American wood pellets join crude oil and natural gas with prices set by international trade. The US imports and exports crude oil in large volumes. The US exports lots of natural gas. And... the US exports lots of wood pellets, more than 9 million tons per year, and is the worlds largest wood pellet exporter. The US exports more wood pellets than it consumes by a large margin. Canada exports more than 3 million tons of pellets each year. The largest exporters of wood pellets are the coastal states from Louisiana and around to Virginia. Russia previously supplied wood pellets to Europe but that is a bust now. US pellet exports increased by 1 million tons each year recently. England is the largest importer of wood pellets and the price of wood pellets in England is higher than the US but in the same range. Just think of European wars filtering back to wood pellet prices at Home Depot or TSC. A small world. How about a tit-for-tat trade war hitting wood pellets... More trivia, the total annual exports of wood pellets from the US are equal to one medium large oil refinery processing for an entire year on a tons basis.
Interesting. My wife has family in England. They have a pellet burner. I never thought about the fact that they may be burning pellets from the good ol' US of A. I'll have her message them and find out where their pellets originate from.
The commercial industrial pellets I've seen are about twice the size of the ones homeowners use. Biomass for power is controversial, most notably accounting methods used to calculate carbon and CO2. Emissions and offsets.
My wife messaged her Aunt in Leeds England. She said their primary stockpile of pellets come from: Energy Products of America - Wilmington, Ohio Confluence Energy - Kremmling, Colorado She said they also get small amounts of pellets from various European producers as well. But she said the American pellets are generally cheaper and better quality.
