BROWN BROTHERS ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT
What We Do
Brown Brothers Energy and Environment seek to minimize environmental damage and maximize environmental benefits in the fight to decarbonize the global economy. This has led us into three primary avenues of work.
Protecting old-growth forests, or growing new forests
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Found new revenue sources for financially distressed sustainable natural forestry concessions in Borneo’s Mahakam River Basin (2017 & 2018).
It is difficult for environmentally sustainable forestry operations to be financially sustainable.
Clear-cutting/burning to make way for industrial oil palm plantations is tempting.
See red areas of forests lost to plantations in Indonesian Borneo between 2000 and 2010.
Consulting to The Nature Conservancy Indonesia, we investigated using logging waste to make
wood pellets that could be used in place of coal in power plants, thereby doubling the profit of
forestry companies that supply the waste wood. Our work was done in two phases: (i) a detailed
investigation of the full value chain of costs and revenues for natural forest timber concessions
together with an investigation of specific river basins and concessions where the use of waste
wood would change sustainable forestry economics
(link to “Study of sustainable forestry in Indonesia and blueprints for improving profitability”),
and (ii) due diligence on an existing manufacturing facility that could be re-purposed for wood
pellet manufacture
(link to “Mahakam River Forest Biomass Processing Facility Feasibility Study”).
Our investigations revealed that wood waste-to-biofuels is financially feasible and
environmentally sound. However without regulatory changes, it would be impossible for a
business to operate: Indonesian Forestry Ministry regulations must be changed to allow recovery of logging waste after normal forestry operations are completed, timber taxes on waste cannot remain at the same levels as taxes on prime wood, and proper documentation procedures must be developed for waste wood removed from in-forest operations.
Reforestation in the tropics by forest communities.
- Supported the Swedish firm SilviCapital in negotiations over a turnkey Engineer, Procure, Construct (EPC) contract with Chinese contractors to build a plywood mill in north-central Laos. B2E2 helped remedy defects in the original EPC contract so that terms would meet standards required by international lenders. The mill will be supplied with eucalyptus trees grown by community foresters in an area previously devastated in the war. B2E2’s work was performed under a contract with Hatfield Consultants Mekong (2018 & 2019).https://www.hatfieldgroup.com/leadership/jim-webb/
This state-of-the-art Finnish plywood lathe in this factory peels small diameter trees grown in plantations by Laotian forest farmers, and thus reduces pressure on old growth forests. B2E2 helped this factory become a reality, by advising its Swedish owners on how to overcome challenges with a Chinese state-owned EPC contractor.
- For Palladium, identifying five ways for sustainable, indigenous forest farmers and horticulturalists in Indonesian Papua to transcend poverty by selling their products into national and global supply chains (2017). (click through to chart from Palladium proposal)
- With the UK Department for International Development’s Multi-Stakeholder Forestry Program 1, co-authored a report proving that forest farmers in Indonesia contributed as much to the nation’s economic growth as the nation’s industrial timber sector, on only one-sixth of the land area (2006). (Click through to - “Welfare Gains of Returning Forest Areas to Community Management”)
Quantifying the amounts of unsustainable or illegal timber in the supply chains of environmentally-sensitive commodities
- Performing a “Forest Futures Analysis” which looked at how three principle scenarios (‘business as usual,’ ‘plantations only,’ and ‘balanced restructuring’) would impact upon long term forest sustainability, economic growth, and employment in Indonesia’s forestry sector over the coming quarter century. Work resulted from collaboration between the UK Department for International Development’s Multi-Stakeholder Forestry Program 1 and the USAID’s Forest Management Program 2 (2005). (Click through to “Timber Industry Revitalization in Indonesia in the First Quarter of the 21st Century.”)
- With the UK Department for International Development’s Multi-Stakeholder Forestry Program 1, quantifying the percentage of uncertain-origin or unsustainable timber in the supply chains of all of Indonesia’s pulp, plywood, and sawn timber business groups. (Click through to “From Darkness into Light: The Consumption of Timber of Uncertain Origin by Indonesia’s Forest Products Primary Processing Sector.”)
Combatting illegal logging by
- Leading a WWF Indonesia field investigation that showed that a major pulp and paper company was logging in a protected forest, and had high amounts of uncertain-origin or unsustainable natural forest timber in its supply chain (click through to WWF – “Legality of Timber Consumed by Asia Pulp and Paper’s Mills in Indonesia: January – October 2003.”)
- Facilitating work of an Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry working group to create, refine and execute a mill to forest log tracking system. The system was used inspect eight plywood mills, all of which were found to be using or harboring illegal logs. (Click through to “Stories from the Front Line of Change: Changing the Future of Indonesia’s Forests”)
- Leading a World Bank Indonesia field investigation that showed that a timber company was logging in a national park. (Click through to World Bank report “Kerinci-Sebelat Integrated Conservation and Development Project; Field team report on PT. Duta Maju Timber and Bina Samaktha”)
Combatting transfer pricing, and promoting better due diligence practices by banks which lend to timber companies.
- One of our principals is a UN Development Program (UNDP) financed advisor to the Internal Revenue Commission (IRC) of Papua New Guinea (PNG), all under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Tax Inspectors Without Borders (TIWB) program. In this clip from PNG’s TV Wan (TV One), the then-Deputy Prime Minister of PNG Charles Abbott introduce David’s team to reporters.
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- Quantifying non-performing loans of Indonesian timber and plantation companies during the Asian Financial Crisis. Performed while working for the UK DFID’s Indonesia-UK Tropical Forestry Management Program. (Click through to "Corporate Debt and the Indonesian Forestry Sector")
- Explaining the risks in investing in a publicly-listed Indonesian plywood company, while working for the global investment bank of Dresdner Kleinwort Benson. (Click through to Dresdner Kleinwort Benson – “Pulp Faction: Barito Pacific Timber”)
Advancing technologies and policies to reduce industrial, electric, and deforestation-linked Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial and power plants and injecting the CO2 into the sub-surface.
- Consulting to the Great Plains Institute, providing techno-economic and financial support for three major studies released by an 18-state State Working Group of the Carbon Capture Coalition and downloadable at https://www.betterenergy.org/our-work/carbon-management/
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“State and Federal Policy Drivers for Growing America’s Carbon Capture and CO2-EOR Industry” (2016)
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“Electricity Market Design and Carbon Capture Technology: The Opportunities and the Challenges” (2017)
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“Transport Infrastructure for Carbon Capture and Storage” (2020) https://www.betterenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/GPI_RegionalCO2Whitepaper.pdf
- Heading the “Integrative Economics Team” for the recent national study of potential for U.S. carbon capture and sequestration executed by the National Petroleum Council for the U.S. Secretary of Energy. Our 2020 Topic Paper, “Supply and Demand Analysis for Capture and Storage of Anthropogenic CO2 in the Central United States” can be accessed at https://dualchallenge.npc.org/downloads.php
-Consulted for a multi-billion-dollar family foundation on policy options for better project financing of power and industrial decarbonization projects, better state policies for decarbonization, and associated changes to U.S. export credit agency policies and foreign investment treaties (2019-2020).
-Consulted to a group of U.S. environmental organizations on the most promising opportunities for carbon capture, electrification, and clean fuels to promote decarbonization of U.S. heavy industry, as well as the specific loan, tax, and grant incentive changes needed to initiate these opportunities (2020-2021 ongoing.
-[Upcoming] “The Role of Natural Gas in Decarbonizing the U.S. Power and Heavy Industrial Sectors”, to be published via Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) Spring 2021. https://www.c2es.org/
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Innovative Strategies for Linking Decarbonization to reduction of conventional air pollutants and/or achieving negative emissions.
-Ongoing project with Clean Air Task Force https://www.catf.us/ on “Co-benefits of Criteria Air Pollutant Reductions that Accompany Carbon Capture Retrofits in Heavy Industry.” Engineers are aware that addition of carbon-dioxide removal equipment, particularly amine post-combustion scrubbing systems, will remove nearly 100% of sulfur-dioxide, most particulates, and most NO2 from exhaust streams. These benefits have not been formally documented, much less well-explained, for the benefit of fenceline communities and regulators in airsheds affected by heavy industrial emissions from refineries, cement plants, pulp mills, etc. This project will document engineering aspects, criteria pollutant reductions, air modeling impacts, and epidemiological evidence.
-Ongoing project with Clean Air Task Force on “Biogenic Emissions with Carbon Capture and Sequestration (BECCS) in the U.S. Pulp and Paper Industry. The U.S. pulp and paper industry generates approximately 140 million metric tons per year of emissions from burning wood-derived liquid, semi-solid, and solid fuels for the generation of electricity and steam. These large-scale and concentrated CO2 emissions are also associated with heavy sulfur, NOx, and particulate emissions. Adding carbon capture equipment at pulp mills could create negative emissions: trees pull CO2 from the atmosphere, and the CO2 resulting from combustion can be captured and sequestered underground. At the same time, major reductions in SOx, NOx, and particulates can be obtained.
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Promoting low carbon energy
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For TNC Indonesia, producing a pre-feasibility study to revive a wood pellet factory that uses waste wood to produce wood pellets intended to serve as a green substitute for coal in Korean and Japanese markets (2018).
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For Waxman Associates, identifying, quantifying, and ranking the ten most coal-power-intensive manufacturing sectors in SE Asia
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Assisting the European Climate Foundation with a situation report on the Indonesian coal sector
Provide strategies for saving tropical forests in regulated and voluntary carbon markets
- For the ADB’s Forest Investment Program 1, distilling for the provincial government of West Kalimantan (in Indonesian Borneo) lessons learned from efforts by the World Bank-administered Forest Carbon Partnership Facility to create an USD 100 million regulated carbon market for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) in East Kalimantan province (click through to “Toward Jurisdictional REDD+ Benefit Sharing in West Kalimantan, Indonesia”)
- With Environmental Resources Management and the Zoological Society of London, co-authoring a proposal for a REDD+ project in Indonesia (click through to “Avoided Deforestation and Biodiversity Conservation: The Berbak Carbon Value Initiative”)
- Helping the Nature Conservancy identify the most biologically-intact Indonesian natural forest timber concessions (many of them unlogged) so that they could be acquired by an international conservation investor, and the value of the resulting avoided deforestation sold on carbon markets.
Building transparency, and exploring the link between political corruption, the destruction of the environment and the endangerment of human rights
Reporting on control of natural and extractive resource companies by political exposed persons:
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For the UK DFID Indonesia Tropical Forestry Management Program, showing that major assets of three of Indonesia’s five largest timber business groups were owned by members of the family of the nation’s former authoritarian leader.
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For the Asia Foundation, showing companies linked to the Indonesian military control more timber concessions than any other business group in Indonesia, and mapping the full ownership of Indonesia’s two largest coal business groups. Written in partnership with Publish What You Pay Indonesia and Indonesia Corruption Watch. (Click through to “Authoritarianism’s Indelible Stain: Politics and the ownership of Indonesia’s largest forestry and coal business groups”)
Exposing construction of poorly-justified, environmentally-damaging projects
- Publishing a report showing that a planned dam on the Indonesian island of Sumatra was unnecessary from an electricity supply point of view, and would not have meaningfully reduced GHG emissions of the local power sector. If built, the dam would have trifurcated the remaining habitat of and killed 10 percent of the world’s remaining population of 767 Tapanuli orangutan. In part because of B2E2’s research, the dam has now been delayed three years. https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/batang-toru-hydropower-dam-tapanuli-orangutan-delay-nshe/
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The Tapanli orangutan is the world’s most newly-discovered and most-highly-endangered species of Great Ape. (Click through to http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/Batang_Toru_Analysis_English-final.pdf )
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Identifying the business interests of government officials who commit human rights abuses
- Assisting the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights’ Independent Investigative Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar to assemble and publish the most complete list of the economic interests of the Burmese military every compiled in one place (click through to “The economic interests of the Myanmar military”- https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/FFM-Myanmar/EconomicInterestsMyanmarMilitary/A_HRC_42_CRP_3.pdf
- Speaking out on the efficacy of freezing the assets of government actors who commit human rights abuses (click through to https://www.justicerapidresponse.org/the-potential-of-financial-investigation-remains-largely-untapped/ )
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Building transparency mechanisms to prevent corruption and environmental destruction, and to build public trust:
- While under secondment to the UK Department for International Development and the World Bank, guided Indonesia through all phases of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), the global standard on transparency for extractive industry revenues. Under the Initiative, all material oil, gas and mining firms in a given country report revenues conveyed to government, the government reports all revenues received, and the discrepancies between the two sets of figures are published. (Click here for a summary of Indonesia's first EITI report.) Indonesia is only BRIICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China, South Africa) nation to implement the EITI, a testament to the influencing ability of the principals of B2E2 and our networks. We facilitated the emergence of an initial draft of a Presidential Regulation for the implementation of the EITI in Indonesia, and with the indispensable assistance of a former Commissioner of Indonesia’s Anti-Corruption Commission, took the final draft over numerous political hurdles before it was finally signed into force as a Presidential Regulation.
- With World Resources Institute, we authored a policy brief explaining how to use spatial and other types of information in the public domain to identify Indonesian timber concessions, timber plantations, and oil palm companies engaging in illegal logging (click through to World Resources Institute - “Bridging the Information Gap: A Matrix for Combating Illegal Logging in Indonesia”)
