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.
Last month we released our first investigative video in support of the Our Forests Aren’t Fuel campaign: Wetlands Up in Smoke. The short film featuring a wide variety of voices documents the growing impact of the wood pellet industry on our Forests, community and climate.
Environmental groups in 23 states today requested that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) end its three year exemption of biomass power plant greenhouse gas emissions from Clean Air Act permitting – an exemption that also enables biomass plant builders and operators to avoid using the best pollution controls for the smokestack emissions that cause local air pollution and harm human health.
