In early April, the Pellet Fuels Institute completed a congressional fly-in, finding Washington, D.C, and the federal government much changed since our last visit just 11 months ago. In May 2024, the Biden administration was winding down, with the prospects for a second term seeming improbable. Republicans in Congress seemed content to wait for the election, feeling confident that they might regain the majority in the 119th Congress.This spring, our fly-in contingent found itself navigating a Congress in reaction mode to a spate of executive orders and tariff announcements. Capitol Hill was busy, as industry trade groups of all stripes were visiting their policymakers and sharing the potential impacts of President Trump’s tariffs to their businesses, hoping for some guidance on when the bigger ticket legislative packages might start to move.&nbsp;The PFI’s strategy for the 2025 spring fly-in was two-fold. First, as with every PFI advocacy effort, was to educate and remind policymakers about the role wood pellet manufacturing plays in their state and how the sector provides a paying off-taker for the residue streams that are generated by upstream sawmills and secondary forest product manufacturing sites. Of our 29 congressional meetings, 10 were with new members of Congress. In those meetings, we spent more time establishing the impact of pellet manufacturing on their state’s forest product economy. And why not? In many states, wood pellet manufacturing has a sizable footprint worthy of a thorough review. In Pennsylvania, wood pellet manufacturers purchase 500,000 tons of wood waste annually, generating nearly $20 million in revenue for upstream fiber producers. Those residues are then converted into 350,000 tons of finished heating pellets worth nearly $80 million wholesale. This $100 million economic contribution to the state’s economy does not include the impact of the pellet appliance manufacturing site operated by PFI-member Hearth &amp; Home Technologies in Halifax, nor the impact of the state’s roster of hearth retailers selling both pellets and pellet appliances to consumers. The handful of minutes required to establish these important metrics at each meeting created a foundation upon which the remainder of the meeting was built.&nbsp;Part two of this year’s strategy was to connect our regulatory and policy goals with two recent executive orders issued by Trump. Our intent was to make it clear, specifically with the Republican majority, that the Farm Bill provisions, appliance tax credit support and enhancements, and regulatory relief we were seeking closely aligned with the spirit of these recent orders.&nbsp;In his “Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production” order released on March 1, Trump established that “the production of timber, lumber, paper, bioenergy and other wood products (timber production) is critical to our nation’s well-being.” Certainly, this is a strong endorsement of wood products and wood pellets specifically, but another executive order issued earlier in the president’s second term put an even finer point on our fly-in goals, particularly our calls for regulatory relief. In his executive order issued Jan. 20, Trump noted, “In recent years, burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations have impeded the development of these resources, limited the generation of reliable and affordable electricity, reduced job creation, and inflicted high energy costs upon our citizens. These high energy costs devastate American consumers by driving up the cost of transportation, heating, utilities, farming and manufacturing, while weakening our national security.”For wood pellet manufacturers, this tone represented a welcome change from the anti-combustion rhetoric so prevalent in both the states and federal government in the recent past. This sentiment stands in stark contrast to state bans on the installation of natural gas infrastructure, or the introduction of bills like Washington’s SB 5174, which would have allowed the state’s ecology department to develop and issue its own list of approved wood-burning appliances, irrespective of the U.S. EPA’s current emissions criteria and list of approved pellet-burning appliances.&nbsp;Administrations change. So, too, does the balance of power in Congress, and although the value of wood pellet manufacturing to our country’s forest product and rural economies is consistent and unchanged, for our advocacy efforts to have a chance of success, the way we articulate our policy and regulatory efforts must change with them. Author: Tim Portz&nbsp; Executive Director, Pellet Fuels Institute&nbsp; tim@pelletheat.org&nbsp; www.pelletheat.org&nbsp;

America’s Wood Energy Unleashed

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