This story initially appeared on Grist and is a part of the Local weather Desk collaboration.
Wooden pellets, by design, are extremely flammable. The small items of compressed woody leftovers, like sawdust, are utilized in all the things from dwelling heating to grilling. However their flammable nature has made for harmful work situations: Since 2010, at the very least 52 fires have damaged out on the services that make wooden pellets throughout the US, in keeping with a database of incidents compiled by the Southern Environmental Legislation Heart.
Of the 15 largest wooden pellet services, at the very least eight have had fires or explosions since 2014, in accordance to the Environmental Integrity Undertaking, a nonprofit based by a former director of the US Environmental Safety Company.
On the identical time, the world’s largest biomass firm, Drax, is slicing down timber throughout North America with a promise to promote them as a substitute for fossil fuels. However even its observe report is checkered with accidents.
In South Shields, UK, wooden pellets destined for a Drax plant spontaneously combusted whereas in storage on the Port of Tyne, beginning a hearth that took 40 firefighters 12 hours to extinguish. In Port Allen, Louisiana, a Drax wood-pellet facility burst into flames in November 2021.
Now, regardless of discovering itself within the midst of a lawsuit over unintended hearth damages, Drax is urgent on with a brand new enterprise proposal; it entails not simply slicing down timber to make wooden pellets, however, the corporate argues, additionally to assist cease wildfires.
In October 2023, after buying two parcels of land in California to construct two pellet mills, one in Tuolumne County and one other in Lassen County, Drax’s companion group, Golden State Pure Assets, or GSNR, “a nonprofit public profit company,” met with residents of Tuolumne County to deal with issues about its imaginative and prescient for the way the method of producing wooden pellets can mitigate wildfire danger.
GSNR has since touted its shut work with group members. Nonetheless, in keeping with Megan Fiske, who instructs rural employees at a local people faculty, residents residing near the proposed pellet mill websites weren’t at all times conscious of the plans. “Individuals who had been 100 ft away from the [proposed] pellet plant had no concept about it,” stated Fiske.
Each of the proposed mills are in forested areas which have been threatened by wildfires. When requested in regards to the dangers that manufacturing wooden pellets poses, Patrick Blacklock, govt director of GSNR, informed Grist, “We sought to be taught from these incidents. The design options can go a protracted approach to mitigating the danger of fireside.”
If county representatives approve the plan, loggers will probably be allowed to take “useless or dying timber” and “woody biomass” from inside a 100-mile radius of the pellet mills inside the two counties, which overlap with the Stanislaus Nationwide Forest and the Yosemite Nationwide Park.
Fiske stated she’s seen situations, unrelated to Drax, the place loggers weren’t educated correctly and ended up taking extra wooden than ought to have been allowed underneath a wildfire resilience scheme. “There’s a distinction between what the loggers are informed and what occurs on the bottom,” stated Fiske. You might have “inexperienced or younger people who find themselves underpaid, perhaps English isn’t their first language, so there are lots of limitations.”
