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It has been advertised that planting trees is good way to capture and store CO2 and remove it from the atmosphere. Al Gore has recommended it. Individuals and businesses can reduce their carbon footprints by buying offsets from companies that, among other things, plant trees.
Then along comes the idea of pelletized wood.
The U.S. wood pellet business is booming, Russell Gold at the Wall St. Journal reports that European coal-fired utilities, facing regulations that require them to generate 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020, are switching from coal to wood pellets.
Burning wood pellets is considered carbon-neutral because the carbon released by burning pellets is equal to the carbon released when trees decay. Coal, on the other hand, stores carbon in the earth which it is only released when burned.
And, although wood pellets are more expensive then coal, they are far less expensive than other renewable alternatives such as solar or wind.
Wood pellets are made by compressing sawdust and wood chips into a pellet shape. Some of the largest producers are in the Southeast U.S. Now no one is pelletizing the old growth forests or slow-growing hardwoods. The trees used here are fast-growing and are traditionally used in paper-making processes.
The wood pellet industry is the one bright spot in the forest products business. Wood pellet demand has been growing for the last three years. Worldwide demand for wood pellets increased since 2006 from about 7 million tons to an estimated 18 million tons in 2010.
This market, however, has been totally created by governmental mandates. No utility would choose to burn pellets rather than coal were it not for the government regulations.
Whatever the reason, the Southeast forest owners, who are dealing with the slump in the housing and paper industries, are ready to take advantage of the wood pellet demand. “We are irrationally exuberant,” said Lee Laechelt, executive vice president of the the Alabama Forest Owners Association, quoted in the Wall St. Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124691728110402383.html