The use of wood pellets as fuel for domestic stoves and boilers and for co-firing in thermal power plants has been an amazing success story over the past 10 years. Recently, the exorbitant speed of growth caused supply problems and a slowdown of markets, but the next boom is waiting, says Christian Rakos.

Conservation International (CI) and the Medco foundation joined in a partnership to develop spatial planning scenarios for wood pellet plantations in southern Papua.

It didn't take long for the debate on biofuels to heat up again, despite the bottom-of-the-barrel price of oil and an economy in the drink. This time, it was a study published in the February issue of Science that said corn-based ethanol could add nearly twice as many greenhouse emissions as fossil fuels. Not to be left out, the California State Regulators, among others, have jumped into the fray and now seem ready to declare that biofuel will not help reduce global warming.