Bruce,
Here’s a release from the Northern Forests Center making an argument for wood pellets. I haven’t had a chance yet to dig into the study to figure out how they are valuing emissions, so I’m not in a position to defend the research, but wanted to pass it along. I will say, here in New England, we don’t have a much of a timber industry any more (Maine being an exception), especially relative to historical scales or the US southeastern/northwestern forested regions, and accordingly much of our forest products are of lower scale/quality, which makes them more favorable to applications like pellet or pulp wood rather than CLTs (I’m generalizing big time here, of course). An argument for regional, scale-appropriate pellet fuel from well-managed supply chains is that providing some market base for our regional forests helps to avoid land use changes as development pressure and management fragmentation from private ownership are among the greatest threats to thriving forest ecosystems in our region. While I’d have a hard time saying burning anything for fuel is good for the atmosphere, looking at the use of pellet fuel in the context of what it is displacing (in our region, that’s largely #2 fuel oil as natural gas pipelines don’t reach the rural areas and it’s cheaper than propane) and the regional ecosystem and supply chain in which it is being produced does support its use as a tool in the kit from my perspective. By this I’m not talking about clearcutting swaths of forests for electric generation, or shipping southern yellow pine to Europe to be burned to meet their “net zero energy” goals, mind you…
All my best,
Jacob