Readers of this column may recall that I own 16 acres of property about 2 miles west of Carrboro that I operate as a hobby farm/pollinator reserve. Approximately 14 of these acres are wooded. Prior to 1992, this land was part of a 50-acre farm. There are stands of pine trees that have grown on the level areas that had been farmed prior to 1992, and there are mixed hardwoods on the sections that were too steep to have been used for crops. For the past several years I have received a steady stream of solicitations from timber companies asking if I would like for them to come harvest the trees. I have no interest in this, but let me try to explain why they do. It has a lot to do with wood pellets.
Wood pellets are made by pressing sawdust into little cylinders that are approximately one inch long and a quarter inch in diameter. 
Pressing the pellets into these cylinders creates friction that heats the wood to a high temperature. The high temperature provides two advantages; it helps to dry the pellets, which improves their quality as a fuel source, and it causes the lignin within the wood to melt into a liquid, which then glues the pellets together as they are cooled. The timber industry has been making wood pellets for decades, as a way of monetizing the sawdust produced in lumber production. In addition to the sawdust created by cutting logs, the timber companies often grind the branches and twigs from the trees into sawdust in order to incorporate them into the wood pellets as well.
Since wood pellets are small and of uniform size, they can be fed into a burner at a controlled rate from a feed hopper. This is far more convenient in a variety of applications than using firewood. For home heating, a wood pellet stove can operate like a furnace, with the temperature of the house being used to control the feed rate of the pellets. On a much larger scale, the ability to convey wood pellets with automated equipment allows them to be used as a fuel in electric power plants. The use of wood pellets to produce electricity, primarily in Europe and particularly in the United Kingdom, is driving a tremendous increase in the production of wood pellets in the United States. This trend has both environmental and economic implications for North Carolina. I will explore those further next week in Part II of this series.
To understand why Europe is ramping up the use of wood pellets for electricity production, we need to talk first about coal and fracking. As I explained previously in The Saudi Arabia of Denial, humanity has already burned through the coal deposits with the highest energy contents. Therefore, as time passes we need to mine more and more tons of lower and lower quality coal to deliver the same amount of energy to coal-burning electric power plants. In parallel with this trend in coal mining, the practice of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has spread through the United States. Fracking operations have dramatically increased the supply of natural gas and, through the laws of supply-and-demand, lowered its price. The combined effects of an increase in the supply of cheap natural gas and the declining quality of coal have inspired many electric power companies in the U.S. to convert from coal to natural gas as a fuel source.
Power companies in Europe are also looking for alternatives to coal, but they can’t tap into the U.S. natural gas supply. Natural gas can only be transported in an economically efficient manner via pipeline, and there are no natural gas pipelines between the U.S. and Europe. In contrast, wood pellets produced in the U.S. are easy to send to Europe. All you need is a really big boat.
The wood pellet industry in the U.S. is growing so fast that it is difficult to keep up with the statistics. Ten years ago, wood pellet production was just niche industry. Today, production of wood pellets has grown to 10 million tons a year, and timber companies in the U.S. are in the process of building new facilities which will double that capacity in short order. Much of this activity is occurring in North Carolina. But is this a trend that we should embrace or resist? I’ll give you my thoughts on that question next week in Part II.
Jeff Danner discussed this week’s column (and the Keystone XL pipeline) with Aaron Keck on WCHL.
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