Wood pellet plants are being built at an unprecedented rate around the U.S. These plants produce kiln dried wood pellets which are shipped to European countries so they can meet their new green renewable alternative energy standards set by the EU and designed to cut dirty air emissions from burning strictly coal. The pellets are being burned with coal to produce electricity for European power companies.

Thirteen wood pellet plants have opened in the Southeastern U.S., and twelve more are currently in the planning stages. These plants carry the promise of steady jobs in a sluggish economy which has been especially hard hit by the recession.

Some of the big timber companies are claiming that the demand for wood pellets has in part caused the price of lumber used in building construction to skyrocket as much as 50% over a three year period. In the UK, one of the power companies there is switching its 1,050 megawatt plant at Tilbury in Essex to run entirely on wood pellets imported from the U.S. instead of coal and pellets.

Forests in the U.S. are not the only ones which are destined to be leveled and sent to foreign countries so their emission standards can be lowered. It has been reported that power companies in the EU and Russia have been negotiating the destruction and export of Russia's huge timber reserves which apparently will be ground up and made into wood pellet fuel.

At least we're exporting something to buy that foreign oil with.

We must think wood grows on trees or something.

wood smoke isn't the healthiest thing to breathe either.

At least trees are a renewable resource. Destroy a forest and poof--twenty years later you have another one.