For the larger settlement bill, which is still being negotiated, the language would also subsidize logging on both federal and private land, as well as subsidize forest biomass energy, manufacturing facilities, and more. wood pellets and production laminated wood (a kind of prefabricated wooden board used in house construction) under the heading “wood innovation”.
In their letter, the scientists write that the promotion of commercial logging and wood burning “ignores the advice of hundreds of climate and forest scientists who have previously informed the Congress that these industries significantly increase emissions and exacerbate the climate crisis.”
But not all experts agree on that point. Bob Abt has studied the ecology and economics of southern forests for more than 40 years, and is professor emeritus of natural resources at North Carolina State University. He said that, under the right economic and environmental conditions, the carbon footprint of wood pellets could be smaller than that of coal. Making this equation work – so that the carbon burned for electricity today is offset by future tree growth – there are several requirements. First, Abt says, plantation land owners must harvest fast-growing trees, such as pine or hardwood mixes found in the South. The same process won’t work well in the forests of New England or the Pacific Northwest, forests that take longer to regenerate.
The second thing is to ensure that the landowners who sell timber to the pellet companies continue to keep the production land as plantation forests. Abt says that as the demand for wood into energy increases, so will the price of wood. That would be an incentive for timber owners to keep their trees growing into adulthood, rather than turning the land itself into pasture for grazing or arable land for custom crops. season, or sell it to housing developers. ONE 2017 study by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory found that spread from residential areas and shopping centers could also endanger those forests. “Urbanization – currently the single largest cause of deforestation in the Southeast US – is more likely to expand into forested landscapes if forest landowners lack adequate income-generating opportunities for their timber,” the report said. show.
If the land from which the pellets were harvested was later converted to another use, any carbon released today by burning the pellets for electricity would not be recovered by those trees in the future. future. That means that the pellet industry’s claims of carbon neutrality can depend on the price North Carolina, Georgia or Mississippi owners can get for their land – something very important. difficult to predict for decades to come.
Using forests for energy may not be perfect, Abt says, but it’s a step in the right direction. He said that all solutions to the climate crisis need to be on the table. “As for wood coming from the south, I feel comfortable saying it is better than coal in most cases,” he said.
In places like the UK, where there is no domestic supply of natural gas, the burning of wood pellets has taken on a big impetus. In fact, Drax is based in the UK converted the island’s largest coal-fired power plant in North Yorkshire into a pellet plant in 2013. It now produces enough electricity for 4 million homes, with wood pellets imported from the US. Drax currently operates 13 tablet factories in the US and Canada, and is building three more in Arkansas, according to Ali Lewis, head of communications and public relations at Drax.
