Golden State Natural Resources (GSNR), a California nonprofit that focuses on rural economic development, has canceled plans to build two industrial-scale wood pellet plants in the state. The organization cited weakening market conditions and pushback from locals as the drivers of their decision. Conservation groups are hailing the move as a win for forests and communities.
The company planned to source wood from public and private forest land in a 161-kilometer (100-mile) radius of each proposed plant. Their stated aim was to reduce overgrown vegetation and reduce fire risk. The two pellet plants would have produced roughly 1 million tons of pellets annually for use as biomass energy, mostly for export markets.
However, demand for pellets has significantly declined recently. In December 2024, South Korea abruptly announced it would end subsidies for new biomass projects starting in January 2025 and that it would phase down subsidies for power plants using imported forest biomass fuel. In February, the U.K. government announced it would cut in half the subsidies received by a controversial wood-burning power station.
In response to overseas market shifts for wood pellets, GSNR announced it will instead explore the domestic market for wood chips.
“GSNR’s reduced-scale project not only increases forest resiliency, but directly supports sustainable biomass use innovation in accordance with state and federal goals,” GSNR President Patrick Blacklock said in a press release.
Biomass proponents, including GSNR, say thinning forests to make wood pellets is a sustainable, climate-friendly fire-resiliency option because forests can be replanted.
However, Rita Vaughan Frost, a forest advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Mongabay in a video call that those arguments don’t ring true to her.
“They never really told us … how we would actually increase fire resiliency for communities,” Frost said. She added that most forests the company targeted were not the densest forests, “which is where scientific research actually does say that thinning attached with prescribed fire can bring a benefit for reducing fire intensity.”
Industry-scale wood burning can in fact increase carbon emissions, “depending on where that forest is, what kind of forest it is, how old the forest is, what sourcing practices they use, etc.,” Frost said. “And then you’ve got to manufacture the wood pellet, put it on another ship and you’ve got to transport it over the ocean to South Korea.”
GSNR cited more than 5,500 public comments from Californians as another reason for scrapping the pellet plants.
To move forward with wood chips, the organization will have to release a new plan, including a new draft environmental impact report (DEIR).
“GSNR is currently revising the previously released DEIR to reflect these project changes and anticipates recirculating the revised report, with an updated evaluation of potential environmental impacts, in early 2026,” Carolyn Jhajj, communications director with the Rural County Representatives of California, told Mongabay by email.
Banner image: Trees harvested in Stanislaus National Forest. Photo courtesy of Isis Howard.
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