My first two columns of 2022 had to do with climate and political change. COP-26 has tried to drive new and progressive solutions to climate change as described in my first column. My second column celebrated the return to some kind of environmental normalcy with the change of administration. As I have reflected on both, I have begun to wonder about “green washing” and whether we are just shifting our liability from one side to the other.

A case in point: I wrote about the use of wood pellets to replace coal several years ago. But, after COP-26, the irony of switching from coal to wood pellets as a source of feedstock for energy is even greater. Further, the conversion was embraced by Kyoto, Paris, and most recently, Glasgow at COP-26. Let me explain.

Drax is a small village in the north of England. What’s not so tiny is a power plant also called Drax. In fact, Drax is the largest energy producer in England and one of the largest in all of Europe. The plant was built in 1974 and burned coal. But the British shut down their coal mines and Drax switched from coal to what they describe as “sustainably sourced biomass.” I call their feedstock, “wood pellets.” 

Drax says their conversion from coal to biomass has “enabled a zero carbon, lower cost future.” As Sarah Miller describes it in a wonderfully written article in The New Yorker, “Drax, in essence, is a gigantic woodstove.” I have actually driven past the Drax facility in northern England. This was many years ago when they were still burning coal.

Admittedly, I’ve never been in the facility. However, I have seen their “biomass operation” in the US and have a strong opinion on their definition of biomass. However, the real rub, besides the definition that Drax has for biomass, is the conflict between what Drax is doing and what we as a world should be doing to reduce carbon emissions.

This goes back to 1997 at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change. The conference established the Kyoto Protocol, which was supposed to reduce emissions and “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system!” Wind and solar were classified as renewable energy sources. Wood burning (biomass) was harder to classify. It is renewable, technically, because trees grow back. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) debated whether to include wood pellets as renewable. Very simply, IPCC took the low road and defined wood pellet fuel as renewable. 

At the time the guidelines were drawn up they could not imagine millions of tons of wood pellets being shipped thousands of miles to be burned in another country. And that is exactly what has happened.

Back to Drax and Sarah Miller’s “wood stove.” In 2019, when burning wood pellets, Drax emitted more than 15 million tons of CO2, equal to greenhouse gas emissions from three million cars in one year. Of those emissions, “Drax reported that 12.8 million tons were biologically sequestered carbon” from biomass. In 2020 the numbers increased to 16.5 million, 13.2 million from biomass. Meanwhile, Drax calls itself “the biggest decarbonization project in Europe, delivering a decarbonized economy and healthy forests.” I’m sorry. This declaration makes me go crazy.

Very quickly, the IPCC left a loophole, and Drax jumped in lock, stock and barrel. Drax, and to be sure they are not the only utility taking advantage of the UN loophole, owns huge forest holdings here in the US. They have spent millions on infrastructure, which includes rail tracks into the forests and deep ports for pellet shipments. Their feedstock is technically biomass but it includes whole trees, not just stumpage and branches. These forests have sequestered carbon for years, and it will take dozens of years to replace their contributions to sequestering CO2. 

The US should be embarrassed about this activity, and the UN should rewrite its description of renewable energy sources. It is incongruous to me that we have allowed ourselves to get into this situation. You see, burning wood emits CO2. The transportation of pellets from America to England emits CO2. And, sadly, the loss of trees means we’ve lost our “carbon catching” capability.

Case II is just as incongruous, at least to me. The governors of the State of Illinois, not the ones in jail, mind you, but the republican, Bruce Rauner, and the democrat, JB Pritzker, signed laws that they both believed made Illinois the nation’s most aggressive clean energy advocate. Illinois is shutting down its coal-fired plants and switching – not to wood pellets but to natural gas. Pritzker just signed a law that allows Lincoln Land Energy Center to emit more carbon dioxide than 800,000 cars every year. Combined with the CO2 emitted by the two plants converted from coal to gas by Rauner, the Lincoln Land Energy Center will wipe out any climate benefits from closing the coal-fired plants. 

During 2019, the now closed coal-fired plants emitted 7.8 million tons of carbon dioxide.  The newest permits for the gas-fired burners will allow 63% more CO2 into the atmosphere, or 12.9 million tons annually. Isn’t this somewhat inconsistent with the concept of clean energy?

“One of Pritzker’s top aides deferred (naturally) to career state employees when asked why a governor who promotes himself as a clean energy champion would allow a big new source of climate pollution to be built under his watch.”  (This appeared in the 12/29/21 issue of the Chicago Tribune.)

Interestingly, one other state has been considering switching to gas as a clean alternative to coal. However, in October of 2021, the same month Illinois signaled it would approve the Lincoln Land Energy Project, New York denied a permit for a new gas-fired unit at an existing power plant, declaring it “would be inconsistent with or interfere with a state law demanding carbon-free electricity by 2040.”

Here’s the State of Illinois’ cop-out: In the final version of the Clean Energy Jobs Act in Illinois, new gas plants can operate without climate-focused restrictions until the 2040 deadline for carbon-free electricity in Illinois. A little less knowing is that the law extends a lifeline to a pair of municipality owned coal power plants, including the Prairie State Generating Station, southeast of St. Louis, which in 2020 was the nation’s seventh largest source of carbon dioxide. Get it! Ever heard of pork barrel!

In my view, whether it is the loophole in definitions with the IPCC or political persuasion that “black is white” in the State of Illinois, we are no closer to reducing CO2 emissions than we were 10 years ago. Coal to wood pellets is not the answer. Coal to natural gas is not the answer.  We must look at strategies that incorporate more holistic solutions.

This kind of Neanderthal thinking reminds me of the company that says it wants to be green but can’t find the money needed to invest in capital equipment that will enable them to be green. We can’t have it both ways, and if change is going to happen, politics – and politicians for that matter – have to go out the window.


Calvin Frost is chairman of Channeled Resources Group, headquartered in Chicago, the parent company of Maratech International and GMC Coating. His email address is [email protected].