NORTHAMPTON, N.C. — Here’s a multibillion-dollar question… If a tree [is] chipped and compressed into wood pellets, which are then driven to a port and shipped across the ocean to be burned for electricity in European power plants—does it warm the planet? Most scientists and environmentalists say yes… But policymakers in the U.S. Congress and governments around the world have declared that no, burning wood for power isn’t a climate threat—it’s actually a green climate solution. …Biomass power is a fast-growing $50 billion global industry… But when it comes to power from ground-up trees, there’s still a raging substantive debate about whether it’s a forest-friendly, carbon-neutral alternative to fossil fuels, or an environmental disaster. …Many European politicians and regulators now express second thoughts about the blanket exemptions they gave biomass in the past, but in most countries those exemptions have proved quite resilient.