Inside this issue

From the Editors

A “Waste Problem” That Is A Gold Mine

For the last several years, much of the forest products industry has sounded like a country song played on repeat: Mills closing, chip markets disappearing, logging crews parking equipment, rural economies getting hammered.

And to be fair, the numbers are ugly.

Since 2022, 11 pulp mills—mostly in the U.S. South—have closed. Millions of tons of fiber demand vanished. Landowners watched pulpwood prices sag while economists produced increasingly depressing PowerPoints.

But if the recent Wood Bioenergy Conference & Expo in Atlanta proved anything, it’s that the industry may finally be getting tired of attending its own funeral.

The unspoken theme of the conference was simple— if life gives you lemons, stop holding a symposium about citrus oversupply and make some dang lemonade already. All that “excess” everyone keeps whining about? Turns out it might actually be valuable. Imagine that, haven’t the likes of Drax, Highland, Graanul and Enviva been saying that for years now?

Speaker after speaker laid out a future where forest residuals aren’t treated like an inconvenient pile of leftovers nobody wants, but as feedstock for energy, fuels, carbon products, biomaterials, and emerging markets that are suddenly attracting real money and real attention.

AFRY Management Consulting’s Vincent Leon estimated higher-value uses for forest residues in the South could unlock $20 billion to $25 billion annually in incremental value. Not from discovering some magical new resource. From utilizing the one already sitting in slash piles, chip bins, and woodyards across the region.

But the conference made one thing abundantly clear: The next generation of forest products markets won’t look like the last one. Data centers alone could become a massive opportunity. Georgia Forestry Commission’s Dru Preston pointed out that a single hyperscale data center needing 1.2 gigawatts of electricity could theoretically support 12 biomass power plants consuming 1.2 million tons of wood chips annually. Twelve plants.

That’s not just a win for biomass developers. That’s a win for logging contractors, trucking companies, landowners, building products mills, and every rural diner where foresters drink bad coffee at 5 a.m.

The fiber demand projections tied to sustainable aviation fuel are enormous—large enough that forestry could become a central player in decarbonization efforts.

The irony in all this is almost painful.

From Left: Jessica Johnson, Managing Editor; Dan Shell, Senior Editor; Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief; David Abbott, Senior Associate Editor