Estonia’s thriving wood pellet industry is pitting environmentalists who say it increases logging and harms biodiversity against supporters who say it makes good use of wood that would otherwise go to waste.

The subject is particularly sensitive in the tiny Baltic state once ruled by Moscow, whose forests cover more than half its surface area and are very much part of the national identity.

However, at a plant belonging to Europe’s biggest wood pellet producer, Estonia’s AS Graanul Invest, Mihkel Jugaste, the company’s head of quality and certification systems, defended the industry.

“Wood only comes to us when sawmill or plywood factories reject it,” Jugaste said over the sounds of machinery turning logs into sawdust and compacting them into pellets.

Wood pellets are a type of biofuel that can be used in special pellet stoves or central heating furnaces for homes.

They are also used on a larger scale.

The former coal-fired power station of Drax in the UK now runs partially on wood pellets, including some from Estonia.

Environmentalists say biomass demand in western Europe is causing an intensification of logging in places such as Estonia, including in protected areas, and the use of techniques such as clearcutting in which entire areas of forest are destroyed.

They say that bird species such as the black grouse and woodlark are under threat from the logging, with woodland bird numbers falling by about one-quarter over the past two decades.

Their warnings have been heard in Brussels, and the European Commission earlier this year initiated infringement proceedings against Estonia for failing to ensure environmental impact assessments before issuing logging permits in these areas.

“The intensity of Estonian forest management is too high and pellet production within the forestry industry plays an important role,” said Siim Kuresoo, forest program coordinator at the Estonian Fund for Nature.

“The initial idea of allowing wood to be burned as renewable energy was only to lessen the waste of the industry. Now it has grown into a big industry by itself,” Kuresoo said.

Wood and wood product exports make up about 10 percent of Estonia’s total, and the value rose by 48 percent to 165 million euros (US$185.46 million) for the 12 months through August compared with a year earlier, official figures showed.

Graanul has also reported that its revenues last year rose to 438.9 million euros from 401.7 million euros in 2019.

Jugaste said his company respects and would continue to abide by any environmental protection regulation, but added that sometimes stakeholders disagree on what the rules should be.

“We, as a wood processor, cannot really decide for them,” he said.

“As long as experts make a decision about the protection status or the protection territory and that list is given to us, then we can protect it 100 percent,” he said.

An article in Nature Research last year found that there had been an 85 percent increase in logged areas in Estonia from 2016 to 2018 compared with 2004 to 2015 — one of the largest expansions in the EU.

At the same time, thanks to natural reforestation and planting, the overall forested area in Estonia last year increased to 2.3 million hectares from 2.2 million hectares in 2001.

The issue in Estonia is part of a wider European debate over whether wood pellets can be considered a carbon-neutral energy source as long as there is replanting of trees.

Many say they cannot because burning wood is as dirty as coal and trees take many years to grow back.

Taavi Ehrpais, a forest owner in northwest Estonia, said only about 10 percent of his timber — the lowest quality pieces — would end up in a pellet factory.

Ehrpais, who is also the head of Vardi Metsauhistu, a forest management organization, said it was “an unbelievable myth” that the wood pellet industry was leading to an increase in logging.

Ehrpais also defended logging laws, saying they are “very strict” and guarantee biodiversity.

Malaysia is scrambling to protect its assets as the descendants of the last sultan of the remote Philippine region of Sulu look to enforce a US$15 billion arbitration award in a dispute over a colonial-era land deal. In 1878, two European colonists signed a deal with the sultan for the use of his territory in present-day Malaysia — an agreement that independent Malaysia honored until 2013, paying the monarch’s descendants about US$1,000 per year. Now, 144 years later after the original deal, Malaysia is on the hook for the second-largest arbitration award on record for stopping the payments after a bloody incursion

RECOVERED CONFIDENCE: As market rationality returns, Taiwanese stocks that have lagged behind their US peers might soon catch up, Allianz researchers said Local shares last week defied heavy pressure from China’s military drills in waters around Taiwan, and investors this week are expected to pay attention to earnings results from several tech heavyweights as well as the latest economic data on exports and GDP. The TAIEX closed at 15,036.04 points on Friday, posting a weekly increase of 0.24 percent from 15,000.07 on July 29, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Over the same period, the FTSE TWSE Taiwan 50 Index, which comprises Taiwan’s top 50 stocks in terms of market capitalization, closed up 0.93 percent at 11,750.15 points, while the Formosa Stock Index, which measures

Pharmaceutical start-up AcadeMab Biomedical Inc (研生生醫) said it has been developing a COVID-19 antibody drug, an endeavor not being undertaken by many other Taiwanese pharmaceutical firms. The company was spun off from Academia Sinica’s Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology in 2020 and has only 16 employees. It has set its sights on the innovative field of the monoclonal antibody treatment of tumors. The start-up began developing antibody drugs in January, after seeing that COVID-19 vaccines could not effectively protect people from new variants of SARS-CoV-2, AcadeMab Biomedical chief strategy officer Pearl Fong (俸清珠) said in an interview with the Taipei Times

FORECAST EXCEEDED: China’s curbs on some Taiwanese goods are unlikely to affect trade given inter-reliance in the electronics industries, a finance ministry official said Exports last month spiked 14.2 percent to US$43.32 billion, the second-highest increase on record and the 25th consecutive month of gains, driven by global demand for electronics used in high-performance computing and vehicles, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. The ministry expects the trend to sustain this month and beyond, although the pace could slow due to inventory corrections for laptops, smartphones and other consumer electronics. “The July results proved stronger than expected despite rising fears over economic uncertainty,” Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) said, adding that a high sales season in the West and stabilized COVID-19 infections in China