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This southern Mississippi town\u2019s expansive wood pellet plant was so close to Shelia Mae Dobbins\u2019 home that she sometimes heard company loudspeakers. She says industrial residues coated her truck and she no longer enjoys spending time in the air outdoors.<\/p>\n
Dobbins feels her life \u2014 and health \u2014 were better before 2016, when United Kingdom energy giant Drax opened a facility able to compress 450,000 tons of wood chips annually in the majority Black town of Gloster, Mississippi. To her, it\u2019s no coincidence federal regulators find residents are exposed to unwanted air particles and they experience asthma more than most of the country.<\/p>\n
Her asthma and diabetes were once under control, but since a 2017 diagnosis of heart and lung disease, Dobbins has frequently lived at the end of a breathing tube connected to an oxygen cannister.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething is going on. And it\u2019s all around the plant,\u201d said the 59-year-old widow who raised two children here. \u201cNobody asked us could they bring that plant there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wood pellet production skyrocketed across the U.S. South. It helped feed demand in the European Union for renewable energy, as those coutries sought to replace fossil fuels such as coal. But many residents near plants \u2014 often African Americans in poor, rural swaths \u2014 find the process left their air dustier and people sicker.<\/p>\n
Billions of dollars are available for these projects under\u00a0President Joe Biden\u2019s signature law<\/a>\u00a0combating climate change. The administration is weighing whether to open up tax credits for companies to burn wood pellets for energy.<\/p>\n As producers expand west, environmentalists want the government to stop incentivizing what they call a misguided attempt to curb carbon emissions that pollute communities of color while presently warming the atmosphere.<\/p>\n Despite hefty pollution fines against industry players and\u00a0one major producer\u2019s recent bankruptcy,<\/a>\u00a0supporters say the multibillion-dollar market is experiencing growing pains. In wood pellets, they see an innovative long-term solution to the climate crisis that brings revenue necessary for forest owners to maintain plantations.<\/p>\n After the European Union classified biomass as renewable energy in 2009, the Southeast\u2019s annual wood pellet capacity increased from about 300,000 tons to more than 7.3 million tons by 2017, according to research led by a University of Missouri team.<\/p>\n Federal\u00a0energy statistics<\/a>\u00a0show about three dozen southern wood pellet manufacturing facilities account for nearly 80% of annual U.S. capacity. Most pellets are used for commercial-scale energy overseas.<\/p>\n The market brought hope for revitalization to small, disadvantaged communities. But interviews with residents of towns with large Black populations, from Gaston,\u00a0North Carolina<\/a>, to Uniontown, Alabama, surfaced complaints of truck traffic, air pollution and noise from pellet plants.<\/p>\n Gloster has become the poster child for such tensions. In 2020, Mississippi\u2019s environmental agency fined Drax $2.5 million for violating air emissions limits. Gloster is exposed to more particulate matter than much of the U.S. and adults have higher asthma rates than 80% of the country, according to an Environmental Protection Agency mapping tool. Median household income is about $22,000; the poverty rate is triple the national level.<\/p>\n Spokesperson Michelli Martin said Drax in 2021 installed pollution controls, including incinerators to decrease carbon emissions. An environmental consulting firm found \u201cno adverse effects to human health\u201d and that \u201cno modeled pollutant from the facility exceeded\u201d acceptable levels, Martin said.<\/p>\n The company recently committed to annual town halls and announced a $250,000 Gloster Community Fund to \u201cimprove quality of life.\u201d<\/p>\n But critics aren\u2019t swayed by showings of corporate goodwill they say don\u2019t account for poor air. 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.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t really know you\u2019re dealing with air pollution until most people have breathed and inhaled it for so long that they end up sick,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Brown University assistant epidemiology professor Erica Walker is studying health impacts of industrial pollutants on Gloster residents. Walker said fine particulate matter can travel deep into lungs and reach the bloodstream.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can also circulate to other parts of our body, leading to body-wide inflammation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Environmentalists are calling on Biden to stop aiding an industry they believe runs counter to his green energy goals. At the\u00a0annual United Nations climate conference<\/a>, The Dogwood Alliance urged attendees to phase out wood pellets.<\/p>\n Enviva \u2014 the world\u2019s largest wood pellet producer \u2014 had already received subsidies through the 2018 farm bill signed by former President Donald Trump, according to Sheila Korth, a former policy analyst with nonpartisan watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense.<\/p>\n But Korth said the Biden-era\u00a0Inflation Reduction Act<\/a>\u00a0made tax credits available to companies that create pellets for countries in Europe and Asia.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need every single technology we can get our hands on to mitigate climate change,\u201d Woodworth said. \u201cBioenergy is a part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n Scientific studies have found firing wood pellets puts more carbon immediately into the atmosphere than coal. Pollution from biomass-based facilities is nearly three times higher than that of other energy sectors, according to a\u00a02023 paper in the journal Renewable Energy<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a\u00a02018 letter<\/a>, hundreds of scientists warned the EU that the \u201cadditional carbon load\u201d from burning wood pellets means \u201cpermanent damages\u201d including glacial melting.<\/p>\n Drax \u2014 with plants operating in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi \u2014 is heading west.<\/p>\n The corporation signed an agreement in February with Golden State Natural Resources to identify biomass from California\u2019s forests. The public-private venture hopes to build two plants by year\u2019s end and produce up to 1 million tons of wood pellets annually. Another Drax project in Washington would produce 500,000 tons a year.<\/p>\n The Natural Resources Defense Council\u2019s Rita Frost, who fought plants in the South, said the deal will endanger California\u2019s low-income Latino communities much like she says the industry threatened Black southern towns.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an environmental justice problem that should not be repeated in California,\u201d Frost said.<\/p>\nBiomass boom<\/h4>\n
Subsidies for an upstart industry<\/h4>\n
Expansion plans and more burning?<\/h4>\n