Tag Archives: Erik Hoffner

Mongabay: The Netherlands to stop paying subsidies to ‘untruthful’ biomass firms

A view of an Edenton North Carolina forest clear-cut photographed in November 2022. A logger on site told Mongabay that roughly half of the trees cut there and chipped were destined for a nearby Enviva wood pellet plant. Enviva exports large amounts of wood pellets to the UK, EU and elsewhere. The firm makes extensive green claims. Image courtesy of Bobby Amoroso.

Cause and effect. That’s something journalists covering controversial topics hope for — that our dogged reporting will come to more than praise or complaints from readers, that it might actually have a more tangible impact. About two weeks after my exclusive whistleblower story was published, this story illustrates a clear cause and effect, a tangible impact from my reporting.

On December 14, a liberal Dutch politician from Amsterdam cited specific details from the Enviva whistleblower story as the motivation behind a motion, approved 150-114, to compel the Dutch government to stop paying subsidies to wood-pellet manufacturers found to be untruthful in their wood-harvesting practices. Accountability journalism is a large part of what has motivated me throughout my career, and here at the end of 2022, it is bearing fruit in a way that happens all too rarely.

What this all means for wood pellet producers and energy companies that depend on wood pellets to generate energy as they phase out coal (not an environmentally or climate-friendly swap, scientists tell me) should become clearer in 2023. It is a story I will continue to cover.

Meanwhile, in what amounted to a fabulous gift on Christmas Eve, Bill McKibben, writer, author, educator and one of the leading and loudest US voices in global environmentalism, devoted his last Substack newsletter of the year to my reporting in December 2022. McKibben also promoted my stories out to his vast audience on Twitter, which resulted in an additional enormous response and engagement beyond what we were already seeing with Mongabay’s coordinated social media postings by colleague Erik Hoffner.

Illustration with Bill McKibben’s newsletter under the headline: A little Xmas cheer for trees/ Biomass burning has a bad week

Mongabay @ COP22: The podcast from Marrakesh and the UN climate summit

podcast-globe-photo

Mike Gaworecki, a long-time Mongabay correspondent with a similar focus as me on forests and climate change policy, is leading a new web site initiative: The Mongabay Newscast. On Tuesday, November 15, Mike interviewed me via Skype, where I stood just outside the press center to get a good connection. I come in at around 7 minutes. Naturally, we spent a good bit of time talking about the impact on the president-elect on COP22. Special thanks to Mongabay podcast producer Erik Hoffner for making this happen.