GLOUCESTER, Miss. (AP) — The massive wood pellet mill in this southern Mississippi town was so close to Sheila Mae Dobbins’ home that she could sometimes hear the company’s speakers. Industrial debris covered her truck and she no longer enjoyed spending time outdoors, she says.
Dobbins feels her life and health were better before 2016, when British energy giant Drax opened a facility capable of compressing 450,000 tons of wood chips a year in the predominantly black town of Gloucester, Mississippi. To her, it’s no coincidence that federal regulators found residents were exposed to more unwanted air particles and had more asthma than most of the nation.
Her asthma and diabetes were once under control, but since being diagnosed with heart and lung disease in 2017, Dobbins has often lived on the end of a breathing tube connected to an oxygen tank.
“Something is happening. It’s everywhere around the factory,” said the 59-year-old widow, who raised two children here. “No one asked us if they could bring this factory there.”
Wood pellet production has soared in the southern United States. That has helped meet demand in the European Union for renewable energy, as those countries seek to replace fossil fuels like coal. But many residents near the plants—often African Americans in poor rural areas—find the process makes the air dustier and makes people sicker.
Billions of dollars are available for these projects under President Joe Biden’s Signature Act Combating climate change. The administration is considering whether to open the door to giving tax credits to companies that burn wood pellets for energy.
As producers expand westward, environmental advocates want the government to stop incentivizing what they call a misguided attempt to reduce carbon emissions that pollute communities of color while already warming the atmosphere.
Despite the huge fines imposed on industry players for pollution, A major producer recently went bankrupt, Proponents say the multi-billion dollar market is increasingly difficult, and in wood pellets they see an innovative, long-term solution to the climate crisis that would provide forest owners with the revenue they need to sustain plantations.
Biomass boom
After the European Union classified biomass as a renewable energy source in 2009, annual wood pellet production capacity in the Southeast rose from about 300,000 tons to more than 7.3 million tons by 2017, according to research by a team from the University of Missouri.
Federal Energy Statistics Data shows that about thirty wood pellet plants in the South account for nearly 80 percent of the annual U.S. energy. Most of the wood pellets are used for commercial energy production overseas.
The market has brought hope for revitalization to small, deprived communities. But interviews with residents of cities with large black populations, from Gastown, North CarolinaComplaints have been raised about truck traffic, air pollution and noise from pellet mills in Uniontown, Alabama.
Gloucester has become a prime example of such tensions. In 2020, the Mississippi Environmental Agency fined Drax $2.5 million for violating air emissions limits. Gloucester is exposed to higher levels of fine particulate matter than most of the United States, and adults have asthma rates higher than 80 percent of the nation, according to the EPA’s mapping tool. The median household income is about $22,000; the poverty rate is three times the national level.
Drax installed pollution controls, including waste incinerators, in 2021 to reduce carbon emissions, company spokesperson Michele Martin said. An environmental consulting firm found “no adverse effects on human health” and that “no contaminant designed from the facility exceeded” acceptable levels, Martin said.
The company recently pledged to hold annual town meetings and announced a $250,000 Gloucester Community Fund “to improve the quality of life.”
But critics are unmoved by the companies’ show of goodwill, which they say doesn’t explain the poor air quality. Crystal Martin, of the Greater Gloucester Green 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 breathe it in and inhale it for so long that they get sick,” she said.
Erica Walker, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Brown University, studies the health effects of industrial pollutants on Gloucester residents. Walker said fine particles can travel deep into the lungs and into the bloodstream.
“The virus can also spread to other parts of the body, leading to inflammation throughout the body,” she added.
Subsidies to support emerging industry
Environmentalists are calling on Biden to stop helping an industry they believe conflicts with his green energy goals. UN Climate Change 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 signed by former President Donald Trump, according to Sheila Kurth, a former policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense.
But Kurth said that the Biden era Inflation Reduction Act Providing tax credits to companies that produce wood pellets for countries in Europe and Asia.
The money represents a small portion of the forest restoration program’s allocation, said Elizabeth Woodworth, interim executive director of the American Industrial Wood Pellet Association, noting that emerging technologies require government subsidies. The industry argues that replanting trees will eventually absorb the carbon released by burning wood pellets.
“We need every technology we can get to mitigate climate change, and bioenergy is part of that,” Woodworth said.
Scientific studies have found that burning wood pellets releases more carbon into the atmosphere immediately than coal. According to a recent report, pollution from biomass-based facilities is about three times higher than pollution from other energy sectors. Research paper in the Journal of Renewable Energy 2023.
in Message 2018Hundreds of scientists have warned the European Union that the “extra carbon load” from burning wood pellets means “permanent damage” including melting ice.
Expansion plans and more burning?
Drax, which operates plants in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, is heading west.
In February, the company signed an agreement with Golden State Natural Resources to identify biomass from California forests. The public-private company hopes to build two plants by the end of the year that will produce up to 1 million tons of wood pellets annually. Another Drax project in Washington is slated to produce 500,000 tons annually.
Rita Frost of the Natural Resources Defense Council, who has fought the plants in the South, said the deal would endanger low-income Latino communities in California, just as she says the industry has threatened Southern black cities.
“This is an environmental justice issue that should not happen again in California,” Frost said.
Biomass, including wood pellets, accounted for less than 5% of U.S. primary energy consumption in 2022, According to the US Energy Information Administration.
But a major federal decision could attract more companies into the wood pellet business — and not just production.
The White House is considering whether biomass plants should receive tax credits specifically for zero-emission electricity generation. The Treasury Department is examining whether biomass’ potential long-term carbon neutrality is sufficient even if its production increases emissions in the near term.
Department spokesman Michael Martinez said they are “carefully reviewing public comments” and “working to issue final rules that will increase energy security and clean energy supplies as effectively as possible.”
Some environmentalists doubt that the energy alternative is ultimately carbon-free. The Southern Environmental Law Center worries that the credits could provide the incentive needed for the United States to join Europe in increasing pellet burning.
“The threat here is actually the growth of biomass energy production in the United States itself,” said senior attorney Heather Hilker. “This would add to the total carbon and climate damage caused by this industry globally.”
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Pollard reported from Columbia, South Carolina. Watson reported from San Diego. Photojournalist Terri Shea from San Francisco and correspondent Matthew Daly from Washington, D.C. contributed reporting.
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