Katan, NRC 2 Dec 2019: evidence that pellets are made from trees

This Tuesday [Dec 3, 2019], the Dutch Senate will discuss the Coal Act.[1]That states that within five to ten years power stations will no longer be allowed to burn coal because of the CO₂emissions. Energy company RWE is therefore switching to biomass for its power stations. For this they use compressed wood sticks, so-called pellets. Opponents say that these are made from whole trees. Because wood emits more CO2 during burning than coal, the problem becomes worse. No, the proponents say, pellets are made from waste that is otherwise burned anyway, so that CO2 does not count.[2]What are pellets really made of?

Video’s abound that show how giant machines cut entire forests in the US. A stream of trucks then drives the logs to the pellet factory.[3]But perhaps those videos are selective and all show one and the same forest. We need quantitative data from reliable sources. Those exist.
The largest pellet manufacturer in the world, the American company Enviva, reports every quarter what their pellets are made of.[4]On average, that is four fifth trees and one fifth waste.[5]Half of the trees consist of pine and the rest of hardwood, especially oak.[6] The RISI report for the American wood and paper industry reported five years ago that three quarters of American pellets were made from trees.[7]That agrees with the Enviva figures. Proponents say no one makes pellets from whole trees, because trees yield more when converted to sawn wood. But the million-dollar subsidies for biomass have made that obsolete. According to the RISI report, the market price of freshly harvested trees at that time was $11 per green tonne, but pellet manufacturers offered $ 26 to $ 53 per tonne.[8]The price was boosted by the subsidies.[9]If energy companies receive no subsidies, they cannot even meet the manufacturing costs of pellets, so production stops and the trees remain in the forest. In the Netherlands, the import of pellets also goes up and down with the subsidies. That is why the Netherlands did not import pellets from the US in 2018, as Minister Wiebes recently stated in the House.[10]In 2018 we were just in between two subsidy rounds. What Wiebes did not say is that imports are now rising rapidly thanks to new billion-dollar subsidies.[11]
Proponents say that pellets are made from waste. However, the reports from pellet producer Enviva show that less and less waste goes into their pellets and more and more trees. In 2016, pellets consisted of 25% waste and now 18%. If there is a shortage of waste, it becomes even more unlikely that our power stations will run on wood waste. Indeed, a report from the University of Montana shows that in the woody Northwestern states of the US. hardly any waste wood is available.[12]It is all used up for paper and board, chipboard or as a fuel in the sawmills. Mechanization and rationalization result in less and less wood waste; in 1965, 14% of the harvested forest ended up as waste and, fifty years later, only 3%. That explains why Enviva is putting more and more trees into its pellets. The pellet manufacturers do offer the highest price for what is left of waste, so for chipboard, new trees are now being felled. Converting waste to biomass therefore indirectly leads to harvesting of more forest.
The whole idea that modern coal-fired power stations can run on wood waste is nonsense anyway. Bark, leaves and branches contain too much ash and dirt that clogs the ovens; large power plants require clean tree trunks![13]That is why a Belgian pellet manufacturer emphasized in a hilarious PR film that their pellets are mainly made from logs - from Dutch forests.[14]
American pellets are also mainly made from tree trunks. Reports from the EU,[15]the US Department of Agriculture,[16]Yale University[17]and the English Royal Institute for International Affairs[18]confirm that.
And pellets from the Baltic states, are those made from wood waste? Estonia houses the second pellet manufacturer in the world, Graanul. It also processes entire trees. The amount of waste that is released during regular timber harvesting is far too little to satisfy the fuel requirements of coal-fired power stations. It takes a forest five times the size of the whole of Estonia to provide enough waste wood to fire three coal-fired power plants in the Netherlands.[19]On satellite photos, forests in Estonia are declining rapidly[20], eyewitnesses report about cutting of primeval forests, and recently 35 forest protection organizations from Estonia and the US wrote a well-documented letter begging minister Wiebes and the House of Representatives to stop this.[21]
The only way to produce enough pellets is massive cutting of trees. How can producers claim that their pellets are made from waste? Here is how this works: if the price for wood for pellets is high due to the subsidies, the forest owner harvests an entire forest tract, removes a number of straight trees for saw wood and names the rest 'waste'. Pellets are made from this and are sold for good money.
Without the subsidies, that forest tract would have remained standing, but because of subsidies, the demand for pellets is now rising faster than the demand for saw wood.
A final argument for the sustainability of biomass is that it is certified with strict certification systems. But that is also not correct. First of all, the official Dutch regulations allow biomass to be made from trees.[22]In addition, the certification is a jungle (the SER Council is supposed to bring order into this next year). In the meantime, in order to keep supplies going, the Netherlands allows wood with less sustainable certificates.[23]
If the law banning coal leads to coal being replaced by biomass, it will lead to more instead of less CO2 emissions and to the destruction of forests. That is why a prohibition on wood burning should be coupled with the coal law. That means pulling down coal-fired power stations and huge expenses. I wish the Senate much wisdom.