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Even as the world's largest wood pellet producer, Enviva, recently declared bankruptcy a major user of that stricken firm's dirtier-than-coal fuelstock, Drax Group, is casting a hungry eye on California's forests.
To make matters worse, U.K.-based Drax now covets the deep pockets of the U.S.' popular Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) to subsidize Drax's expansion here.
IRA is the most substantial effort in U.S. history to address the climate crisis and accelerate our transition away from fossil fuels.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury is now considering whether to allocate IRA tax breaks to the biomass electricity industry, which bills itself as a "green" energy source despite a growing body of science exposing it as highly climate-damaging and harmful to communities near the plants.
A decision from Treasury on the potential subsidies was due by the end of March and could come any day now.
Industrial-scale pellet manufacturing would unleash a host of environmental impacts onto California's forests, including stripping away vital nutrients and degrading soils and wildlife habitat. Drax hopes to build one pellet manufacturing mega-plant each in Lassen and Tuolumne counties.
Treasury is supposed to factor environmental justice and public health considerations into its decision-making. But communities across the South have long charged Drax and Enviva plants with inflicting noise and higher rates of cardiovascular disease, asthma and other respiratory ailments on nearby residents.
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Paul Hughes
Executive Director
Forests Forever
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RESOURCES →
- This recent Mongabay piece will bring you some of the latest developments in the wake of Enviva's bankruptcy.
- In case you missed Forests Forever's latest alert on this campaign, check it out here.
- Find out more about Drax here.
- Here's a recent study by a team of respected scientists who set the record straight on some of the best and worst approaches to managing forests for carbon.
- Video (7:43) "Wood pellets may not actually be green renewable energy source, critics say"