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Black liquor - P&P's redeemer?

Remember the other day when we heard that International Paper received $71.6 million from the IRS for burning an alternative fuel mix?

Well Domtar and AbitibiBowater want in too.

Domtar has retrofitted seven of its U.S. mills to produce the black liquor to qualify for the tax credit.

If approved, Domtar could see an estimated $225 million a year from the U.S. tax credit program.

The program was initially designed to encourage companies to add green energy like biodiesel to their fossil fuels to reduce America´s dependency of foreign energy.

For the forestry companies to qualify for the tax credit, they are actually adding diesel to the black liquor that they are already burning for steam generation. To qualify, at least 0.1% of taxable fuel such as diesel, gasoline or kerosene must be mixed with a qualified alternative fuel.

As a result of this tax credit, multi-national companies, like Domtar and AbitibiBowater, will likely increase production at their mills located in the U.S. at the detriment of their Canadian operations.

In addition to hurting the competitive position of Canadian producers, the incentive encourages producers to add even more pulp on the market even though an oversupply continues to deflate prices.

Climate killer toilet paper

You can find the related articles >>here<< and >>here<<

Soft toilet paper is ruining the planet--huh?

Allen Hershkowitz, Senior Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and (I perceive) a long time enemy of the forest products industry, pronounced last week that using soft toilet paper is harmful to the planet's health.

On one hand, I am encouraged that we have cleaned up our act to the point that what we use to clean our behinds is all Hershkowitz apparently has left to complain about. On the other, thanks for hitting our fine industry when it's down, Allen.

Let's recycle toilet paper! Part 2

Toilet paper may not be the sexiest environmental issue, but it really is one of the most important considering the manufacturing of that product causes deforestation, which causes more global warming pollution than all the combined emissions of cars, trucks, buses, airplanes and ships in the ent

Let's recycle toilet paper! Part 1

There was some interesting debate going on. American "soft" toilet tissue seems to be a problem to some people in the US...

Don't print...

...isn't going Green

It is increasingly popular to bash the use of paper. The industry is an easy target as everyone uses paper and the presentation of the industry is laughable (think Dunder Mifflin on The Office).

Despite the many environmentally friendly actions taken by the paper, printing and publishing industries, little is known of these efforts due to a self-inflicted inability to publicize them. Unlike the auto or fuel industries, we don’t spend any money as an industry on effective green promotion.

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Global forest products markets

Exciting and challenging - Global Timber markets - have a view on how we will see the situation

 

 

You can find a presentation held mid 2008 here:
(Text as Download, 1,2 MB)

There is another (external) report on international forest product markets available as well...

 

 

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by Dr. Radut