En A1 pine 100 % Price: Big bag 140 eur/t + transport. “Governments, particularly British governments — they hate changing their minds,” said Kelvin Hopkins, a veteran Independent lawmaker from Luton, about an hour north of London. In light of the alternative, Brack said, “it doesn’t make sense to pay for more biomass.”. Built with the Largo WordPress Theme from the Institute for Nonprofit News.

A top United Kingdom diplomat was in Chicago this week discussing climate change and other clean energy topics with Mayor Rahm Emanuel. This argument is employed by the industry on both sides of the Atlantic and is echoed in many halls of government.

“It has to be a both/and,” said Rita Frost, campaigns director with the Dogwood Alliance. “There’s still the opportunity for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage,” he said. They're degraded.

That’s in part, he says, because it doesn’t give bioenergy credit for being a 24-7 source of power. The British government all but ignores this figure, and Drax isn’t bothered by it. “By that time, if we haven’t improved the situation,” said Alex Mason, senior policy officer for the World Wildlife Fund in Brussels, “we could have totally screwed the climate, and biomass could have played a big part in that.”. “We have to match the campaigning in the places where we have the political opportunities.”. Estonia is beginning to see the cost of wood pellets. Q&A: Top U.K. diplomat meets with Chicago mayor to discuss climate change, Brexit and smart cities, Massachusetts seeks solutions to expand access to energy efficiency dollars, Q&A: NAACP climate justice organizer on ‘black to green’ employment pipeline, Colorado utilities fear wildfire risk — and liability — amid warming climate, New Hampshire utilities propose major expansion of energy efficiency programs, Massachusetts transportation grants emphasize partnerships to cut emissions, Grid congestion a growing barrier for wind, solar developers in MISO territory, Smart meters giving Missouri customers incentive to save energy during peaks, Michigan can’t wait until 2050 to reach zero emissions, environmentalists say. hide caption. And it is pushing up prices for that wood.

The change, he beamed, “was a fantastic victory from our point of view.”. A lawsuit filed against the European Union’s latest renewable energy directive — which still counts biomass as carbon neutral — is generally considered a long shot, and the next renewable energy policy isn’t scheduled to take effect until 2030. “They rolled out a policy that is forward-looking,” Stashwick said, “and quite conspicuously leaves out all of the bioenergy currently being produced in the country.”. Straw briquettes | Turning ancient forests into wood pellets is putting the country’s tourism and climate commitments at risk. Last year, Drax reported these life-cycle emissions as 130 kilograms per megawatt-hour, compared to a limit of 285. The company hopes the unit can be perfected and scaled up to capture enough carbon for its bioenergy to meet the new contracts for difference standard. If the government adjusted the sustainability criteria for these credits to match those under the contracts for difference, Drax’s bioenergy would no longer be deemed renewable — and almost certainly wouldn’t pencil out. Drax is currently experimenting with its own BECCS unit, which now captures just one ton of carbon dioxide a day — the first of its kind on the continent and one of a few such projects in the world. “British politics is on hold,” he said in an interview at his Westminster office. They've been expanding rapidly across the southeastern United States, and they're provoking heated debate over what deserves to be called "renewable fuel.". There's a lot of pine, but also hardwoods: poplar, sweet gum, elm and oak. Enviva also views BECCS as integral to its future. Dan Charles/NPR First, before they were cut, those big trees were capturing tons of carbon dioxide from the air every year.

In fact, Colette says, the soil here is still probably releasing carbon four years after the forest was cleared. The Southeast U.S. exports more than 6 million tons of wood pellets a year, primarily to the United Kingdom, Denmark, Italy and Belgium. North Carolina has emerged as the epicenter of the region’s fight over wood pellets, a popular substitute for coal in European power plants that critics say is making climate catastrophe worse, not better. Four thousand miles across the Atlantic, a rail line from a North Sea port to Selby, England, transports pellets along the final leg of their global journey to the largest bioenergy station in the world. Certificated wood pellets from Russia 7. To explain why, Adam Colette, from the group Dogwood Alliance, takes me to a patch of land near the town of Williamston, North Carolina.

Wood pellet export to Europe. Anti-coal and biomass campaigners protest outside Drax's annual general meeting in York in April 2017. But many who are skeptical of bioenergy are equally skeptical of BECCS.

They hate losing face.”. “‘Scrap subsidies’ has been our campaign slogan,” said Pete Deane, another Biofuelwatch volunteer. And while the science around forest carbon accounting remains the subject of debate, there’s little doubt: Trees do remove carbon from the atmosphere, and some types of wood — such as sawmill waste or underbrush susceptible to burning up in a forest fire — could serve the climate well if they were used to produce electricity. Drax and Enviva also face increasing pressure from U.S. activists who have questioned their claims of sustainability, in some cases documenting whole forests being clear-cut to supply pellet mills. Supporters of biomass as an energy source, though, argue that it's a renewable resource. Independent forestry experts, however, say that's not completely true.

Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, Elizabeth Ouzts has reported on the state’s clean energy transition for the Energy News Network since 2016. And it chose to track those emissions by fluctuations in forest cover, not by molecules measured at the biomass smokestack. "The carbon benefits are enormous," says Seth Ginther, executive director of the U.S. Industrial Pellet Association, which represents wood pellet companies. Contact Us

“Like the Lorax, we speak for the trees,” Rachel Weber, a campaigner for the Asheville-based advocacy group Dogwood Alliance, told the crowd, among millions worldwide who’d left their jobs and classrooms that Friday. Then it was logged. In 2009, it set a goal of 20% renewable energy by 2020 and deemed biomass as emissions-free as solar or wind.

The standard for fuel contracts starting in October 2020 is 29 kilograms — currently an unachievable bar for imported pellets.

Here, British power company Drax will burn them to create enough electricity to power more homes than in all of London. Across the pond, however, the politics are starting to shift.

As the forests grow back, they'll recapture that carbon dioxide from the air and store it in their branches and roots. A load of wood enters a wood pellet plant operated by Enviva Partners in Sampson County, N.C. Enviva is one of the largest producers of wood pellets in the U.S. On a soggy field in eastern North Carolina, Jason Tew and his crew of loggers are cutting trees and sorting logs into piles based on their size and the type of wood.

Smokestack emissions are still marked down as zero, and more carbon is captured than is emitted in the making and transporting of pellets.

The pellet export industry in the United States has boomed in recent years, driven by European Union member states seeking to meet aggressive renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction targets. © Copyright Ukrainian Biofuel Portal 2007-2020, Sawdust briquettes production business plan, Straw pellet producers in Ukraine 2008-2009, Husk sunflower pellet producers in Ukraine, European Importers Database of Ukrainian Wood pellets 2012, Husk sunflower pellet suppliers in Ukraine 2010, Wood pellet suppliers from Ukraine 2008-2009, Sawdust briquette suppliers in Ukraine 2010, Certified pellets from a manufacturer, Poland, A1 prime wood pellets available 15 kg each bag, Pellets Plus A1 - made from debarked spruce sawdust, White Pine, Spruce Pelletes, Peeled Crust 6mm, Wood pellets of various grades are available, Offer high quality fuel pellets (spruce, pine), Offering 100% spruce ENPlus pellets A2 from Ukraine, FCA, High-quality wood pellets (6/8 mm) high performance, no additives, the type of pellets you are interested in. Drax and Lynemouth will burn imported pellets through 2027, and MGT Teesside will burn them through 2034. A second coal-to-biomass plant near the Scottish border, Lynemouth, only runs on American imports of 1.5 million tons of pellets each year, most from Enviva’s mills in the southeastern United States.

Despite setbacks in North Carolina, many still view the state as their best bet within the region of curbing the production of pellets on the supply side.

Manufacturing wood pellets and shipping them across the Atlantic creates carbon pollution. “It looks like they’re losing face. "The landowner is getting some value [from wood pellets], we're getting some production, it's just an all-round good deal," he says. Jason Tew is a logger in eastern North Carolina. To meet the energy-focused Kyoto targets, coal-dependent member nations like Britain began offering financial incentives to coal plants to convert to bioenergy.

"These are lands that are being harvested for sawtimber, for housing, for paper and for other things," he says. Britain’s “contracts for difference” program illustrates these dynamics. Terms of Use | The world’s largest pellet customer, the United Kingdom, plans to phase out the generous subsidies that caused the industry to balloon in the first place.

“It’s not like they have a big runway for significant cost reductions.”, By contrast, prices for energy sources with relatively high upfront costs but no fuel charges are plummeting. As a result, the EU considers it "renewable," just like wind or solar energy. Using annual filings and government data, the British nonprofit Biofuelwatch estimates the British government spends about £1.3 billion each year to allow these plants to operate, or about $1.7 billion. That’s why back in the United States, many wood pellet foes still see changing British subsidies as their best opportunity in the short term to drive down international demand. "The European Union literally just passed something known as the Renewal Energy Directive II, and sustainable biomass was unequivocally included as part of what can meet renewable energy goals," Ginther says.

A scientists’ panel advising the United Nations on the framework made two crucial decisions that sparked the global pellet trade that followed. "We would have normally hauled that back in the woods and just left it. In fact, the “carbon neutral” label stems from a simple case of incomplete accounting. "None of it's ever been counted ... either in the U.S. or in Europe," he says. FAQ | Current contracts for difference can’t be renegotiated under British law — leaving Lynemouth and MGT Teesside locked in to burn 2.5 million tons of American pellets each year. Burning wood, also called biomass, releases lots of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas. hide caption. Offering 100% spruce ENPlus pellets A2 from Ukraine, FCA 9.