GLOSTER, Madam. — The sprawling wood pellet plant in this southern Mississippi city was so close to Shelia Mae Dobbins’ home that she could sometimes hear the company’s loudspeakers. She says her truck was covered in industrial debris and she no longer enjoys being outside.
Dobbins believes her life—and health—were better before 2016, when Drax opened a facility capable of compacting 450,000 tons of wood chips annually in the predominantly black city of Gloster, Mississippi. It’s no coincidence, she says, that federal regulators are finding that residents are exposed to unwanted air particles and have higher rates of asthma than most people in the country.
Her asthma and diabetes were once under control, but since being diagnosed with heart and lung disease in 2017, Dobbins has frequently lived at the end of a breathing tube connected to an oxygen tank.
“There’s something going on. And it’s all around the plant,” said the 59-year-old widow who raised two children here. “Nobody asked us if they could bring that plant there.”
Wood pellet production has skyrocketed in the U.S. South to fuel the European Union’s push over the past decade to use renewable energy to replace fossil fuels like coal. It’s an increasingly popular form of biomass: renewable organic material that captures solar energy. But many residents near factories, often African Americans in poor, rural areas, say the process makes their air dustier and people sicker.
Billions of dollars are available for these projects under President Joe Biden’s signature law combating climate change. The government is considering whether to grant tax breaks to companies that burn wood pellets for energy.
As producers expand west, environmentalists want the government to stop encouraging what they call a misguided effort to curb carbon emissions that are polluting communities of color and are currently warming the atmosphere.
Despite the hefty fines for pollution from industry and the recent bankruptcy of a major producer, Proponents say the multibillion-dollar market is experiencing growing pains. In wood pellets, they see an innovative, long-term solution to the climate crisis that generates the income forest owners need to maintain plantations.
After the European Union designated biomass as a renewable energy source in 2009, annual wood pellet capacity in the Southeast increased from about 300,000 tons to more than 7.3 million tons in 2017, according to research led by a team from the University of Missouri.
Federal energy statistics show about three dozen southern wood pellet production facilities, accounting for nearly 80 percent of U.S. annual capacity. Most of the pellets are used for commercial-scale energy overseas.
The market brought hope for revitalization to small, underserved communities. But interviews with residents of cities with large black populations, from Gaston, North Carolinato Uniontown, Alabama, complaints surfaced about truck traffic, air pollution and noise from pellet mills.
Gloster has become a 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 rates of asthma than 80% of the country, according to a mapping tool from the Environmental Protection Agency. The median household income is about $22,000; the poverty rate is three times the national level.
Spokesperson Michelli Martin said Drax installed pollution controls in 2021, including incinerators to reduce carbon emissions. An environmental consultancy found “no adverse effects on human health” and that “no modelled pollutant from the facility exceeded acceptable levels,” Martin said.
The company recently committed to annual meetings and announced a $250,000 Gloster Community Fund to “improve the quality of life.”
But critics aren’t swayed by corporate goodwill displays, which they say don’t explain bad air. Krystal Martin, of the Greater Greener Gloster Project, returned to her hometown after her 75-year-old mother developed lung and heart problems.
“You don’t really know you’re dealing with air pollution until most people have been breathing it in for so long that they get sick,” she says.
Erica Walker, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Brown University, studies the health effects of industrial pollutants on Gloster residents. Walker said particulate matter can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream.
“It can also circulate to other parts of our body, leading to inflammation throughout the body,” she said.
Environmentalists are calling on Biden to stop supporting an industry they say runs counter to his green energy goals. annual United Nations climate conferenceThe Dogwood Alliance urged attendees to phase out wood pellets.
Enviva, the world’s largest producer of wood pellets, had already received subsidies through the 2018 farm bill that former President Donald Trump signed, said Sheila Korth, a former policy analyst at the independent watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense.
But Korth said the Biden era Inflation Reduction Act made tax benefits available to companies that produce pellets for countries in Europe and Asia.
Elizabeth Woodworth, interim executive director of the U.S. Industrial Pellet Association, said the money is a small fraction of the IRA’s allocations and noted that emerging technologies require government subsidies. The industry argues that replanting trees will eventually absorb carbon produced by burning pellets.
“We need every technology we can get our hands on to mitigate climate change,” Woodworth said. “Bioenergy is part of that.”
Scientific studies have shown that burning wood pellets directly puts more carbon into the atmosphere than coal. The pollution from biomass-based facilities is almost three times higher than that of other energy sectors, according to a 2023 article in Renewable Energy magazine.
In a Letter 2018Hundreds of scientists warned the EU that the “extra carbon burden” from burning wood pellets would cause “permanent damage”, including melting glaciers.
Drax, with factories in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, is moving west.
The company signed an agreement with Golden State Natural Resources in February to identify biomass from California forests. The public-private partnership hopes to build two plants by the end of the year and produce up to 1 million tons of wood pellets annually. Another Drax project in Washington would produce 500,000 tons a year.
Rita Frost of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which campaigns against planting in the South, said the deal would pose a danger to California’s poor Latino communities, just as she said the industry poses a danger to black towns in the South.
“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 primary energy use in the US in 2022. according to the US Energy Information Administration.
But a major federal decision could attract more companies to pellet burning, not just manufacturing.
The White House is considering whether biomass facilities should receive tax credits intended for zero-emission electricity generators. The Treasury Department is weighing whether biomass’s potential long-term carbon neutrality is sufficient, even if its production increases emissions in the short term.
Spokesman Michael Martinez said they are “carefully considering public comments” and “working to issue final rules that will most effectively enhance energy security and clean energy supplies.”
Some environmentalists question whether the energy alternative is ultimately carbon neutral. The Southern Environmental Law Center fears the credits could be the incentive the U.S. needs to join Europe in scaling up pellet burning.
“The threat here is really the growth of biomass energy production in the U.S. itself,” said senior attorney Heather Hillaker. “Which will obviously add to the total carbon and climate damage of this industry globally.”
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Pollard reported from Columbia, South Carolina. Watson reported from San Diego. Contributing were video journalist Terry Chea from San Francisco and reporter Matthew Daly from Washington, D.C.
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