of the Eastern deciduous forest, the regional ecosystem that surrounds many of the population centers on the East Coast. He and McMahon hope other forest ecologists will examine data from their own tree censuses to help determine how widespread the phenomenon is.

Funding for this research was provided by the HSBC Climate Partnership.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100201171641.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily:+Latest+Science+News%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

High Lumber Prices Threaten Housing Market

By LIAM PLEVEN And LESTER ALDRICH

Wall Street Journal

Bloomberg News

Wood headed for the door-manufacturing facility at Sierra Pacific Industries Inc. in Anderson, Calif. Lumber futures are up 32% this year.

 
The long-ailing U.S. housing market is facing a new headwind—a jump in the cost of lumber.

Lumber prices have climbed 32% on the futures market this year, a sudden and unexpected surge that could raise construction costs or force builders to swallow an added expense.

"That's the last thing we need right now," Stephen Melman, director of economic services at the National Association of Home Builders, said of the recent price hike.

Lumber's price rise contrasts with a decline in most other commodities, such as fossil fuels and industrial metals. Those are dragging due to fears of weaker demand amid a fragile recovery from the financial crisis. But lumber prices shot up because of a shortage of supply. When the housing market cratered, mills in the U.S. and Canada slashed production; output plummeted about 45% between 2005 and 2009, according to Random Lengths, an industry data provider.

Wholesalers shrank their own inventories and had little incentive to build them back up last year. Housing is the largest single source of demand for lumber, and new-home sales fell 7.6% in December from the prior month, to 342,000 units.  So when builders began their annual re-stocking for the spring construction season, there was little slack in the supply chain, causing a squeeze on prices. Some firms also stepped up speculative construction in the hope that an expiring federal tax credit would boost the market.

"Any increase in demand is going to allow the mills to raise their prices," said Gary Vitale, president of the North American Wholesale Lumber Association.

On Jan. 5, lumber buyers got an added incentive to lock in shipments. Canfor Corp., a major Vancouver-based lumber producer, announced a temporary but indefinite closure of one mill that took 255 million board feet out of production, on an annualized basis—equivalent to roughly half-a-percent of total output from the U.S. and Canada in 2009. The day after Canfor's announcement, lumber futures at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange closed up 5%. Prices kept rising that month and hit a peak for the year of $279 per thousand board feet on Feb. 4, according to Thomson Reuters. Prices settled Friday at $270.90.

Industry insiders described a buying frenzy somewhat detached from actual economic activity.  "It's a bit of a herd mentality" in which people conclude, "If someone's gonna buy, I better buy, too," said Jamie Greenough, a broker and analyst at Global Futures Corp. in Vancouver. Home builders are wrestling with the consequences. Steve Petruska, chief operating officer of Pulte Homes Inc., told investors on Feb. 9 that the nation's largest home builder is responding to the price hike by trying to hold down labor costs. He predicted the situation "isn't going to be so bad."

But the January price increase was welcome news for Weyerhaeuser, the forest-products giant, which reported a $175 million fourth-quarter net loss on Feb. 5. Tom Gideon, a high-ranking executive, told investors the firm was "pleasantly surprised."

It is difficult to gauge how much the recent price increase would affect the price of a home, because various factors affect the bottom line. At the peak price for the year in early February, the rise would have added about $1,000 to the price of a typical new home, said Henry Spelter, U.S. Forest Service economist. Mr. Melman, of the home builders' group, said the impact on a more expensive house could be greater. "Builders don't have a lot of inventory sitting around," he said. "So when the price goes up, it really does go up, and that could have an immediate impact."

The supply crunch is striking because, just a few years ago, the North American lumber industry was able to supply enough wood to start more than two million homes a year. That was nearly four times the pace of home starts in December.

The ongoing recession will keep production light, said Matt Layman, publisher of Layman's Lumber Guide in Belmont, N.C., who called this the only sustained supply-driven rally he has seen in 30 years of trading lumber. Mills lost too much money in the lean years before finally cutting shifts and idling plants, and they don't have the necessary capital to restart shuttered operations now, Mr. Layman said. The industry is also waiting to see whether lumber demand is actually rebounding, beyond the annual re-stocking. Dan Fulton, chief executive officer of Weyerhaeuser, told investors on Feb. 5 that it was "too early to tell."

The expiring tax credit may have boosted home builders' annual effort to fill their lumber stocks before the onset of spring makes building more practical. The measure was initially set to expire on Nov. 30, but it was extended and now offers first-time buyers an $8,000 tax credit if they sign by April 30 and close by June 30. If the home builders' wager on the tax credit doesn't pay off, and home sales remain tepid, lumber prices could suffer. "The sustainability of this rally is in question, because the amount of true demand is not clear," said Joshua Zaret, an analyst at Longbow Research. And Mr. Petruska, of Pulte Homes, said the company wasn't locking in prices for future delivery, a move which could backfire if prices fall again.  "Obviously, in this demand environment, that's very risky," he said.
 

Harold C. Blanchard Named 2009 Distinguished Alumnus by NC State University College of Natural Resources

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Tilla Fearn

NEWS RELEASE  - February 9, 2009
For Immediate Release:
Contact: Tilla Fearn 919.513.4644 or tilla_fearn@ncsu.edu

The College of Natural Resources at North Carolina State University is pleased to announce the selection of our 2009 Distinguished Alumnus.  Harold C. “Butch” Blanchard ’63 of Whiteville, N.C. was selected in recognition of his distinguished career as a forest manager and his many contributions to his profession, his community and the college.  Blanchard accepted the honor January 29, 2010 at the NC State University Alumni Association’s “Evening of Stars” Gala in Raleigh.
Blanchard attended what was then the NC State School of Forestry on a four-year scholarship from the Continental Can Company. Later, he was awarded the George K. Slocum Scholarship. Blanchard earned five varsity letters in three track-and-field sports at NC State and was recognized as an ACC Outstanding Scholar-Athlete in 1963. Several years after graduating, Blanchard and his father, a practicing forester, began a forestry consulting business. Operating today as H.C. Blanchard and Associates, the company has provided land and timber sales, appraisals and forest management services for landowners with 275,000 wooded acres.

One of Blanchard’s many contributions to the college was serving as president of the North Carolina Forestry Foundation Board of Directors. During his term, Blanchard led a reorganization and consolidation of funds that pushed foundation assets over $1 million, helped retire the mortgage debt on the Hofmann Forest and later was instrumental in establishing active management of the forest to fund numerous undergraduate and graduate scholarships.
According to Blanchard, he “was proudest at a scholarship dinner when (he) counted 26 undergraduate and graduate scholarships funded from Hofmann Forest receipts.”  Blanchard left the board of directors in 1985 to assume the responsibility of Hofmann Forest manager, a position he held for 23 years. Under his management the forest returned more than $13 million to the college in needed support; support which played an incalculable role in the college’s growth into the national leader in natural resource education, research and service it is today. In addition to his support of the college over the years through his professional responsibilities - in 1998 Blanchard and his wife, Peggy, established the Harold E. and Gerda C. Blanchard Endowed Scholarship for young men and women who begin their studies at Southeastern Community College and continue their studies in natural resources at NC State University.

Blanchard is a member of the Society of American Foresters, the North Carolina Foresters Association, the North Carolina Society of Consulting Foresters, the National Woodlands Association and the Forest Farmers Association.

Active in his home community, Blanchard is a charter stockholder of Topsail National Bank and served on the board of Columbus National Bank where he assisted in its successful merger with successor Triangle Bank.  When not working Blanchard acts in local theater productions and had a role in "Bastard Out of Carolina" directed by Angelica Houston;  is a 12 time national sailing champion of Tanzer 16 sailboats; is a deacon, elder and sunday school teacher at Whiteville First Presbyterian Church; and played a major role in the founding of the North Carolina Museum of Forestry in Whiteville, North Carolina.

Converting Coal Plants to Biomass

New York Times
By JOHN LORINC

Converting coal plants to burn wood chips and other biomass is a cost competitive way to reduce reliance on coal, a new study suggests.

Coal-powered generating stations retrofitted to run on a mixture of coal and dried wood pellets can produce cost-competitive, emission-reduced electricity even without the advent of a cap-and-trade system, according to a new biomass life cycle analysis published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology.

For utilities under pressure to meet renewable portfolio standards, biomass should be considered along with wind, solar and small-scale hydro, says Heather MacLean, the lead researcher and an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto.

“The study results suggest that biomass utilization in coal generating stations should be considered for its potential to cost-effectively mitigate” greenhouse gases from coal-based electricity, the paper concluded.

The team tested the life-cycle emissions and costs of “co-firing” scenarios involving fuel with 10 to 20 percent wood pellet content.

Coal accounts for a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, the authors noted.

If just 10 percent co-firing were to be implemented in all coal-generating stations in the United States and Canada, “electricity generation from biomass could contribute approximately 4 percent of annual generation of the two countries,” the analysis found, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 170 million metric tons each year — or about 5 percent of emissions from the two countries’ electricity sectors.

The result emerges from the Ontario government’s campaign to phase out coal from the province’s energy portfolio by 2014. With that deadline approaching, Ontario Power Generation, the provincial utility, has been looking to partly convert some of its coal stations to biomass made from unmarketable timber from the province’s northern region, which has suffered substantial job losses in the forest sector.

Ontario Power co-sponsored the study, but Ms. MacLean says the utility didn’t direct the research, which has been peer-reviewed.

Ms. MacLean also stressed that for wood-based biomass to remain an environmentally attractive alternative to coal, the timber must be harvested according to sustainable forest management practices.

She also acknowledges that the carbon released into the atmosphere by burning biomass is not necessarily reabsorbed by new plant or tree growth at the same rate, which is called carbon debt.

While the technology isn’t especially complicated, a handful of utilities have successfully re-engineered coal plants to run on wood biomass.

Three years ago, the Public Service of New Hampshire spent $70 million to retrofit the 50 megawatt Schiller coal plant to run on wood chips, a project that generates a revenue stream from the sale of renewable energy certificates.

The large European utility Electrabel operates a Belgian generating station that turns pulverized wood chips into a biogas, which is then burned to produce power.

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/converting-coal-plants-to-biomass/