American trees are being harvested in North Carolina to supply energy production needs in the United Kingdom. Burned in the form of pellets, this fuel source provides some benefits to the environment and society, but is creating a firestorm of controversy.
The highest-quality trees are cut for use in the manufacture of planks, while trees that are too twisted or bent are chopped up to be sent overseas. As the pellets are burned, they release carbon dioxide into the air, a known greenhouse gas.
"[I]t doesn't make any sense to cut down the trees that are sequestering carbon," Debbie Hammel, a resource specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said.
In 2007, the European Commission, the governing body for the European Union, set Europe down the path to produce 20% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, and to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 20% below 1990 levels.
The commission later determined that without radically new technology, solar and wind could not meet that renewable energy goal. They therefore ruled that wood would be considered a renewable source, as long as the trees that were cut down could be regrown.
One challenge facing power plants like Drax in England as they make the move from coal to wood is that in many parts of Europe, there just aren't enough forests to supply the demand, or the trees can not be harvested due to regulations. Pellets - nearly two million tons of them last year - get shipped over the Atlantic to supply that demand. That rate is four times what it was three years ago.
The increased demand from Europe for U.S. wood has revived many small logging communities, bringing new life to the industry, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Drax "has converted one of its six units so far... After it fully converts two more units, Drax expects to burn about seven million tons of wood annually and collect about $600 million a year from renewable-energy credits," a company spokeswoman said.
The effect of this increased use of American wood in UK power plants is being studied by the European Commission.
