By Christine Ro
Business of technology.
Christine Ro is the image source.
The image caption is.
Wood chips are an important part of North Carolina's forest industry.
This is the first of two Business of Technology articles about wood pellet production and use as an energy source.
The areas around North Carolina's forests are large. Long-term storage units and enormous car parks are the result of the loss of pine trees.
Many of the US trees are going to be turned into small pellets. At wood pellet mills, wood is ground and compressed into pellets. They are shipped to the UK where they are burned for energy.
Privately owned forest land in North Carolina can be as small as one acre. They are too small to be eligible for a conservement easement, which is an agreement to keep trees intact.
The movement of six million African Americans from the rural south to the urban Northeast, Midwest and West in the late 19th and early 20th century left the cropland to turn back into forest.
Freddie Davis III is a forester who leads the Rural Training and Research Center, which is part of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives.
Mr Davis believes that the best option for owners of low-value holdings is to use the energy from their plants. He says he's passionate about it because it offers opportunity.
The image is from the National Press Foundation.
The image caption is.
The wood chip industry has been bad for the environment.
The racial justice aspect is complex. White-Williamson works out of a cramped office in Clinton. The area has a large black population and is close to a pellet mill. "We've become the dumping ground for a lot of things for the sake of economic development," she says.
Ms White-Williamson argues that the wood pellet industry isn't the best of neighbours because of the effects on water, air and noise.
The Southern Environmental Law Center's lawyer, Derb S Carter Junior, says that wood pellet manufacture is a problem because of the way they're converted into formaldehyde and other noxious substances.
Enviva says that its plants are in compliance with air quality regulations.
For the affects on communities near pellet plants, and also for the unusual way that its carbon emissions are counted, bioenergy is controversial. The current carbon accounting rules on wood pellets are not fit for purpose.
They are accounted for at the harvest site in North Carolina rather than at the power station where they are burnt.
The image is from Daniel Lewis/Drax.
The image caption is.
Drax uses wood pellets to make electricity.
This form of energy is renewable because the trees are replanted. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agreed decades ago that it would be simpler to account for the carbon emissions of land use when it is harvest.
The decisions that have been made have been political, and mainly come out of the forest agencies of the various countries, according to Peg Putt, who coordinates the Environmental Paper Network.
The accounting seems so forbiddingly complicated and technical that higher level negotiators in the party delegations just leave it to them.
The US now has a proliferation of wood pellet mills where they are all for export, mostly to Europe, and there is no use of this material here in the US for energy production.
All of the wood pellets were imported. The system is almost a free ticket for the EU, UK, and increasingly Japan and South Korea, according to Mr Carter.
The emissions from burning wood don't show up in the emissions records of these countries because of the "perverse accounting" rules on wood pellets' carbon emissions.
A growing number of scientists and policymakers understand that there is more to renewable energy than carbon neutral sources. Mr Carter believes that trees are a renewable resource. It can take up to 100 years for a tree to fully grow back. The maximum amount of carbon dioxide is only absorbed by mature trees if they store some carbon as they grow.
The image is from the National Press Foundation.
The image caption is.
Carter says it's simplistic to see trees as a renewable resource.
Drax uses wood chips to make electricity.
Biomass is a flexible renewable power source that is available regardless of the weather. It has a vital role to play in the energy system, by helping to decarbonise the grid by enabling wind and solar to come online, and it also has a vital role to play in the energy system.
Wood pellet producer Enviva says it is not from pristine forests, but from managed forests which need to be thinned periodically to maintain good health, and whose wood quality isn't high enough for higher- value markets like paper.
Enviva says that its wood pellet mix is made up of 20% sawmill residues, 14% thinning, and the remainder from harvest.
Kim Cesafsky is the director of sustainable living at Enviva. She calls fossil fuels a one-way street.
The image is from Daniel Lewis/Drax.
The image caption is.
Drax believes that wood pellets can be used to replace coal in electricity production.
Coal is more polluted than biomass. Ms Putt says that burning wood for energy produces at least as much carbon dioxide as burning coal per unit of energy produced.
Wood is less dense than coal, so you have to burn it more to get the amount of energy you want.
Prof Gert-Jan Nabuurs is one of the lead authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For the same amount of energy, you are emitting more because wood does not burn as efficiently as natural gas or coal. He says that the trees are replanted and that this is a short cycle for bioenergy.
This idea runs contrary to proforestation because as diverse forests are replaced with plantations of a single tree species, this makes them more vulnerable to disease and less efficient at sequestering carbon.
According to Ms Putt, plantations are less carbon dense than natural forests, and they get logging more frequently. They don't have as many opportunities to sequester carbon.
The second story on wood pellets in this series will be published on Friday, January 14th, and will cover how power stations are using the material to generate electricity.
The National Press Foundation supported the reporting of this article.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
