Wood Pelletizing Plant in North Carolina
Wood pellets were supposed to be a green energy.
And President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was meant to be good for America’s air, forests, and rivers.
But environmentalists say government-subsidized wood pellet production is wreaking havoc across the South
Swathes of forests have been chopped down to make pellets for power stations in Europe.
And residents living near those plants say they leave their air dustier and people sicker.
Scot Quaranda, a spokesman for the Dogwood Alliance, says big business and government subsidies have wrought disastrous consequences.
‘The whole reason for IRA subsidies was to stimulate the production of advanced technology to stop climate change‘ Quaranda told DailyMail.com.
‘But this wood pellet industry is just a way of sneaking in their old caveman ways and pretending it’s something new.’
Wood pellet production has skyrocketed across the US South, fueled by demand overseas.
After the European Union classified biomass as renewable energy in 2009, the Southeast’s annual wood pellet capacity increased from about 300,000 tons to more than 7.3 million tons by 2017, say University of Missouri researchers.
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