Wood pellets resemble manufactured hamster food -- just slightly larger. They’re cylindrical pieces of compressed wood that countries in Europe and Asia buy to fuel their power grids in place of coal.
Much of the metric tonnage of pellets going overseas are former North Carolina forestlands.
Why the big appetite for wood pellets abroad? Partly because the European Union’s climate and energy program still deems wood pellets carbon-neutral, renewable energy sources.
Public skepticism around these claims, though, is rising.
Enviva, the largest wood pellet manufacturer in the world, boasts four plants in North Carolina along with a distribution facility at the Wilmington port.
When concerns first arose among North Carolina environmentalists about the state’s pine and hardwood forests going into wood-chippers for shipment overseas, Enviva company officials assured critics that wood pellets are mostly made of waste: treetops, limbs, even sawdust. According to reporting from environmental journalist Justin Catanoso, also a professor of journalism at Wake Forest University, that claim is false.
After covering climate change-related issues for more than a decade, Catanoso has been chipping away at other Enviva company assertions, including the notion that Enviva only buys wood from areas that will be re-planted.
In a recent article for Mongabay, a conservation news organization, Catanoso seeks to explain why “a billion-dollar company with long-term contracts around the world, and where demand for pellets is at a record high, had lost more than $250 million this year and exhausted a $570 million line of credit.”
It’s an economic and environmental issue for the state of North Carolina, particularly in the east, so we hear from Justin Catanoso about what he’s learning.
We also explore his reporting process. As a professor of journalism, how does he think about the line between environmental advocacy and writing for news?
When there’s so much at stake, how does he vet anonymous sources?
He joined us courtesy of member station WFDD in Winston-Salem.
Links & Resources:
Justin Catanoso: https://www.justincatanoso.com/
Mongabay: Enviva, the world’s largest biomass energy company, is near collapse. Here’s why.
Whistleblower: Enviva claim of ‘being good for the planet… all nonsense’: https://news.mongabay.com/2022/12/envivas-biomass-lies-whistleblower-account/
Surging wood pellet industry threatens climate, say experts; Mongabay / Sharon Guynup
“Wood pellets draw fire as alternative to coal,” link to MIT study
Financial downturn at Enviva could mean trouble for biomass energy
