Would you cut down all the trees in your yard so your neighbor could use them in his fireplace and still maintain his own shady canopy? Of course not, but that’s exactly what utility companies in the Southern U.S. are currently doing with our forests. Nearly 2.5 million tons of wood pellets — made from trees in Southern forests — are being shipped to European utility companies each year so that they can burn them for electricity while still meeting their climate goals.
The number of wood pellet mills and the demand for trees to fuel them are on the rise in our region. For four days in early September, Dogwood’s Campaign Director Scot Quaranda hosted Greenpeace colleague Larry Edwards from Alaska on a tour of these mills in Georgia and South Carolina. Although the two were denied entry and tours at all the locations, what they saw from the outside was enough to cause concern.
“It literally looked like a swarm of bees heading to the hive as truck after truck of whole trees entered the enormous Georgia Biomass plant in Waycross,” said Quaranda. “The pace was overwhelming. At Appling County Biomass in Baxley, Georgia, it was semi after semi of wood chips.”
Georgia Biomass is the largest pellet mill in the country, producing 700,000 tons of pellets each year to ship overseas to its German parent company, RWE. Appling County Biomass is owned by the Norwegian-based FRAM and produces approximately 350,000 tons of pellets per year for European consumption.
Quaranda and Edwards also visited smaller mills: a soon-to-be-operational pellet mill built by Varn Wood Products in Hoboken, Georgia to accompany its sawmill operation, and Lowcountry Biomass in Ridgeland, South Carolina, which uses saw mill residue and miscanthus (Chinese silvergrass), a non-native invasive grass, to make its pellets.
“Essentially, we are destroying our forests so Europe can burn them and meet their climate goals,” said Quaranda. “This is, of course, one of the most ridiculous schemes we have seen in years. Why, in the name of climate change, would we burn the very forests that are supposed to buffer us from climate change? Scientific study after study has shown that burning wood is far from climate neutral and, in fact, over the first 50 years may be worse for the climate than burning coal.”
The good news? Dogwood Alliance and others are taking proactive measures to stop a biomass industry explosion before it starts. “The biomass industry has been slow to develop, thanks to groups like Dogwood Alliance and individual communities that have fought off local mill proposals,” says Quaranda. “That’s been great, but the recent growth in the number of wood pellet mills means we need to become even more aggressive in exposing the biomass myth for what it is — a grave threat to the long-term health of our forests and the communities they sustain.”
This new initiative is so full of contradictions that it is ridiculous. These “whole trees” are coming from the thinnings of pine plantations, planted and grown by the owners to produce fiber that will go to paper or energy, as well as lumber. According to your own policy, pine plantations are not forests. If not forests then, pine plantations are in fact a type of agriculture. Your policies support sustainable agriculture. You can’t have it both ways!