Gov. Cooper should block another wood-pellet mill

In the wake of the U.S. pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement and recent federal attacks on the Clean Power Plan, Gov. Roy Cooper’s commitment to continue to embrace a clean energy future and ensure North Carolina does its part to address climate change is a reason for hope. But ultimately, it’s his actions that will matter more than his words and right now he’s missing the boat when it comes to our state’s forests.

From hurricanes to wildfires, the past two years have created proof in North Carolina for what scientists have been warning us about for years. We’ve put too much heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere and it’s causing global temperatures to rise, the catalyst behind more frequent and extreme storms and droughts. Climate change is no longer something that is likely to happen in the future. It’s already costing us billions of dollars while threatening the safety of our friends, neighbors and families.

The need to transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy sources such as solar and wind power to address climate change is common knowledge and is therefore at the forefront of our governor’s climate agenda. It’s true that we cannot solve the climate crisis without a rapid phase-out of fossil fuel use. However, it is less well-known that in order to meet the ambitious global goal set forth in the Paris Agreement to limit temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius over the next century, we must also scale up the protection of forests around the world, and that includes the forests in our own backyard.

When left standing, forests remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in plants and soils. They also play a vital role protecting our communities against the worst effects of storms by providing natural flood control. They help mitigate the severity of droughts by regulating and purifying drinking water supplies.

Yet, while Cooper has committed to ensure that North Carolina continues to do its part in the global effort to solve the climate crisis, he has yet to address a major global climate threat taking root across North Carolina: the rapidly expanding wood pellet industry. Over the past several years, with the full support of the previous governor, North Carolina’s forests have become a primary target for fuel to generate electricity in Europe.

Three large wood pellet export mills, which rely mostly on hardwoods, are now destroying tens of thousands of acres of forests a year to make wood pellets to power Europe. Claims that the wood pellets are made from “waste wood” have been debunked by countless on-the-ground investigations that have produced photographic evidence of trucks entering the gates of the wood pellet mills loaded with trees from clear-cut hardwood forests along our rivers.

The world’s largest wood pellet exporter, Enviva, is planning to build yet another wood pellet mill in Richmond County, this time under the watch of a governor who has publicly committed to advance a climate-friendly agenda in North Carolina. If this mill is constructed, it will tear down on average an additional 13,000 acres of forests every year. These are forests we should be protecting to keep our communities safe.

At the same time, the power plants burning our forests across the pond are belching up to 50 percent more carbon pollution per unit of energy generated than coal. Equally troublesome, the process of manufacturing trees into wood pellets releases harmful pollutants into the air, threatening the health of people living nearby.

Just like gas, coal and oil, wood pellets are a dirty and destructive fuel taking us backward on climate change. Yet, while Cooper has come out strongly against the Atlantic Coastal Pipeline and offshore oil drilling (two projects that threaten to exacerbate climate change), to date he has been silent about the wood pellet industry.

The air permit for the proposed new wood pellet mill was issued in 2015 without proper legal notice to the community that will be most directly affected. Though the land has been cleared, construction has not started. The opportunity for Cooper to revoke the permit for this facility is now. This climate catastrophe can be stopped, but not without swift action from Cooper.

This story was originally published October 24, 2017 at 11:25 AM with the headline "Gov. Cooper should block another wood-pellet mill."