http://www.mountainx.com/article/50340/Dogwood-Alliance-launches-campaign-against-logging-for-energy
By David Forbes on 05/29/2013 04:05 AM
From the Dogwood Alliance:
May 28, 2013 – Southern forests are being burned for electricity, and a
new campaign announced today aims to put an end to it. Dogwood Alliance
and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have launched “Our
Forests Aren’t Fuel” to raise awareness of an alarming and
rapidly-growing practice of logging forests and burning the trees as
fuel to generate electricity
At the forefront of burning trees logged from Southern forests for
electricity are some of Europe’s largest utility companies, including
Drax, Electrobel and RWE. Rising demand by these companies has resulted
in the rapid expansion of wood pellet exports from the Southern US. The
American South is now the largest exporter of wood pellets in the
world. Recent analyses indicate there are twenty-four pellet facilities
currently operating in the Southeast, and sixteen additional plants
planned for construction in the near-term. Market analysts project that
annual exports of wood pellets from the South will more than triple from
1.3 million tons in 2012 to nearly 6 million tons by 2015. All of the
South’s largest domestic utilities, including Dominion Resources and
Duke Energy, are also beginning to burn wood with plans for expansion in
the future.
“This rapidly expanding trend of burning trees for energy will both
accelerate climate change and destroy forests,” said Danna Smith,
Executive Director of Dogwood Alliance. “Southern forests not only
protect us from climate change, but protect our drinking water, provide
habitat for wildlife and contribute to our quality of life. We need
these companies to stop burning trees for electricity and embrace a
clean energy future that helps to protect, rather than destroy forests.”
“With the advancement of clean, renewable energy alternatives, the
growing practice of burning trees for electricity is a major step in the
wrong direction,” said Debbie Hammel, Senior Resource Specialist of the
Natural Resources Defense Council. “Our Forests Aren’t Fuel lets the
public know about the extent of this ecological devastation and calls on
utilities to end the practice. It’s an even dirtier form of energy
production than burning fossil fuels, it destroys valuable southern
ecosystems, and it isn’t necessary.”
Energy from burning trees – or biomass – has been widely promoted as a
form of renewable energy along with technologies like solar, wind, and
geothermal. Over the past two years, however, mounting scientific
evidence has discredited biomass from forests as a clean, renewable
fuel. Recent scientific reports document that burning whole trees to
produce electricity actually increases greenhouse gas pollution in the
near-term compared with fossil fuels and emits higher levels of multiple
air pollutants. This fact, combined with the negative impacts to
water resources and wildlife associated with industrial logging have
discredited whole trees as a clean fuel source. But current European
and U.S. renewable energy policies and subsidies encourage the burning
of trees as a “renewable” source of energy for power generation, helping
to facilitate the rapid increase in demand for trees from Southern
forests to burn in power plants.
Consequently, a new industry is spawning in the South. Companies like
Maryland-based Enviva, the South’s largest pellet manufacturer, are
grinding whole trees into wood pellets to be burned in power stations in
Europe while also supplying wood to domestic utilities like Dominion
Resources. New evidence that Enviva may be relying at least in part on
the harvesting of wetland forests has recently emerged. Georgia Biomass,
a wholly-owned subsidiary of the German utility RWE Innogy, is also
manufacturing millions of tons of wood pellets annually to be burned in
European biomass facilities.
“Our Forests Aren’t Fuel” organizers reveal the scope and scale of the
growing biomass industry through a series of case studies on the
campaign website that include wood pellet manufacturers, domestic
utilities, and European utilities. Particular emphasis is placed on the
following companies:
· Enviva - one of the largest manufacturers of wood pellets in
the U.S. and Europe, with manufacturing facilities and partner
facilities in Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia. The Bethesda,
Maryland-based company has an annual production capacity of more than
590,000 tons. It also operates a deep water terminal at the Port of
Chesapeake, which has the capacity to receive and store up to three
million tons of woody biomass annually. Much of its product is sold and
shipped to European utilities, like Drax. Leftover biomass “residues,”
like tree tops and limbs, are sold to domestic utilities, like Dominion
Resources.
· Drax – major United Kingdom-based utility that recently
shifted focus from co-firing biomass in coal power plants to full
conversion of its largest plant to biomass. Drax has begun building
pellet mills directly through its wholly owned subsidiary Drax Biomass.
In December, 2012, Drax announced it will build Amite BioEnergy pellet
mill in Gloster, Mississippi, and Morehouse BioEnergy in Bastrop,
Louisiana, to supply wood pellets for use in its power plants, with
production set to begin in 2014.
· Dominion Resources – the Richmond, Virginia-based utility
recently launched several biomass operations that could well rely on
whole trees in the near future. Its 83 megawatt plant in Pittsylvania,
Virginia, is one of the largest biomass power stations on the east
coast. Dominion is also converting three existing peak power coal-fired
power stations into full-time biomass-burning facilities. The utility
currently sources much of its biomass material as “residues” from wood
pellet manufacturers like Enviva that export the bulk of its product to
European markets. Should the supply of these residuals become limited,
Dominion’s operations could increasingly rely on burning whole trees.
Full case studies for companies driving the biomass industry can be
found on the “Our Forests Aren’t Fuel” website,
http://www.dogwoodalliance.org/campaigns/bioenergy/, along with
recommended actions for those concerned about losing southern forests
for electricity, and a list of more than 70 supporting environmental
groups.
