Whistleblower exposes top biomass producer's empty promises
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- čas přidán 5. 12. 2022
- A biomass industry insider tells Mongabay in exclusive interviews that Enviva, the world’s largest maker of wood pellets for energy, is disingenuous in its green, eco-friendly claims to the public and stockholders.
Enviva is the largest maker of wood pellets burned for energy in the world. The company, has from its inception, touted its green credentials.
It says it doesn’t use big, whole trees, but only uses wood waste, “tops, limbs, thinnings, and/or low-value smaller trees” in the production of woody biomass burned in former coal power plants in the U.K., EU and Asia. It says it only sources wood from areas where trees will be regrown, and that it doesn’t contribute to deforestation.
However, in first-ever interviews with a whistleblower who worked within Enviva plant management, Mongabay contributor Justin Catanoso has been told that all of these Enviva claims are false. In addition, a major recent scientific study finds that Enviva is contributing to deforestation in the U.S. Southeast.
Statements by the whistleblower have been confirmed by Mongabay’s own observations at a November 2022 forest clear-cut in North Carolina, and by NGO photo documentation. These findings are especially important now, as the EU considers the future of forest biomass burning as a “sustainable” form of renewable energy.
Read the full story- news.mongabay.com/2022/12/env...
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Brilliant work, Justin. Not shocked.
Congratulations to the former Employee for honesty, would be very hard.
Thank you for holding that reprehensible industry accountable.
😂🤣
The most important thing is to show VERY CLEARLY that ENTIRE TREES are being shredded, something that UNFORTUNATELY could not be seen well, or for longer in this video.
I work at the railroad that serves Enviva in Lucedale MS. They are purchasing WHOLE trees and paying top dollar bc they competing in the same market as lumber. They were supposed to use scrap wood, but there are thousands of whole trees laying on the lot. They were supposed to use 80% hardwood, 20% pine, but instead they’re using 80% pine. This corrodes and erodes the equipment at a much faster rate causing more plant shut downs to exchange equipment. They also negotiated super low prices with European contracts, the 80/20 pine along with purchasing whole trees is not a sustainable business model. See EVA stock prices today and that will tell you that this company is in rapid decline.
Great video. All of it is true, I see hundreds of truckloads every day in NE Georgia, carrying thousands of tree logs (only tree logs, no branches) to the local pellet mills, every day. They are turning the South-East into a huge wasteland. Enviva and its pellet industry is destroying our two richest treasures, which are our forests, and our rivers. In a world warming up fast, our forests provide cooling and help with water management and wildlife protection. If you see recent satellite images from Google, you can see the obvious destruction, where there is no woodland restoration afterwards.
Look at California, Oregon, Arizona, etc. They barely have any forests left. They have very little water resources and experience huge forest fires every year. We in the South East, on the other hand, have had large forests that provide humidity, which cools the region, provide a home for wildlife, and maintain our water resources. When our forests are cut, those areas become pastures or swampy wastelands.
They are not planting trees back. Ecosystems are being destroyed at exponential rates and communities where this happens are being lied to. We are destroying our invaluable forests to provide cheap energy for Europe. These are short-term, quick-buck industries that know they are causing damage and will be liable for accountability, after all is destroyed and their plants close, and their owners disappear. The non-multigenerational, short-term jobs they produce create false hopes.
This year 2023, the stock price of Enviva crashed by 98%. This is because investors are walking away from the disaster they are witnessing. Nobody want to be associated to enterprises of this kind. Any company that destroys American forests to produce wood chips for energy plants in US and Europe, is bad business, bad public relations. Our politicians are to blame. They are the ones who allow this and turn the face, and pretend they had nothing to do with the damage. We have to delineate all of the areas where Enviva and others have caused unrepairable damage. We have to identify the local leaders at county, state and federal levels, and find out how they legislated, and if they bought stock, or taking campaign money from these companies, and then approved their establishment. We have to let them know that we know what they did, and hold them accountable on how we are going to restore the damage, and how affected communities will be compensated. Finally, we have to drive these nature-destroying industries from our communities and from our country and let them know they are not welcome. Throughout our history, American natural resources have been relatively well managed. A sustainable balance was kept. That is why we still have forests and natural reserves, while most of the world has ravaged wastelands. So, now foreign entities come to our country and buy off politicians to exploit our resources. China is growing soy on farmland they own in the west. Saudi Arabia doing the same, and drying up our aquifers in the process. Enviva is clearing up our forests. Every foreing entity is looking to America to see how they can exploit it. Are we going to continue letting them?
Logs are roughly at a minimum of three times more expensive than an in-woods or micro chip. You aren't seeing logs you're seeing pulpwood going to Enviva.
I think the place in South Georgia is done, done and done.
In Europe, Clear cutting forests and burning them is very environment friendly just like green coal, green gas and green oil etc.
Which is the more absurd thing I have ever heard. Cutting down Forrest for energy is terrible for the environment
Bill Gates wants to bury trees for co2 reduction…???!!! Incredible
this is just a 52acre plot. thats nothing. Plus it is destined to become an industrial zone. So why not turn those trees into pellets?
Also I strongly suspect they make consumer-pellet as well.
For industrial use (mostly powerplants) the quality can be fairly low, and they will use branches and bark. for consumer pellet this is not allowed due to emissions and related things.
Because the company is profiting from subsidies for claiming that it doesn't do this. It's another example of fake green-ness.
Aww yes, down play wiping out Forrest and Animal Habitation because you think it's going to turn down the Thermostat on the Planet.
CUT/BURN TREES=LOWER GLOBAL TEMPERATURE
This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of.
I've seen him chipping whole trees I was wondering why they didn't go to a sawmill
Because it isn't logs. Not every big tree will make the mill spec to be a log and there are also restrictions on dbh at the paper mills. Depending on the area sometimes the price for chips is the same or greater than pulpwood. I'd rather gain volume chipping the whole tree than taking it to a paper mill for pulp. You also get a cleaner job with little to no debris left which is aesthetically pleasing. Also eliminates costly site prep for replanting.
Chipping sawlogs is a giant cost negative. I highly doubt this occurred. Chipping an entire pulp log(waste wood) yes, but if not, it’s left on the ground to rot and emit carbon.
Emit methane a gas that is 20x more dangerous than CO2
Damn perfect short opportunity here!
The repair of the climate lay with the companies and organizations that make the products. The pressure for them to change comes from the consumer. An educated consumer is a dangerous consumer
They just dont care, some times cutting just some trees is not possible, so even that on paper it will say to cut only some trees, they go and cut all of it, they go the easy way, there is just no one to punish this kind of destruction....and replanting the trees.....he he he, that is a sad joke, they replant 5% if so and its done for good will commercial, it should be 100% but its 5%.
It's a scam, thanks for info.
Yup... we're doomed
Do you know this, Mongabay?
Please google this:
How radioactive wood from Belarus is sold across the world
That's one way to make money. Sadly, "making money" is one great motor in the US, and all over the world. Look at the Amazonas in Brasil! The forest is wiped away in an alarming speed.
My cousine is a farmer but never headed into "ecological milk" etc. Don't remember the details. Head cared about the animals, gave them food to produce as much as possible and when they were burned out, they would end up in the pan, the grill.... That's life. But still, no hypocrisy. When a cow got ill it got the needed shots, was kept away from milk delivery as long as prescribed, but then "back in business".
Being a whistleblower is dangerous.
From $82/share in 2022 to about $.40/share today. They will soon be insolvent.
czcams.com/video/Zk11vI-7czE/video.html
Haha😂
Did you witness that the tract was converted or just take the word of some hourly worker who told you what you wanted to hear? If you knew anything about logging you would realize you can't capture all of the limbs and other forestry waste because it falls off when it's being processed in the woods before it ever makes it to the log deck. See how much waste you generate by not utilizing the chip wood (tops) in a tree. Not every big diameter tree is a log and there are also diameter restrictions at paper mills. You're just doing a hatchet piece on Enviva for a tree hugging hippie news outlet.
I have a feeling this story is at the very least misleading. Trees are much more valuable as timber to be used as building materials than being pelletized for burning. After you log a woods for timber there is a lot of wasted materials such as branches and other unusable pieces of the tree. These are usually just left to rot and decompose releasing there stored up carbon back into the environment. I would imagine that is what is being used as pellet material in these cases. For a company to pelletize good building timber like this story is inferring makes no economic cents. Why would a company purposely use materials to make pellets when they could use that same material to make more money as building material ? This story and it’s so called whistleblower seem to be trying to sell a narrative that is detrimental to logic. Why would a greedy company do something that would make them less money? I would greatly question the information put out by this story, or at least suggest that the creators do some more investigating into the validity of it’s “ whistle blower”. They seem to have a agenda that is causing them to embellish the facts.
🤔Maybe this company is a bad company that is detrimental to the environment. However when you try and sell a narrative that is obviously misleading, at least to people who know about the economics of timber values, you end up hurting your credibility when you are trying to draw attention to a problem that the people maybe do need to be aware of.
Just my thoughts on the matter. 🤗 Have a nice day.🤗
I would urge you to read the story again, as it is thorough, fair and accurate. You'll see that the errors you mention are actually not there. What's misleading is your description of the story itself.
@@tbj123123 I rewatched the video and my opinion still stands. I would imagine the trees that were so called “whole trees”, were trees not suitable to be used as timber. This appears to be a site that was to be cleared for use by this city for whatever reason. Would you rather them just burn the trees in place? It seems to be much more environmentally friendly to use the materials that would otherwise be just bulldozed into piles and burnt in order to clear the site. You mentioned the city owns the land but you seem to try and blame the company for the clearing of the land and making use of as much of the material as possible instead of letting it go to waste. Why not blame the city who is having it cleared? This is an obvious hit piece put together by someone with an agenda who is trying to sell a narrative, and is relying on people who are less informed on the basic uses of timber and its various products that are all designed to lessen waste. 🤗Have a nice day 🤗
We stand by our reporting in this piece. If you watch the video or read the story, the whistleblower (who is a former employee of Enviva) details that large whole trees are being used to make wood pellets. The journalist who wrote this story investigated this claim (along with others) by actually going to a site. From the first paragraphs of the published article:
"EDENTON, North Carolina - The operator of a Tigercat tractor used its claw-like arm to skillfully scoop up what just days before had been a sizable old oak, as the clear-cut of a thickly wooded 52-acre (21-hectare) site in this coastal Southeastern U.S. town neared completion.
The Tigercat operator fed the big oak, along with several skinnier trees, into a 4-ton whole-tree drum chipper. With a roar, it instantaneously ground the long trees into a torrent of small wood chips that flew out a chute into a tractor-trailer. In less than 30 minutes, the trailer was filled with 40 tons of chips. Then another tractor-trailer backed up to take the first one’s place. The chipping and loading process continued - another forest patch cleared.
What I observed here while reporting for Mongabay on Nov. 3, 2022, corroborated what a biomass industry whistleblower had told me."
You can read the full story here: news.mongabay.com/2022/12/envivas-biomass-lies-whistleblower-account/
Thanks for reading, Mongabay.
@@MongabayTV Aaron says "Maybe this company is a bad company that is detrimental to the environment." It is the largest maker of wood pellets burned for energy in the world, so it's not 'just one bad apple,' but rather is a problem for all of us.
@@MongabayTV You can't legally haul 40 tons of chips in the state of NC or any other than I am aware of. 40 tons would break the chip van in half. Your "expert" is full of shit. Also would you rather that oak be left to rot? Maybe you can't make lumber out of it as it doesn't meet saw mill specs? What if the owner wanted it harvested? Then do you leave it to rot or do you utilize it? Lets hear your reply