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Meanwhile, some EU nations are scrambling to find new sources of wood pellets to meet their sustainable energy pledges under the Paris agreement. The UK’s Drax, an Enviva pellet user , is positioning itself to greatly increase its pellet production in the U.S. South and maybe benefit from IRA subsidies.
Wood chips piled in mounds more than 6 meters high cover the lot of the Enviva wood pellet plant in Ahoskie, North Carolina. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay. When it built its plants, Enviva planned to mostly use hardwood trees to make pellets. But when the price of hardwood rose sharply, the firm to control costs shifted to processing 80% pine and 20% hardwoods, instead of the opposite. But pine resins and added moisture quickly corroded and degraded the carbon steel equipment, especially in Southampton, Virginia, a plant Enviva said it has partially shuttered.
Felled hardwood and pine cut from a dense forest and piled high on a 52-acre lot in Edenton, North Carolina. The trees were later ground into wood chips, loaded into trucks and moved to the Enviva pellet plant in Ahoskie, North Carolina. Enviva had planned to use mostly hardwoods to supply its Southeast U.S. pellet mills, but company insiders say the current mix is 80% pine and 20% hardwood, with pine resin and moisture damaging facility machinery. Image courtesy of the Dogwood Alliance.
According to environmental groups, Enviva is seeking subsidies under the IRA from the Department of Energy and Treasury Department to help pay for its new plant in Alabama and restart construction in Mississippi — plants with the potential to each make 1 million tons of pellets annually, far more than existing plants.U.S. Rep.
“We know these new U.S. subsidies are appealing to the biomass industry,” said Adam Colette, a program manager with Dogwood Alliance. “As forest campaigners, we’re now telling officials in Washington, ‘Let’s not make the same mistake as Europe.” Burning wood currently makes up 60% of the EU’s renewable energy mix — though the emission cuts claimed for wood exist only on paper not in reality, say environmental analysts.