Citizens and environmental groups across the Carolinas called on the state of North Carolina to reject a proposed port expansion to accommodate Enviva in Wilmington, NC. The proposed project involves the lease of state public land at the state port to a wood pellet manufacturer, Enviva LP, for the development of a wood pellet export facility.
In November of 2011, Enviva, a major corporate wood pellet producer with international sales, began operations at a rebuilt, former Georgia Pacific sawmill in Ahoskie, NC. Residents close to the plant have faced 24/7 extreme noise and lights, dust that coats cars, buildings, and lungs in just a few minutes, along with dangerous heavy truck traffic. While European power plants seek huge shipments of wood pellets as supposedly “greener” fuel than the coal they burned in the past, eastern North Carolina has turned into the Southeast’s latest energy colony.
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.
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.
Today we released “The Use of Whole Trees in Wood Pellet Manufacturing,” a report documenting that the top exporters of wood pellets in the region rely heavily on whole trees, i.e. cutting down trees to be burnt in European power stations. According to Wood Resources International, the Southern US is now the world’s largest exporter of wood pellets to Europe. The report discredits European energy companies’ claims that wood pellets burned in UK power stations are produced from wood waste and residues. Over the next 5-10 years, burning wood in large power stations – both new-build biomass power stations but increasingly also converted coal power stations – is expected to attract several billion pounds of public subsidies annually in the UK.
