Burning the forests that are supposed to be our best defense against climate change to protect us against climate change has to be one of the most ridiculous ideas I’ve ever heard. Yet over the last few years, Europe has wholeheartedly embraced this false solution to climate change, and we’ve seen a dramatic increase in logging in the Southern US to fuel European demand. Along the way, the US South has become the largest wood pellet export region in the world.
The Vermont Public Service Board denied the North Sprinfield Sustainable Energy biomass plant a certificate of public good on the basis of greenhouse gas emissions.
Last week Dr. Anna Stephenson, a scientist from DECC, flew from London to Raleigh, North Carolina to begin a two week investigation of the forest and climate impacts associated with the UK’s increasing reliance on imported wood pellets as a fuel source for generating electricity.
Dogwood Alliance convened a meeting for Dr. Stephenson with a number of conservation groups concerned about the exploding wood pellet export industry in the South and the impacts on forests, climate and our rural coastal communities.
Not only does clearcutting US forests, turning them into pellets, and shipping them to Europe to be burned for electricity have a grievous cost for our climate, but it also destroys the habitat of the South’s rich and biodiverse plant and animal ecosystems.
