Wood pellets were supposed to be a green energy.
And President Joe Biden‘s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was meant to be good for America’s air, forests, and rivers.
But environmentalists say government-subsidized wood pellet production is wreaking havoc across the South.
Swathes of forests have been chopped down to make pellets for power stations in Europe.
And residents living near those plants say they leave their air dustier and people sicker.
Sheila Mae Dobbins breathes through an oxygen tube. She says a wood pellet plant has made the air dirty at her home in Gloster, Mississippi
Birds fly past a pile of wood used to make pellets during a tour of a Drax facility in Gloster, Mississippi
Scot Quaranda, a spokesman for the Dogwood Alliance, says big business and government subsidies have wrought disastrous consequences.
‘The whole reason for IRA subsidies was to stimulate the production of advanced technology to stop climate change‘ Quaranda told DailyMail.com.
‘But this wood pellet industry is just a way of sneaking in their old caveman ways and pretending it’s something new.’
Wood pellet production has skyrocketed across the US South, fueled by demand overseas.
After the European Union classified biomass as renewable energy in 2009, the Southeast’s annual wood pellet capacity increased from about 300,000 tons to more than 7.3 million tons by 2017, say University of Missouri researchers.
Federal energy statistics show about three dozen southern wood pellet manufacturing plants account for nearly 80 percent of annual US capacity.
The pellets are made from compressed sawdust, logging debris and even whole tree trunks.
Much of it is shipped to the EU and burned in power stations as those countries try to replace fossil fuels such as coal.
Billions of dollars are available for these projects under Biden’s signature climate change law.
The administration is weighing whether to open up tax credits for firms to burn wood pellets for energy.
But Quaranda and other critics say the pellets are even dirtier than fossil fuels.
They want the government to stop incentivizing what they call a misguided attempt to curb carbon emissions that pollute poor neighborhoods.
Supporters of wood pellets say they’re an innovative long-term solution to the climate crisis that brings revenue necessary for forest owners to maintain plantations.
The market brought hope for revitalization to small, disadvantaged communities.
But residents of towns from Gaston, North Carolina, to Uniontown, Alabama, complain of truck traffic, air pollution and noise from pellet plants.
Dan Caston, an employee of Drax leads a tour of their plant in Gloster, Mississippi
Environmentalist investigators say Enviva sources pellets from whole hardwood trees in Virginia and North Carolina, while the firm says it uses only tree tops, limbs and other waste
Dan Caston, an employee of Drax, shows some of the wood pellets their plant produces in Gloster, Mississppi
Shelia Mae Dobbins says life was better in Gloster, Mississippi, before 2016, when British energy giant Drax opened a facility able to compress 450,000 tons of wood chips annually.
She says industrial residues coated her truck, that she no longer enjoys spending time in the air outdoors.
Her asthma and diabetes were once under control.
But since a 2017 diagnosis of heart and lung disease, Dobbins has been sucking air through a tube from an oxygen tank.
‘Something is going on. And it’s all around the plant,’ says the 59-year-old widow who raised two children here.
‘Nobody asked us could they bring that plant there.’
Gloster is exposed to more particulate matter than much of the US and adults have higher asthma rates than 80 percent of the country, the Environmental Protection Agency says.
In 2020, Mississippi’s environmental agency fined Drax $2.5 million for violating air emissions limits.
Spokesperson Michelli Martin said Drax in 2021 installed pollution controls, including incinerators, to reduce carbon emissions.
They found ‘no adverse effects to human health’ and that ‘no modeled pollutant from the facility exceeded’ acceptable levels, Martin said.
Drax recently committed to annual town halls and announced a $250,000 local fund to ‘improve quality of life.’
But critics aren’t swayed by showings of corporate goodwill they say don’t account for poor air.
Krystal Martin, a Gloster native, shows pamphlets at a community meeting about air quality.
Logged hardwood timber being processed by wood pellet maker Enviva in Sampson County, North Carolina, in 2017, according to campaign group The Dogwood Alliance
A looming shortage of Russian gas in the wake of the Ukraine war has reignited enthusiasm for heating homes with coal and wood pellets in Europe. Pictured: a heating products business in Berlin, Germany
Krystal Martin, of the Greater Greener Gloster Project, returned to her hometown after her 75-year-old mother was diagnosed with lung and heart problems.
‘You don’t really know you’re dealing with air pollution until most people have breathed and inhaled it for so long that they end up sick,’ she says.
Brown University epidemiology scholar Erica Walker is studying health impacts of industrial pollutants on Gloster residents.
Fine particulate matter can travel deep into lungs, reach the bloodstream, and cause ‘body-wide inflammation,’ she says.
Environmentalists want Biden to stop aiding an industry they believe runs counter to his green energy goals.
At the annual United Nations climate conference, The Dogwood Alliance urged attendees to phase out wood pellets.
Enviva — the world’s largest wood pellet producer — had already received subsidies through the 2018 farm bill.
But the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act made tax credits available to companies that create pellets for countries in Europe and Asia.
Elizabeth Woodworth, interim executive director of the US Industrial Pellet Association, said the money is a small part of lRA allocations and noted emerging technologies require government subsidies.
The industry argues that replanting of trees will eventually absorb carbon produced by burning pellets.
‘We need every single technology we can get our hands on to mitigate climate change,’ Woodworth said.
‘Bioenergy is a part of that.’
Studies have found firing wood pellets puts more carbon immediately into the atmosphere than coal.
Little remains but stumps and puddles in what was once a hardwood forest along the Roanoke River in northeastern North Carolina. The trees were turned into wood pellets for burning in power plants in Europe
Cooling towers stand within the Drax Group Plc.’s power station complex in Yorkshire, Britain, a former coal burning facility that now generates heat from compressed waste
Environmentalists campaign against Drax’s burning of wood pellets and other so-called biofuels outside Britain’s Department for Business, Energy and Industry Strategy in London
Pollution from biomass-based facilities is nearly three times higher than that of other energy sectors, according to a 2023 paper in the journal Renewable Energy.
In a 2018 letter, hundreds of scientists warned the EU that the ‘additional carbon load’ from burning wood pellets means ‘permanent damages’ including glacial melting.
Drax — with plants in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi — is heading west.
The corporation signed an agreement in February with Golden State Natural Resources to identify biomass from California’s forests.
The public-private venture hopes to build two plants by year’s end and produce up to 1 million tons of wood pellets annually.
Another Drax project in Washington would produce 500,000 tons a year.
The Natural Resources Defense Council’s Rita Frost, who fought plants in the South, said the deal will similarly endanger poor communities in California.
‘It’s an environmental justice problem that should not be repeated in California,’ Frost said.
Biomass, including wood pellets, accounted for less than 5 percent of US primary energy consumption in 2022, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
But a key federal decision could draw more companies into pellet combustion — not just production.
The White House is looking into whether biomass facilities should receive tax credits meant for zero-emission electricity generators.
The Treasury Department is weighing whether biomass’ potential long-term carbon neutrality is sufficient even if its production increases emissions in the short term.
Spokesperson Michael Martinez said they are ‘carefully considering public comments’ and ‘working to issue final rules that will increase energy security and clean energy supply as effectively as possible.’
Some environmentalists doubt the energy alternative is ultimately carbon-neutral.
The Southern Environmental Law Center fears the credits could be the incentive needed for the US to join Europe in scaling up the burning of pellets.
‘The threat here is really the growth of biomass energy production in the US itself,’ said senior attorney Heather Hillaker.
‘Which obviously will add to the total carbon and climate harms of this industry globally.’
