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New Campaign: 'Stop the Chopping' of US Forests for Wood Pellets
Green Technology Featured Articles
May 28, 2013

New Campaign: 'Stop the Chopping' of US Forests for Wood Pellets

By Cheryl Kaften
TMCnet Contributor

Did you know that, if Americans don’t act now, forests in the U.S. Southeast will be chopped down for fuel—razed to supply six million tons of wood pellets to be exported by 2015?

To raise awareness and stop the wholesale demolition of vital natural resources, the New York City-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Asheville, N.C.-based Dogwood Alliance have partnered to launch a new campaign, Our Forests Aren’t Fuel, aimed at both the burgeoning wood pellet industry and utilities practicing tree-burning biomass.


Indeed, the southern United States is now the largest exporter of wood pellets in the world. Twenty-four pellet facilities currently are operating in the Southeast, and 16 additional plants are planned for construction in the near-term. Market analysts project that annual exports of wood pellets from the South will more than triple from 1.3 million tons in 2012 to nearly six million tons by 2015. 

What’s more, the South’s largest domestic utilities, including Dominion Resources and Duke Energy (News - Alert), also are beginning to burn wood as an alternative to fossil fuels, like coal—with plans for expansion in the future. They are doing so under the mistaken assumption that, because trees can grow back, they are a “carbon neutral” fuel source—one that completely balances the production and use of carbon, resulting in zero net emissions. But just like coal, when trees are burned in power plants, the carbon they have accumulated over long periods of time is released into the atmosphere. Unlike coal, however, trees will continue to absorb carbon if left alone. So burning forests for energy not only emits a lot of carbon, but also degrades our carbon sinks.

At the forefront of the wood pellet industry are some of Europe’s largest utility companies, including Drax, Electrobel and RWE. Rising demand by these companies has resulted in the rapid expansion of wood pellet exports from the Southern United States. And, while biomass is widely perceived to be a form of sustainable energy, recent science has discredited it as a renewable energy source. Burning trees for energy releases quadruple the amount of global warming pollutants into the atmosphere that coal does, and devastates ecosystems working to absorb carbon. The campaign especially emphasizes the susceptibility of forests in the U.S. Southeast, which are projected to supply trees for six million pounds of wood pellets to be exported by 2015.

“With the advancement of clean, renewable energy alternatives, the growing practice of burning trees for electricity is a major step in the wrong direction,” said Debbie Hammel, senior resource specialist of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “[The] Our Forests Aren’t Fuel [campaign] lets the public know about the extent of this ecological devastation and calls on utilities to end the practice. It’s an even dirtier form of energy production than burning fossil fuels, it destroys valuable southern ecosystems, and it isn’t necessary.”

“This rapidly expanding trend of burning trees for energy will both accelerate climate change and destroy forests,” said Danna Smith, executive director of Dogwood Alliance. “Southern forests not only protect us from climate change, but protect our drinking water, provide habitat for wildlife and contribute to our quality of life. We need these companies to stop burning trees for electricity and embrace a clean energy future that helps to protect, rather than destroy forests.”

The campaign organizers reveal the scope and scale of the growing biomass industry through a series of case studies on the campaign website that include wood pellet manufacturers, domestic utilities, and European utilities. Particular emphasis is placed on the following companies:

Enviva is one of the largest manufacturers of wood pellets in the United States and Europe, with manufacturing facilities and partner facilities in Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia. The Bethesda, Md.-based company has an annual production capacity of more than 590,000 tons. It also operates a deep-water terminal at the Port of Chesapeake, which has the capacity to receive and store up to three million tons of woody biomass annually. Much of its inventory is sold and shipped to European utilities, such as Drax. Leftover biomass “residues,” like tree tops and limbs, are sold to domestic utilities, like Dominion Resources.

Drax is major United Kingdom-based utility that recently shifted focus from co-firing biomass in coal power plants to full conversion of its largest plant to biomass. Drax has begun building pellet mills directly through its wholly owned subsidiary Drax Biomass. In December 2012, Drax announced plans to build the Amite BioEnergy pellet mill in Gloster, Miss., and the Morehouse BioEnergy in Bastrop, Louisiana, to supply wood pellets for use in its power plants, with production set to begin in 2014.

Dominion Resources is a Richmond, Va.-based utility. The company recently launched several biomass operations that could well rely on whole trees in the near future. Its 83-megawatt plant in Pittsylvania, Va., is one of the largest biomass power stations on the east coast. Dominion also is converting three existing peak power coal-fired power stations into full-time biomass-burning facilities. The utility currently sources much of its biomass material as “residues” from wood pellet manufacturers, like Enviva, which exports the bulk of its product to European markets. Should the supply of these residuals become limited, Dominion’s operations could increasingly rely on burning whole trees.

The advocacy groups warn, “In the Southeast, the massive fuel needs of energy companies could double logging rates and increase carbon emissions significantly – contributing to climate change at a time when we need to be rapidly cutting our carbon pollution. It is imperative that companies using biomass or producing wood pellets for utilities establish adequate policies to protect our climate and forests, before expanding their use of biomass.”




Edited by Alisen Downey


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