Don’t let Washington forests be turned into pellets

This editorial was published in the The Seattle Times.

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A pair of proposals to build wood pellet-manufacturing plants in Hoquiam and Longview would bring a growing but controversial global industry to Washington. Countries including the U.K. and Japan have subsidized the burning of such pellets to produce electricity. That has created new demand in places rich in the raw material: forests, particularly those in North America.

The two companies that seek to open in Washington pledge to make pellets from leftover logging and sawmill material — branches, sawdust and other remnants. But of concern is the industry’s operations elsewhere have revealed the use of whole logs, and even old growth forests in British Columbia, to manufacture them. That track record should galvanize incoming Gov. Bob Ferguson and the state Legislature to ensure Washington has adequate protections to guarantee trees from coveted forestlands aren’t cut to be burned in power plants overseas.

Burning wood in furnaces to generate electricity — particularly within former coal-fired power plants — has become a key scheme for some countries in eliminating fossil fuel energy sources. U.K.-based Drax Global, which uses pellets to create 4% of England’s electricity in a single power plant, is behind the proposal to open a pellet plant in Longview. Both Drax and Massachusetts-based Pacific Northwest Renewable Energy, which aims to open in Hoquiam, aim to export 450,000 tons of pellets per year from Washington, once operational.

Drax says it’s helping solve a long-term problem: what to do with slash piles, or the low-value wood left behind after logging. Company officials argue this form of woody “biomass” is better burned as pellets to generate power than burned on the harvest site, as often happens. Because trees can be replanted, they also support the idea that new growth of trees can offset the emissions when wood is burned as pellets. This is a notion that many climate scientists dispute, arguing instead that burning wood is actually worse than combusting coal for climate change.

Drax and other wood pellet producers in the southeastern U.S. also vowed to use residual materials. But the Southern Environmental Law Center estimates that at least 100,000 acres of trees in the American south have been harvested for wood pellets.

In British Columbia, similar promises were made. But an investigation by CBC’s The Fifth Estate found whole logs — even ones harvested from virgin forests — were being made into pellets.

Pellet manufacturing plants have also faced a backlash from neighbors and environmental groups for the noise and air pollution they produce. The regional air agency regulating Drax’s Longview plant has also stopped development of the project after they found the company had begun construction without permits.

Washington already has rules that include distinguishing biomass from timber. And the high value of timber here should shield it from becoming pellets. But lawmakers should ensure there is sufficient transparency around the process collecting biomass and creating the pellets to safeguard the state’s forests.

The Times editorial board supports active management of working forestlands to improve their health, prevent wildfire and supply critical material for everything from utility poles to affordable housing. And in a world struggling with a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the 21 million acres of forests around the Evergreen State continue to hoover up carbon, a powerful defense against climate change. But state leaders should be wary of past examples where a precious resource was transported across oceans just to go up in smoke in power plants on the other side of the world.

TNS