By Gabriel Popkin, The New York Times

On the surface, it sounds crazy: Cut down trees, press them into little pellets, ship them to Europe, burn them in power plants and declare that you’re fighting climate change.

But many experts endorse the idea. Their argument: If you create a new market for wood products, people will grow more trees. Those trees suck up carbon dioxide. Ergo, good for climate — at least if you’re using pellets to displace fossil fuels.

Other experts, however, say the premise is as crazy as it sounds. Trees grow with or without markets, and every tree burned is not sitting in the ground storing carbon and sequestering more, they argue. Moreover, logging can harm the environment, if done carelessly, and pellet mills make noise and emit chemicals that can irritate, or harm, people living nearby. Hundreds of scientists recently lobbied the Biden administration to bar wood energy from the United States’ still-developing climate plan.

I traveled to North Carolina, the heart of a booming pellet-making industry, to try to unravel this quandary. What I found was a fascinating, complex landscape in which thousands of forest owners are feeding this relatively new industry with wood — often low-value wood that would have been hard to sell to other buyers. One character I met was Jesse Wimberley, a loquacious fellow whose passion is restoring longleaf pine savannas. To him, the industry’s climate claims are questionable. But to restore longleaf, he needs to burn the forest floor and to do that safely, he needs to first get rid of scraggly underbrush. A pellet company is paying for that scrap wood — a big win, in Mr. Wimberley’s book, for biodiversity.

The wood pellet industry, like any industry, has its fans and detractors. If it had just quietly gone about making pellets, it might not have attracted much attention. But when you say you’re fighting climate change and should be publicly subsidized to do so, you’re making a big claim that needs to be backed up with big evidence, to borrow a Carl Sagan-ism.

Please take a look at the full article and its amazing photos and video by my colleague Erin Schaff. If you liked this post you’ll love our daily newsletter, EnviroPolitics. It’s packed with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.