This is a pretty good breakdown of the insanity that is the transatlantic wood pellet energy trade. 

U.N. carbon accounting rules count the CO2 from losing a tree in the country where it’s cut down. So when American trees are milled into pill-sized pellets and shipped to, for example, England to be burned in a power plant, the British can claim its carbon-free power — even though they’re burning twice as much to compensate for the more energy-dense coal they’re replacing. 

This scam has been allowed to continue, however, in part because the typical pro-climate bloc in Europe — ie Nordic countries — all have big timber industries and haven’t wanted to crack down on a market. 

Meanwhile, the heavily-polluting pellet mills processing all these old-growth forests being felled in the American South are overwhelmingly located in poor, rural and mostly Black towns.