I was disappointed to learn…

I was disappointed to learn of Ontario’s plan to expand the wood pellet industry as a solution to climate change and to provide jobs.

While it is has been proffered that only waste forest products are being used for this purpose, it has been reported that mature trees are being logged & burned. An expansion of wood-burning would be a mistake for many reasons.

Firstly, burning wood is dirtier than coal. Since wood is not as energy dense as coal, more wood needs to be burned per energy unit generated resulting in a 40% increase in emissions.

Secondly, trees take a long time to grow back and capture the same amount of carbon that a decades old tree can. Add to this that much of our old-growth forests have already been logged, and the current logging cycle is so much shorter than it used to be, means that our forests are already less effective carbon sinks than they used to be. The best solution for the climate is to leave the trees in the ground!

Lastly, many more permanent jobs and spin-off industries would be created with more high-tech clean energy technologies like solar, pumped storage, wind, and landfill methane capture.