Britain destroyed most of its forests hundreds of years ago.
Alongside a myriad of other uses, countless trees were felled to fuel iron
smelters and build battleships. At present only about 13 %
of the UK’s land area is wooded, compared to a world average of 31 %.[1]
Needless to say, when the UK began to convert coal-burning power plants to
biomass, we were never going to be burning British trees. Even if the entire
output of the UK’s forestry industry were to be poured into Drax’s maw, this
would not be enough to cover its consumption.
In countries blessed with greater forest coverage, canny entrepreneurs
have seized the opportunity created by European energy policies and have
rapidly built up a massive pellet-producing industry. This is most striking in
the south-eastern US, the source of 65 % of Drax’s pellets in 2019. Twenty-three
wood pellet mills now operate here, three of them owned by Drax itself. Enviva,
the world’s largest producer of wood pellets and Drax’s biggest supplier, has acquired
or built nine pellet mills in this area, all of them since the passing
of the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive in 2009. Several more mills, with even
greater capacity, are at various stages of the planning process.[2]
What exactly goes into these pellet mills? As mentioned in
my previous post, Drax claims that its pellets are “largely made up of low-grade wood produced
as a by-product of the production and processing of higher value wood products,
like lumber and furniture”. Biomass UK, the trade association for the industry,
similarly talks about “residues”. This is in fact nonsense: residues from the
timber industry such as bark and twigs may be used as fuel in pellet
processing, but they do not produce high-quality pellets, and there is ample
documentary evidence that wood pellets are mostly or entirely made from whole
trees.[3]
Impressive aerial photographs of pellet plants show thousands of tree trunks stacked
outside, waiting to be processed.[4]
The other major claim made by Drax is that its pellets come
from “sustainably managed working forests”. What does this mean? I can imagine
two scenarios for sustainably managed forests: one is established, natural
forests, from which a small number of trees are selectively felled without any
major disturbance to the overall forest environment; the other is pine
plantations so vast that the quantity felled is constantly replenished by new
trees. In fact neither scenario represents the real situation. The demand for
wood pellets, driven by the fashion for “low-carbon” biomass (see my previous post for the truth behind this), is so great and has arisen so suddenly that a
careful, one-tree-at-a-time type of forestry has no hope of keeping up, and the
output of established plantations has also been outpaced. Instead what has
happened, and is still happening, is the clear-felling (or in some countries the
increasingly rapacious “selective” felling) of natural, diverse old-growth
forests. If these are replaced at all, it is with quick-growing monocultures of
pine.
This is a tragedy on a huge scale, which is being played out
in numerous locations around the world. In the south-eastern US, substantial
tracts of mature hardwood forest, known as “bottomland” forest, have been
destroyed to feed the pellet mills. These are deciduous forests in low-lying,
frequently flooded land near rivers – imagine tall trees with buttressed trunks,
rising out of the still, dark water of wetlands. These forests are complex and immensely
valuable ecosystems, home to an enormous variety of plants and animals. Indeed
this area, the North American Coastal Plain, has been declared a World
Biodiversity Hotspot. Bottomland forest also provides essential “ecosystem
services” to humans, reducing the risk of flooding, and improving water quality.[5]
It is estimated that 80 % of these forests have disappeared in the last two
hundred years. Most of what remains belongs to private landowners, and only 10
% of it is protected. [6]
It is this fragmentation and lack of protection that has
allowed Enviva and other pellet manufacturers to prosper. Enviva, like Drax,
makes a very persuasive attempt to greenwash its activities. Its stated purpose
is to “displace coal, grow more trees, and fight climate change”. “Climate
change,” it announces, “is the greatest challenge of our time. Enviva was
founded to be part of the solution.” Its website shows an idyllic image of forest-clad
hills bathed in sunlight, and its argument is essentially that if Enviva were
not there to buy wood, nobody would have any incentive to grow trees. By providing
a market for “low-value wood”, and insisting that the landowners “commit to
return their land to forest after harvest”, Enviva says it is preventing this
land from being converted to other uses. “Keeping forests as forests” is one of
its mantras.
This is an unbelievably cynical claim. Much of the hardwood
forest now being clear-felled to feed Enviva’s mills consists of pockets of woodland
that have been left standing by generations of farmers, on the low-lying edges
of their farms, because the land is not viable for agricultural use. So in many
cases there is little danger of it being cleared to grow crops. Nor are these
remote tracts of swampland desirable real estate for shopping malls and golf
courses. In other words, if it weren’t for the pellet industry there is every
chance that these trees would remain standing, as they have for many decades.
Furthermore, Enviva’s claims about “keeping forests as
forests” are based on the assumption that any kind of forest cover is equally
valuable. This is simply not the case. A mixed-species, self-regenerating natural
forest that has been growing for many decades or centuries cannot be “replaced”
in any meaningful way by a single-species plantation which will be felled as
soon as it is viable, after as little as fifteen years.[7]
The range of plant life that thrives in a natural forest – the moss, ferns,
flowers and creepers – need many years of undisturbed existence to develop. Fungi,
insects, birds and mammals need a range of shelter types and food sources that
only an established forest can provide – including dead and decaying trees. A
tree farm is not a forest – or at best it’s a “fake forest”.[8]
Quite apart from the loss of irreplaceable forest habitats, the
wood pellet industry causes severe local pollution. This is hardly surprising
given the processes involved. The tree trunks are delivered to the plant by
heavy logging trucks, then debarked and shredded in hammermills, a noisy process
that goes on around the clock. The next step is to dry the wood, using heat
produced by burning wood and bark. This combustion generates greenhouse gases,
while the wood chips emit harmful VOCs (volatile organic compounds) as they
dry, as well as at other stages in the process. A report in 2018 found that “The
21 wood pellet mills exporting to Europe emit a total of 16,000 tons of health-threatening
air pollutants per year, including more than 2,500 tons of particulate matter
(soot), 3,200 tons of nitrogen oxides, 2,100 tons of carbon monoxide, and 7,000
tons of volatile organic compounds. These plants also emit 3.1 million tons of
greenhouse gases annually”.[9]
People living near the mills are affected by noise and dust
pollution, are unable to sit on their own front porches without wearing face
masks,[10]
and suffer from an increase in respiratory diseases.[11]
The presence of the mills exacerbates existing social inequalities: most are
located in poor communities with a high proportion of minority ethnic groups,
and their operations – while purporting to bring jobs and prosperity – in fact
diminish the quality of life of these communities.[12]
A number of grassroots organizations have sprung up to combat this polluting
industry, and in partnership with larger NGOs they have won some victories. In
2019, for example, Enviva was forced to install equipment to reduce air
pollution in its wood pellet plant in Richmond County, North Carolina. In
February 2021 Drax was fined 2.5 million US dollars for major environmental
violations at its pellet plant in Mississippi. This is an encouraging result,
but the fine has been aptly described as “a drop in the bucket compared to the
2 million [GBP] per day the UK government hands the company in the form of
biomass subsidies”.[13]
Campaigners on both sides of the Atlantic are working
tirelessly to try to stop this madness. Key players in the US are Dogwood
Alliance, the Southern Environmental Law Center, and the Natural Resources
Defense Council. In the UK, the campaign group most strongly focused on this
issue is Biofuelwatch. These UK and US organizations have joined forces in the
campaign Cut Carbon Not Forests, which urges the public to “stop the UK from
harming our planet’s forests” by calling for a end to biomass electricity
subsidies. Such efforts to raise public awareness can bear fruit: in 2020 an
opinion poll in the Netherlands showed that 98 % of citizens favoured ending
subsidies for biomass, and in February 2021, the Dutch government agreed to
reject future subsidies.[14]
Could this happen in the UK too?
Existing natural forests and wetlands are not renewable;
they are irreplaceable. Not only are they vital for the protection of
biodiversity, they are also our first line of defence against climate change. Burning
them in the name of sustainability makes no sense at all. We should certainly
be planting new trees – both to supply our other timber needs (more on this
another time!) and to increase permanent forest cover – but we shouldn’t kid
ourselves that this will make up for destroying mature trees and all the life
that depends on them. A fundamentally good intention – that of weaning
ourselves off fossil fuels and nuclear power – has led to horrifying
consequences. The mass production and consumption of wood pellets is bad for
local communities and environments, bad for biodiversity, and disastrous from a
climate change perspective. It has to stop.
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| Neil Wellons on Flickr, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/legalcode |
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| Wndy on Flickr, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode |
Special thanks to Jack Spruill, who first drew my attention to this issue and has given me an insight into the situation in North Carolina, as well as making helpful suggestions on this and my previous post.
[1] https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/statistics/forestry-statistics/forestry-statistics-2018/international-forestry/forest-cover-international-comparisons/
[2] https://www.southernenvironment.org/uploads/images/SELC_WoodPelletExportMap_2020_1208_map+table.pdf
[11] https://www.greenbiz.com/article/europes-wood-pellet-market-worsening-environmental-racism-american-south
