The industrial wood pellet industry in the U.S. manufactures and exports wood pellets to burn in power plants to produce electricity, and this has been praised as a climate solution, a source of renewable energy. The truth is far different: the wood pellet industry has induced logging, spewed air pollution, and harmed human health in the Southeastern United States for over a decade. The industry’s sights are now set on the west coast, and the same claims are being made—that burning trees instead of coal is a renewable, climate-friendly form of energy. It’s just not so.
First and foremost, burning industrial wood pellets releases more greenhouse gases than burning coal. How can this be climate-friendly, I hear you ask. It isn’t. This vast amount of greenhouse gas emissions from the industry are not counted by consuming countries due to an acknowledged accounting loophole that allows governments to count none of the emissions from burning wood against their own greenhouse gas emission targets. In 2021, more than 500 scientists and economists signed a letter to President Biden and leaders of the major biomass-consuming countries, pleading with them to end this irrational carbon accounting system.
Moreover, when wood pellets are manufactured and burned, the carbon stored in the trees that serve as feedstock is lost for decades. Older trees store significant amounts of carbon, and trees in a cut and re-grow cycle cannot grow fast enough to make up for the carbon released during manufacturing and burning.
Nor do these manufacturing plants represent a clean industry. Making industrial wood pellets releases hazardous air pollutants, wood dust, and fine particles that harm the health of local people and communities. The noise from these plants and their “hammermills” is deafening, creating noise pollution all day and all night long. These plants also harm fish and wildlife. Particulate matter and dust deposited on tide flats, shorelines, and in the water harms birds, fish, wildlife, and aquatic ecosystems. Cutting down forests for wood pellets destroys important fish and wildlife habitat.
And inevitably, these plants lead to more logging. Industrial wood pellet plants in other areas have led to increased logging and deforestation — they cannot produce the amounts of pellets they need for export using wood waste and sawdust alone.
Unfortunately, taxpayers are subsidizing this false solution. Many of these pellet plants have received federal and state government grants for the supposed innovation of turning forests into fuel, with the U.S. Forest Service giving $10 million in 2023 alone. Taxpayer money should not support this harmful industry, nor should public money and private investment be diverted away from real climate solutions—ones that don’t emit greenhouse gases, keep carbon safely stored in trees and forests, and protect people’s health.
