Justin Catanoso is no stranger to wood pellet plants, as he lives near four of them in the U.S. state of North Carolina, where biomass giant Enviva has several facilities. While that company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this year, it remains the single largest producer of wood pellets globally.

This firm is one of several (alongside Drax in the U.K.) seeking to expand its global stake in the shift to renewable energy — a category of energy generation that industry and regulators insist burning biomass belongs in. However, a recent analysis shows it’s not renewable and adds more carbon to the atmosphere than coal and gas. But due to complicated language in the Kyoto Protocol treaty that extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, several nations and the European Union still allow the burning of wood pellets to be counted as such, and thus made eligible for subsidies, too. This is a tremendous problem for global efforts to slow the biodiversity and climate crises, Catanoso says.

“In my area of North Carolina, which is the mid-Atlantic, we will have the climate of northern Florida in about 15 years. That’s how fast our climate is changing here,” Catanoso says. “It’s upon us, and we are not pulling the levers fast enough. To slow this down and cutting down trees, calling it carbon neutral … that’s just one of those loopholes that is just completely man-made.”

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Banner image: Wood pellets with combustion chamber in the background. Image by AntonioGravante via Envato.

Rachel Donald is a climate corruption reporter and the creator of Planet: Critical, the podcast and newsletter for a world in crisis. Her latest thoughts can be found at 𝕏 via @CrisisReports and at Bluesky via @racheldonald.bsky.social.

Mike DiGirolamo is a host & associate producer for Mongabay based in Sydney. He co-hosts and edits the Mongabay Newscast. Find him on LinkedIn, Bluesky and Instagram.