The wood-pellet biomass industry has long maintained that it is only burning wood residues — the bits of trees left over from other uses. Wood that otherwise would have left on the forest floor and decomposed anyway.
Environmental campaigners in the US have uncovered much evidence to indicate that this is not true, and that wood pellet factories there are using whole and healthy trees to supply European biomass plants.
It is significant then that the European Parliament passed new rules last week that officially gave the go ahead to burning whole trees.
Both environmentalists and climate scientists are horrified.