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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14399423/Miliband-tree-massacre-drax-energy-pellets.html
Since it started importing huge quantities of pellets in 2012, Drax has relied on America's South for most of them, not only because it has vast tracts of forest close to coastal ports for easy export but also because these conservative states impose few of the regulations that protect woodland in the UK and the rest of Europe.
Logging companies traditionally cut down only the biggest trees as they are most suitable for the building and furniture industries, leaving the smaller ones to keep growing. They also left the ecologically-precious 'wetland hardwood' varieties such as cypress because they were too gnarled to become planks or tables.
Now, there's so much demand for wood that will simply be pulped for pellets, everything is worth cutting down. Environmentalists acknowledge that any really high-quality hardwood may still be sent to a sawmill but the rest becomes biomass. Sometimes, they say, an entire clearcut is turned into pellets. […]
Everyone I spoke to in North Carolina admitted they were slightly shocked that 'tree-loving' and climate change-aware Britain, of all countries, had facilitated the biomass industry –adopting renewable energy accounting rules that didn't account either for the forests being lost in the US or the carbon emissions from burning the wood.
Derb Carter, a senior lawyer at the Southern Environmental Law Centre, told me he had repeatedly visited the UK to explain the situation to government officials.
‘There was this assumption that surely the US regulates how forests are managed to protect the public interest,' he said. The Brits were 'surprised', he said, when he explained that in southern states like North Carolina, there was nothing of the sort.
Since it started importing huge quantities of pellets in 2012, Drax has relied on America's South for most of them, not only because it has vast tracts of forest close to coastal ports for easy export but also because these conservative states impose few of the regulations that protect woodland in the UK and the rest of Europe.
Logging companies traditionally cut down only the biggest trees as they are most suitable for the building and furniture industries, leaving the smaller ones to keep growing. They also left the ecologically-precious 'wetland hardwood' varieties such as cypress because they were too gnarled to become planks or tables.
Now, there's so much demand for wood that will simply be pulped for pellets, everything is worth cutting down. Environmentalists acknowledge that any really high-quality hardwood may still be sent to a sawmill but the rest becomes biomass. Sometimes, they say, an entire clearcut is turned into pellets. […]
Everyone I spoke to in North Carolina admitted they were slightly shocked that 'tree-loving' and climate change-aware Britain, of all countries, had facilitated the biomass industry –adopting renewable energy accounting rules that didn't account either for the forests being lost in the US or the carbon emissions from burning the wood.
Derb Carter, a senior lawyer at the Southern Environmental Law Centre, told me he had repeatedly visited the UK to explain the situation to government officials.
‘There was this assumption that surely the US regulates how forests are managed to protect the public interest,' he said. The Brits were 'surprised', he said, when he explained that in southern states like North Carolina, there was nothing of the sort.