Wood pellets boom comes at a cost for Black people in the South

By James Pollard, Julie Watson and Stephen Smith

July 27, 2024 7:18 AM PT

GLOSTER, Miss. — This southern Mississippi town’s expansive wood pellet plant was so close to Shelia Mae Dobbins’ 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.

Dobbins feels her life — and health — were better before 2016, when Drax opened a facility able to compress 450,000 tons of wood chips annually in the majority Black town of Gloster, Miss. To her, it’s no coincidence federal regulators find residents are exposed to unwanted air particles and they experience asthma more than most of the country.

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 canister.

“Something is going on. And it’s all around the plant,” said the 59-year-old widow who raised two children here. “Nobody asked us could they bring that plant there.”

Wood pellet production skyrocketed across the U.S. South. It helped feed demand in the European Union for renewable energy, as those countries sought to replace fossil fuels such as coal. But many residents near plants — often Black people in poor, rural swaths — find the process left their air dustier and people sicker.

Billions of dollars are available for these projects under President Biden’s signature law combating climate change. The administration is weighing whether to open up tax credits for companies to burn wood pellets for energy.

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 warming the atmosphere.

Despite hefty pollution fines against industry players and one major producer’s recent bankruptcy, supporters 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.

Biomass boom

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, according to research led by a University of Missouri team.

Federal energy statistics show about three dozen Southern wood pellet manufacturing facilities account for nearly 80% of annual U.S. capacity. The plants compress wood into pellets using a variety of sources — including tops of trees and leftovers from lumber operations. Most pellets are used for commercial-scale energy overseas.

The market brought hope for revitalization to small, disadvantaged communities. But interviews with residents of towns with large Black populations, from Gaston, N.C., to Uniontown, Ala., surfaced complaints of truck traffic, air pollution and noise from pellet plants.

Gloster has become the poster child for such tensions. In 2020, Mississippi’s 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.

Spokesperson Michelli Martin said Drax in 2021 installed pollution controls, including incinerators to decrease carbon emissions. An environmental consulting firm found “no adverse effects to human health” and that “no modeled pollutant from the facility exceeded” acceptable levels, Martin said.

The company recently committed to annual town halls and announced a $250,000 Gloster Community 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, 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 said.

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.

“It can also circulate to other parts of our body, leading to body-wide inflammation,” she said.

Subsidies for an upstart industry

Environmentalists are calling on 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 signed by former President Trump, according to Sheila Korth, a former policy analyst with nonpartisan watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense.

But Korth said 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 U.S. Industrial Pellet Assn., 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.”

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 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.

Expansion plans and more burning?

Drax — with plants operating 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 endanger California’s low-income Latino communities much like she says the industry threatened Black southern towns.

“It’s an environmental justice problem that should not be repeated in California,” Frost said.

Biomass, including wood pellets, accounted for less than 5% of U.S. primary energy consumption in 2022, according to the U.S. 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 U.S. to join Europe in scaling up the burning of pellets.

“The threat here is really the growth of biomass energy production in the U.S. itself,” said senior attorney Heather Hillaker. “Which obviously will add to the total carbon and climate harms of this industry globally.”

Pollard, Watson and Smith write for the Associated Press. Pollard reported from Columbia, S.C., Watson reported from San Diego, Smith from Gloster. Contributing were video journalist Terry Chea from San Francisco and reporter Matthew Daly from Washington, D.C.