- Nearly 30 wood pellet mills operate in the southeastern U.S., with more planned. Environmental advocates have long opposed biomass for energy schemes, noting that the burning of wood pellets is a poor replacement for coal because it releases major carbon emissions, while also causing deforestation and biodiversity harm.
- But those arguments have barely moved the dial when it comes to regulating the industry or banning its lucrative green subsidies, so activist wins have been few. But the angry protests of southeastern U.S. citizens — many of them poor and Black —in rural areas where pellet mills are located have raised another big issue: pollution.
- A case in point is Drax’s Amite County plant located in Gloster, Mississippi. Drax is one of the biggest forest biomass producers in the world, but that hasn’t stopped Gloster’s citizens from opposing the company for its impacts on health and quality of life, like toxic air pollution, excessive noise and truck traffic.
- Drax has been fined twice, totaling more than $2.7 million for its pollution, with Gloster citizens recently winning over the state of Mississippi, which for now is refusing to give Drax a permit to legally pollute even more. Pollution is bad near other wood pellet plants, and forest advocates are now allying with irate citizens.
Jimmy Brown has lived less than a mile from the Drax wood pellet manufacturing plant in the tiny town of Gloster in Amite County, Mississippi, since it opened in 2016. The impact on his quality of life, and often his health, was the same then as it is now.
“It’s terrible,” Brown told Mongabay. “You got dust falling all night. You got constant noise from the plant. You got odor. You got truck traffic [carrying tons of trees and chipped wood] all day, every day. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand. It’s nonstop.”
On April 8, during a three-hour hearing in the state capital of Jackson, Brown, along with about 50 of his neighbors, made the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality’s (MDEQ) Permit Board understand his and Gloster’s plight. The board voted 5-1 to deny Drax’s request to be reclassified from a minor to a major source of Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs).
An approval would have enabled Drax — permitted to make 500,000 metric tons of wood pellets annually at its Amite plant — to hit that annual production target and not incur millions of dollars in future fines for violating Mississippi air pollution restrictions. The Gloster plant is among the largest forest biomass-for-energy pellet production facilities in the world.
Drax has twice previously been fined by MDEQ for such violations: $2.5 million in 2020 —one of the largest air-pollution fines in state history — for underestimating hazardous pollutants emitted since the mill’s 2016 opening. It was again fined $225,000 last year for emitting more than 50% of its permitted limit of HAPs, which are toxic chemical pollutants.
“When we fight, we win,” said Krystal Martin of Greater Greener Gloster, who helped organize the bus full of residents who made the two-hour trip to Jackson for the hearing. “This wasn’t just a win for Gloster, it was a win for every community that’s fighting the wood pellet industry from Mississippi to Alabama to Georgia and North Carolina.”
A new tactic for biomass opponents
A 2023 study found that wood pellet mills — 28 of which operate in the U.S. Southeast — emit 2.8 times more pollution than coal and oil-burning power plants on average. The mills release 55 known toxic pollutants ranging from nitrogen oxide to volatile organic compounds that disproportionately impact so-called environmental justice communities like Gloster, with a population of 1,189 and a 32% poverty rate.
The community-level victory in Mississippi portends a shift in strategy among forest advocates such as the Dogwood Alliance, which was involved in organizing opposition to Drax’s permit request.
For years, the scientific arguments of forest activists against the burning of wood pellets — increased carbon emissions, deforestation and biodiversity loss — have largely failed to persuade policymakers to reject biomass energy as a climate solution.
Now, industry opponents are emphasizing local impacts near the pellet mills themselves where elected officials are sometimes more responsive to constituents’ claims of pollution, threats to public health, and diminished quality of life.
Krystal Martin, in conjunction with environmental groups, said their message to the governor, state legislators and the MDEQ was direct: “Your mission is to protect and safeguard the health of all Mississippians. So we want you to honor your mission in our Black communities just like you do in white communities.”
Community outcry; Drax response
In Gloster, residents living within a mile or two of the plant complain of a range of respiratory ailments and daily disruptions due to noise, traffic and pollution. These complaints are similar to those voiced for years in poor rural communities across the southeastern United States where pellet mills are located.
Drax — one of the world’s largest producers of wood pellets for industrial-scale energy use — has eight manufacturing plants across the Deep South and nine in British Columbia, Canada. In 2024, the company produced 4 million metric tons of pellets in North America for export to Europe and Asia, a 5% increase over 2023.
Drax, headquartered in the United Kingdon, also operates the largest wood pellet-only power plant in the world. It received $987 million in British subsidies in 2024 to burn pellets instead of coal. Policies in both the U.K. and the European Union classify the burning of forest biomass as a carbon neutral renewable energy source. Scientists have determined these carbon neutrality claims to be the product of carbon accounting errors that fail to add up C02 releases along the pellet supply chain and emissions from power plant smokestacks.
In the past year, Drax has been able to come into compliance with Mississippi air pollution regulations by decreasing its production. But Drax officials told the MDEQ permit board that, in order to make the amount of pellets its permit allows, it needs to be reclassified as a major, not minor, source of HAPs.
Gloster resident Brown was quoted in Mississippi Today, which covered the hearing, saying that Drax’s request was like getting a speeding ticket and appealing to the state to raise the speed limit to avoid being fined.
Another Gloster resident, Carmella Causey, who carries an oxygen tank with her, asked the board, “How many of us have to die for these pellets to be made?”
Despite its 5-1 vote to deny the permit, the board chairman, Doug Mann, told those attending the hearing that the permit board may reconsider the request later if Drax can demonstrate that it can produce pellets at full capacity while reducing the toxins it emits.
For its part, Drax has been investing in, and promising to install, a new technology called Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage, or BECCS, at its huge wood pellet-burning energy plant in the U.K., as well as at its pellet mills in the southeastern U.S.
Scientists note, however, that the technology is years away from being viable. And if it were to work, BECCS would only trap carbon emissions, not the entire range of toxic pollutants.
Drax spokeswoman Michelli Martin declined to respond to specific questions from Mongabay regarding an appeal of the MDEQ decision or how much the denied permit may reduce the Gloster plant’s annual wood-pellet production.
“Drax cares deeply for the safety of our people and community residents which is why we have installed additional control equipment to manage our emissions,” Martin replied in a written response to the Gloster community outcry.
She added: “MDEQ staff confirmed to the permit board that Drax is currently in compliance and will be able to maintain compliance with the proposed permit applications by all regulatory and technical requirements of MDEQ permits.”
Renewable energy tax credits
In another development, Drax’s ability to receive U.S. tax subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) by claiming wood pellets are a renewable energy source was made more challenging, but not impossible, in January during the waning days of the Biden administration.
Biden’s Treasury Department finalized rules under the IRA to incentivize both industrial emission reductions and the growth of low-carbon energy sources. These rules have not as yet been reversed by the Trump administration.
Among the federal hurdles wood pellet makers like Drax will have to clear to qualify for IRA funding, this rule stands out: Carbon and toxic emissions associated with making wood pellets would likely render the industry ineligible for tax credits. Still, some aspects of the rules are general enough that producers could argue biomass qualifies for federal support.
Martin with Drax declined to comment on the company’s IRA lobbying efforts.
Heather Hillaker, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center in North Carolina, has studied the rules as they pertain to forest biomass for energy production.
“We are glad Treasury listened to our comments and did not wrongly rubberstamp biomass energy companies’ request for millions in taxpayer dollars,” Hillaker told Mongabay. “Instead, the rules direct the Department of Energy to further study biomass energy and its impact on our climate.”
Hillaker noted that research shows that wood pellets emit more carbon emissions than coal per unit of energy produced. “We urge the Department of Energy to follow the facts and make it clear that biomass energy is not clean energy,” she said.
With the Trump administration demonstrating its intent to eliminate environmental protection and air quality regulations, while halting climate mitigation efforts, it is as yet unknown how or whether the current Department of Energy will adhere to the IRA rules released by the previous administration.
Banner image: Greater Greener Gloster community members stand in front of the state capitol in Jackson, Mississippi, as they demand the cleanup of the Drax pellet mill in their community and an end to biomass industry subsidies. Image courtesy of the Dogwood Alliance.
Justin Catanoso, a regular contributor to Mongabay, is a professor of journalism at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
New survey puts human face on pollution caused by U.S. wood pellet mills
Citation:
Tran, H., Juno, E., & Arunachalam, S. (2023). Emissions of wood pelletization and bioenergy use in the United States. Renewable Energy, Volume 219, Part 2. doi:10.1016/j.renene.2023.119536
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