
Russia’s Chernobyl-style reactors to keep operating until the end of the decade
Recent announcements by Russian nuclear officials that they will extend the runtimes of several Chernobyl-style RBMK nuclear reactors shed light on t...
News
Publish date: May 17, 2016
News
Bellona’s response addresses the need to learn from past bioenergy mistakes – including driving deforestation outside Europe, food competition and indirect land use changes – while focusing on the need to look to truly innovative sources for bioenergy, in particular to the oceans and seaweed.
The EU currently relies on bioenergy to meet 60% of its renewable energy target overall, and 90% for the renewable energy in transport target. Bellona is asking that bioenergy continues to play a role, albeit at a vastly improved and potentially dramatically reconsidered manner.
“We need integrated, well-thought through sustainable solutions that take what we have a lot of, like saltwater, to make what we need more of, like sustainable bioenergy” says Bellona advisor Marika Andersen.
“Then we must look at options for integrated solutions, combining for instance offshore wind, aquaculture and seaweed production with advanced biorefining and carbon capture and storage – all the while retaining the cascading use principle at the center” Andersen continues.
Projects like Sahara Forest and Ocean Forest, of which Bellona is a co-founder, are early examples of this.
Bellona works on better understanding the potential of seaweed. While micro algae have benefited from more attention and research, possible energy uses from seaweed are not yet as well studied, but may be significant.
The high carbohydrate content renders seaweeds highly suitable for bioethanol and biobutanol production, where the sugars are fermented. Meanwhile, the low lignin content eliminates many of the challenges currently faced by wood-based bioethanol producers.
Bellona calls on the Commission to further promote sustainable, marine bioenergy for heat and power and biofuels in sectors that can’t otherwise be decarbonised, like aviation.
Bellona further calls on dedicated resources to better understand the environmental risks of industrial scale marine biomass production and to shed light on the difficulties in attaining necessary emission reduction targets and carbon removal without sustainable bioenergy.
Recent announcements by Russian nuclear officials that they will extend the runtimes of several Chernobyl-style RBMK nuclear reactors shed light on t...
Europe’s only multi-source, injection-ready CO₂ storage site will more than triple its capacity by 2028. The decision follows an agreement with Stockholm Exergi to transport and store up to 800 – 900 kilotonnes of CO₂ per year. “This decision is years in the making, and the culmination of decades of hard work from many, Bellona included” says Bellona Europa Director Jonas Helseth.
Days after the Trump administration floated the idea of assuming control of Ukraine’s embattled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant as part of the nascent pea...
During a call between President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and US President Donald Trump, the US leader reportedly floated an unusual idea—that Ky...