Timber tantrum: environmentalists try to chip away at the rapid growth in exports of wood pellets.

• Author: Weisbecker, Lee
• Position: Statewide: BUSINESS NEWS FROM ACROSS NORTH CAROLINA

To some it sounds like 21st-century colonialism: To keep their air cleaner, Europeans prefer burning wood over coal, so they're plundering America's natural resources --in this case, North Carolina's forests. But instead of being met with pitchforks, companies making wood pellets for overseas power production are showered with money by local and state officials. In return, Bethesda, Md.-based Enviva LP--the nation's largest pellet manufacturer--has invested $112 million in two plants, with plans for two more, while San Diego, Calif.-based International WoodFuels LLC wants to build a $60 million one.

A coalition of environmental groups, led by Asheville-based Dogwood Alliance, wants to slow the growth, fearing thousands of acres of privately owned pine and hardwood stands will quickly be depleted. The best wood goes to sawmills for lumber, while other cuttings become pulp for paper mills. Pellet-makers say they get what's left behind: limbs, tops and smaller trees culled to let their stouter cousins grow larger, along with low-quality, diseased and crooked trees. They debark, dry, grind and compress this into pieces that resemble rabbit feed, which can be burned alone or mixed with coal. The environmental group claims that last year it tracked logs hauled from a forest to Enviva's Ahoskie plant, which it says shows the state is allowing clear cutting. (The group's observers might have seen logs on trucks, a company spokes man says, but trimmed tops are often confused for tree trunks.)

Where environmentalists see peril, economic developers see potential, fueled by the European Union's mandate that 20% of its energy come from renewable sources by 2020. (The U.S. leaves such standards up to the states. In North Carolina, investor-owned utilities must get 12% from renewables by then.) For the Ahoskie plant, which opened in 2013 and employs about 80, Hertford County offered a package totaling $840,000, while the town pledged $730,000. The state's One North Carolina Fund kicked in $240,000. For Envira's Garysburg plant, which opened in 2011 and employs about 75, Northampton County secured a $2 million federal grant to extend water and sewer lines. Both counties have poverty rates 50% higher than the state average. "Rather than handing out money like candy to companies that will spend the next 20 years cutting down trees, they should be investing in companies that create high-paying jobs and that have real economic value," Dogwood spokesman Scot...