Category Archives: Environment

Mongabay: Netherlands’ largest forest biomass plant canceled, forest advocates elated

In 2020, two years after the Vattenfall wood pellet energy plant was proposed, forest advocates organized a youth protest outside Vattenfall headquarters as part of the National Children’s Climate March. Image courtesy of the Clean Air Committee in the Netherlands.

As this stories describes, forest advocates were able to take significant credit in The Netherlands when one of its largest energy providers canceled plans in February 2025 to build the largest wood-pellet-only power plant just outside Amsterdam. It took six years and a circuitous route through the Dutch court system, but on a rare occasion, the environmental argument that burning forest biomass is not the climate-friendly solution it is touted to be until won out.

While the Dutch, like the South Koreans, appear to be inching away from industrial-scale forest biomass energy, neither is close to giving up entirely on wood burning, or subsidizing the burning, as they both try to meet 2030 legal deadlines to phase out all coal burning.

In fact, the elusive promises of BECCS — Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage — is now being touted as the reason to continue burning wood pellets because, it is theorized, that emissions can be easily trapped and permanently buried underground.

There is a significant flaw in that plan in that the scientific consensus illustrates that BECCS technology is years, if not decades, away from effective implementation.

“The irony is that my country (The Netherlands) and the EU have called burning biomass carbon neutral, right?” Dutch forest advocate Fenna Swart told me. “Now the claim with BECCS is that the air will be even cleaner. But in our view, it’s just another flawed policy to allow business as usual.”

A close-up image of one of the posters held aloft by demonstrators to protest plans by Vattenfall to build the Netherlands’ largest woodburning energy plant. Image courtesy of the Clean Air Committee in the Netherlands.

Mongabay: Forest biomass growth to soar through 2030, impacting tropical forests

Tree felling on an energy plantation concession in Indonesia where wood has been used to supply wood pellets to South Korea. Image courtesy of FWI.

This story here, my latest on the issue of global forest biomass for energy, sends a bit of a mixed message. Projected supply and demand for wood pellets appears to be rising dramatically through 2030, with more wood coming from tropical forests than every before.

On the other hand, there appear to be a few cracks forming in the long-term viability of an industry that has been on a steady, upward trajectory for 15 years or more — save for Enviva’s self-inflicted business wounds that led to its 2024 bankruptcy. Subsidies are being inched back on South Korea and Japan. Drax is still getting a ton of British subsidies for five more years, but far less than the previous 10. Germany’s second-largest city, Hamburg, nixed a conversion of a coal-burning plant to wood, admitting that it was not a climate friendly move. And a highly regarded investment think tank is raising a bright red flag to investors to think twice before investing in wood-pellet manufacturing stocks.

A source and forest advocate in South Korea went as far as to tell me he believes we are beginning to see that beginning of a paradigm shift regarding forest biomass for energy. The scientific arguments and journalistic reporting, including my own, that challenge industry line that it a climate-friendly alternative to coal, grow stronger every year. Is the tide really turning?

Meanwhile, in the near-term, the industry continues to grow, and native forests across the US Southeast, British Columbia, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, will continue to be diminished and degraded, many replaced by tree farms, to feed immediate demand.

Estimate of global wood pellet production and use in metric tons by nation by 2030. Data sourced from the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Scenario study. Image courtesy of the Environmental Paper Network.

Mongabay: Our investigation exposed biomass giant’s greenwashing in 2022—here’s the latest in 2025

Felled hardwood and pine cut from a dense forest and piled high on a 52-acre lot in Edenton, North Carolina. Image by Bobby Amoroso.

It’s not often that a news organization reflects on its coverage over recent years to evaluate the impact that that coverage has had on a region, a group of people, and in this case, an industry. But in making the case to our global readers and funders, Mongabay recaps important stories or series of stories to let people know that independent environmental journalism can and does make a difference in the world.

In this story penned by Mongabay editors, they recap my coverage of the forest biomass industry over the last several years and explain the impact it has and continues to have. The story rightfully focuses on one of the most prominent and impactful stories of my long career in journalism — the one and only whistleblower to ever come forward from inside the forest biomass industry (from Enviva, once the world’s largest producer of wood pellets for industrial-scale energy) and his candid, verifiable attack on his company’s climate- and environmentally friendly claims of the product it produces. That story, which has a complementary video, was published in December 2022.

Here’s an excerpt from Mongabay’s story of my reporting:

“This case demonstrates how independent journalism can expose greenwashing, inspire tangible action, inform public policy, and create ripple effects across sectors. Mongabay’s reporting uncovered the troubling realities of the biomass energy industry, and it empowered governments, financial institutions, and legal advocates to take decisive action in the pursuit of accountability and environmental justice.”

Mongabay: U.S. policy experts confident of future climate action despite Trump election

The once and future president of the United States continues to mock climate science as if it’s fashion not reality.

No single president U.S. history, just Donald Trump, did more to undermine the trajectory of conservation, forest and species protections, clear air and clean water regulations, and most critically of all, climate action connected to promoting zero-carbon renewable energy while reducing fossil fuel burning during his first term in office. Remarkably, but not surprisingly, none of those issues was discussed much at all during the chaotic, and for Democrats, truncated campaign for the presidency in 2024.

In an election that was suppose to be razor thin but ended up being far less so, American voters decided among many other things that the candidate who still insists climate change is a hoax (residents of Asheville, North Carolina, word like a word with Trump) is the candidate they want back in charge of federal environmental policy. They did so even as he demanded a quid pro quo from US oil barons to fund his campaigns with billions in return for unrestrained drilling and extraction permits. He also vowed once again to remove the United States from the historic Paris Agreement, the only country on earth to do so.

Meeting the urgency of the moment, this story was published on the day it was written: three says after the US election; three days before the start of the COP29, the United Nations climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan (just north of Iran). In it, two U.S. government experts on climate policy shared during an global virtual press conference what they think the impact of another four years of Trump policies on climate and the environment will be on the U.S. and the world. The fact that they believe it will be less impactful than before is in itself an indictment of a miserable U.S. record of leadership amid the worst crisis humanity has ever collectively faced — accelerating climate change and global warming.

Uncontrollable wildfires in California and across Canada are a deadly reality of worsening climate change, not a political hoax.

Mongabay: Delay of EU Deforestation Regulation may ‘be excuse to gut law,’ activists fear

Deforestation for an oil palm plantation in Sumatra. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

In June 2023, the European Union passed a law designed to reduced deforestation and forest degradation around the world caused by the commodities the member states import: coffee, soy, cattle, cocoa, palm oil, rubber and wood, included industrial-scale wood pellets. The law was to go into effect on January 1, 2025. My story covers a surprise decision by the European Commission, which makes legislative recommendations to the European Parliament, to delay the implementation of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) for 12 months.

Since the law was passed, a host of industries and countries, including the United States, have pushed back hard against the regulations, calling them onerous and demanding more time for implementation. The forest biomass industry, for example, wanted a 24-month delay. Forest advocates in the US and EU all decried the delay, as my story describes.

“I think the biggest threat from a delay is that it’s an excuse to gut the law by giving more time to already aggressive industry opposition,” Heather Hillaker, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center in North Carolina, told me, summarizing the general concern of her international colleagues. “With climate change, every month matters when we’re trying to avoid [carbon] emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.”

Meanwhile, Austrian Christian Rakos, president of the World Bioenergy Association, wrote me in an email: “The traceability [requirement in the EUDR] is extremely difficult for sawmill byproducts which make up for more than half of U.S. pellet production. If sawdust is collected from several sawmills and then pelletized, how will you be able to tell from which forest plot pellets come? And what is the benefit of knowing if there is no deforestation in the entire fibre basket?”

Rakos and I met at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 and talked for two hours. His defense of the wood pellet industry is vigorous and, I believe, genuine. But I have seen from my own observations in North Carolina, and from the only source from within the industry to ever go public, that wood pellets are manufactured almost entirely by whole trees from native forests, not waste and residue, and that daily harvests for the 26 pellet mills in the US Southeast are effectively degrading intact forests and contributing to deforestation.

The Edenton, North Carolina, clear-cut. The biggest trees were harvested as timber, while other whole trees were chipped and trucked to an Enviva pellet mill, likely for export to Europe. Precisely how the EUDR will impact the forest biomass industry remains to be seen, though it asked the EU for a 24-month delay. Image courtesy of Bobby Amoroso.

Mongabay: UK’s Drax targets California forests for two major wood pellet plants

These cut trees, viewed by California biologist and writer Maya Khosla, were harvested recently in Stanislaus National Forest, an area that falls within the potential harvest radius of a proposed wood pellet mill in Tuolumne County in central California. The mature trees were taken as part of a thinning strategy which often includes unburned forests for what is hoped to be wildfire prevention. Photo courtesy of Isis Howard.

I have been following the developments of the potential for wood pellet manufacturing in California for more than a year. The news hook that Drax, the United Kingdom based energy supplier and pellet maker, had recently entered into an agreement with a California governmental nonprofit that is promoting and planning for two new pellet mills, was what I needed to write this story.

It’s another forest biomass story steeped in controversy, as most of these stories are — whether they are centered in my home state of North Carolina, the US Southeast, or overseas in the European Union, United Kingdom, Japan or South Korea. The twist in California, a state ravaged by climate change-fueled wildfires since 2020, is that the “thinning” of the state’s vast woodlands and collection of burned trees and residues for wood pellet feedstock, will help reduce the risk of wildfires while boosting sagging economies in rural counties that cover parts of eight national forests.

More than 100 environmental groups, Indigenous tribes and community organizations have been pushing back against this growing industry in California and especially against the central argument for its existence — wildfire mitigation. My story explains both sides. There will very likely be more stories to come from California.

As part of its strategy to gather forest wood for wood pellet production, GSNR has said it will promote “salvage logging” in areas damaged or destroyed by wildfire. This June 2022 photo of an area burned in the Dixie Fire, one of the worst ever in California, illustrates what salvage logging looks like. “Ecologically there is nothing worse that can be done to a forest in California than to log after fire,” said Gary Hughes, a forest advocate with Biofuelwatch. “It is likened to beating a burn victim.” Image courtesy of Kimberly Baker/Klamath Forest Alliance.

Mongabay: Enviva bankruptcy fallout ripples through biomass industry, U.S. and EU

Tractor-trailers each loaded with 40 tons of wood chips waiting at Enviva’s pellet mill in Ahoskie, North Carolina, which opened in 2011. “There’s no way Enviva is coming out of Chapter 11, [bankruptcy]” a former Enviva employee and whistleblower told Mongabay. “Their manufacturing equipment is not fit for the service it’s required to deliver. Only two of its 10 plants (one in Florida, one in Georgia, neither built by Enviva) are hitting their maximum achievable targets for pellet production.” Image courtesy of Bobby Amoroso.

In this story, I continue my coverage of Enviva, the Maryland-based company that claims to be the world’s largest producer of wood pellets for industrial-scale energy. The pellet maker has been a dominant force in the industry in the Southeastern United States, especially my home state of North Carolina, since it opened its first pellet mill more than a decade ago. A couple of years ago, it topped $1 billion in annual revenue, its stock price rising above $87 a share. Enviva boldly planned major expansions in the Deep South and predicted pellet production to go from 6 million metric tons annually to 13 million metric tons by 2027.

That was then.

In the spring of 2024, Enviva found itself in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, having lost hundreds of millions of dollars in 2023 from a variety of circumstances — some beyond its control, many of its own making. It’s stock price is below 50 cents a share and Wall Street analysts, once bullish on forest biomass energy, are now warning investors away. This story continues my explanation of why Enviva is failing, with additional insight from an exclusive source who continues to provide an invaluable look beyond Enviva’s public statements and required disclosures as a public company.

A new angle to my coverage is how forest advocates have been shifting their attention to Washington, D.C., because of the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and the billions provided to incentivize renewable energy. Enviva, in desperation, is eager to convince the Environmental Protection Agency and other government offices, that is produces an legit renewable energy source and climate mitigation strategy amid the climate crisis. No rigorous, independent research supports that claim in the timeframes needed to slow the rate of global warming. But Enviva is angling for millions in US tax subsidies to help it pay for new plants in Alabama and Mississippi.

As my story explains, there is a lot at stake not only in Enviva’s future as a major supplier of wood pellets to the UK and EU, but also the future of forests desperately needed to remain standing as yet our best and most effective defense against erratic weather and accelerating global warming.

Mongabay: Amazon prosecutors get sharper impact tool to charge illegal gold dealers

Small-scale illegal gold mining is widespread throughout much of the Peruvian Amazon, but especially in Madre de Dios, causing enormous harm to the environment and human population in what’s recognized as a biodiversity hotspot. The Peruvian government has been sporadic in its attempts to curtail illegal mining over the years. In 2023, Peru adopted the Mining Impacts Calculator for use by law enforcement and prosecutors to better fight illegal gold mining. Image by Enrique Ortiz.

Enrique Ortiz, a good friend for many years, and a leading Peruvian environmental biologist with Andes Amazon Fund in the United States, sends out to a large email group new studies he thinks would be of interest on matters related to climate change, ecosystem services, biodiversity and environmental assaults. This story — my first focused on Brazil in a long time — came from an Enrique email.

Initially, I thought it was a straight-up, uncomplicated science story about how a Brazilian research team has put in dollar terms the amount of damage wrought in one enormous region of Brazil from the wide-scale destruction that illegal gold mining requires. One fact jumped out: through the team’s economic modeling, it concluded that the damage to nature, ecosystems and human health was twice as large as the value of the gold being mined — even as record prices for gold soar above $2,100 an ounce.

I pitched the story to my editor Glenn Scherer, who passed it to a Mongabay editor in Brazil, Alexandre de Santi. He gave the greenlight. Simple story? Not a chance. What I found from talking with the lead author, Pedro Gasparinetti, was that numbers from the study had a direct, practical use in what’s called a Mining Impact Calculator. This online tool is used by eco-investigators and prosecutors to bolster charges in court against not the small-scale mining operations, but rather the big corporate buyers of illegal gold. Gasparinetti connected me to an investigator and prosecutor for further insight into the value of the enhanced calculator. My own sources in Peru and the US — Enrique and Luis Fernandez — were essential in helping me understand the broader context of this important story.

This economic tool is no panacea. Illegal mining — responsible for widescale deforestation, biodiversity loss and human suffering across Amazonia — is not going away. But with Peru, Colombia, Ecuador as well as Brazil adopting the calculator in prosecutions of gold buyers, there is more than a glimmer of hope that uncorrupted courts will hold gold buyers accountable for billions in damages, thus choking off some the gold supply downstream. It’s starting to work. Let’s see how far it can spread and the impact it can have.

This is what illegal gold mining does to the Amazon in Brazil — once lush jungles filled with all manners of tropical life are reduced to a hellscape of desert, mercury-polluted ponds, poisoned species and dislocated people. I’ve seen this damage up close in Madre de Dios, Peru. It is heartbreaking — and unrelenting.
 Image by Fabio Nascimento

Mongabay: Forest and climate scientists fear Biden delay on mature forest protection

An old-growth Western cedar in Olympic National Park, summer 2022. Photo by Justin Catanoso

What follows below is a summary of this story of mine, which details a letter to President Biden from the top climate scientists in the country. They are calling for an immediate moratorium on logging in old-growth and mature forests in all national forests. The U.S. Forestry Service manages these lands, and more often than not, much of the 112 million acres is managed not for conservation but for harvesting forests — our surest font-line defense during this climate crisis — for lumber and wood products.

  • More than 200 forest ecologists and top climate scientists, including Jim Hansen and Michael Mann, have written the Biden administration urging it to quickly move forward on the president’s commitment to protect old-growth and mature forests on federal lands.
  • The scientists made an urgent plea for an immediate moratorium on logging federal forests with trees 100 years old or older, many of which remain vulnerable to logging and dozens of timber sales nationally. They also asked for the establishment of substantive federal management standards to protect those forests.
  • Federally owned old-growth and mature forests play an outsized role in storing carbon, offering a vital hedge against escalating climate change.
  • At stake are 112.8 million acres (45.6 million hectares) of old-growth and mature forest on federal lands, according to a 2023 U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management inventory — an area larger than California. Less than a quarter of those forests are currently protected against logging.

Mongabay: Study — Burning wood pellets for energy endangers local communities’ health

This wood pellet manufacturing plant in Ahoskie, North Carolina was Enviva’s first in the state, opening in 2011. Wood feedstock – pine and hardwood – arrives at the plant already chipped from native forests within a 50-mile radius of the plant. The chips are dried and then pressed into pellets. According to a new study in Renewable Energy, wood pellet production emits more than 55 hazardous air pollutants, along with tons of volatile organic compounds and particulate matter. Many of the pollutants can be harmful to human health. Image by Justin Catanoso.

The interesting thing about the facts that are the heart of this story of mine: it all sounds so familiar. Burning forest biomass causes enormous amount of emissions and hazardous pollutants from both the manufacturing process and the burning-for-energy process? Don’t we know this already?

Well, yes and no. Forest and public health advocates have been decrying for as long as I’ve been covering this issue the harmful impacts from every process that is the wood pellet industry — from clearcutting native forests that reduce carbon sinks and degrade biodiversity, to emissions from drying wood before its pressed into pellets, to pollution from the transportation sector to move pellets from one place to another, and finally, enormous emissions from burning these pellets instead of coal.

Because so much is assumed — and obvious (like the obvious health hazards of smoking cigarettes for years) — we assume, too, that there are rigorous scientific studies that prove what so many assume. This may be true in Europe, but it has not been true in the United States — until the 2023 publication of the study that is focus of my story.

This research is enormously important given the growth of the wood pellet industry and the growing interest across the United States to start burning wood for energy and claim — erroneously — that it’s a legitimate climate solution. There is no legitimate science that supports that industry claim. I am glad Mongabay continues to cover this issue closely. Sadly, this important study was not covered by any other news media.