Industrial Wood Pellets: A False Climate Solution
The biomass industry is quietly burning forests for fuel – and calling it renewable energy. Wood pellet production pollutes local communities and emits more carbon dioxide than coal. What’s worse – the industry is expanding rapidly, through the US South and to the West Coast.
The Rachel Carson Council is leading the national fight against this exploitative industry, which has largely flown under the radar of the environmental and climate movements. We are building momentum through policy and advocacy, education, storytelling, and community mobilization.
Our National Campaign
Policy & Advocacy
Through our federal advocacy campaign, we are pushing to tighten the definition of “renewable energy” to exclude extractive energy sources, such as wood pellets. And, through a number of state and local campaigns, we are working with community leaders and legislators to invest in truly sustainable energy alternatives and require stronger compliance from facilities in places where the industry has already set up shop.
Awareness & Education
We have published a number of research-based reports on the industry, including Clear Cut, Bad Business, and Greenwashing, detailing the economic, environmental, and public health pitfalls of the industry.
RCC’s newest report Drax: The Destroyer of Forests exposes the corporate destruction of America’s forests and the growing opposition to it.
Community Mobilization
We hosted the largest ever convention of anti-wood pellet advocates at the 2025 National Wood Pellet Forum. We brought community activists, students, educators, journalists, and policymakers together to develop strategies to combat the wood pellet industry and its rapid expansion to the West Coast.
Storytelling & Reporting
Our ongoing storytelling series, Clear Cut: From Forests to Fumes, exposes the human and environmental consequences of the growing wood pellet industry. Through personal testimony, clear explainers, and stories of community resistance, the series reveals how large-scale wood pellet production degrades ecosystems and threatens the health and well-being of people living on the front lines.
Clear Cut: From Forest to Fumes
Our storytelling series debuted with the release of our short documentary, Wood Pellet Wasteland, and continues with five additional short videos highlighting advocates living on the front lines of this issue. Watch our short documentary and latest short videos below.
In Gloster, Mississippi, residents live near Drax wood pellet facilities and report concerns about local environmental and health impacts.
In Washington State, communities are standing up for forests, public health, and climate justice.
In North Carolina, community members are mobilizing against the expansion of industrial biomass.
The Truth About Wood Pellet Energy
“Burning wood pellets emits 150% more carbon dioxide than coal.”
Corporations like Enviva Biomass and Drax have successfully forged a business model out of cutting down forests, processing wood into pellets, shipping those pellets overseas, and burning them for fuel. Every step of the way, these corporations disrupt ecosystems and communities and, ultimately, worsen the climate crisis.
Ecosystem Health
Producers claim they use forest “residue”– or wood scraps and byproducts, but evidence proves they use whole, healthy trees. Razing forests compromises one of our greatest natural climate defenses: forest carbon sinks. It also jeopardizes the important features of a forested ecosystem, water quality, air quality, native species’ habitats, shade, and soil health.
Public Health
These pellets are processed in facilities throughout the South, emitting dangerous amounts of pollutants, dust, noise, and foul odors into surrounding Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income communities. Burdening environmental justice communities with pollution – and hoping they don’t fight back – is the polluter’s oldest trick in the book.
Greenwashing
Wood pellet biomass is no silver bullet to the climate crisis. In addition to the “forest residue” myth, producers claim they voluntarily replant new trees for every tree they harvest. While you technically can replant trees, we need their current carbon storage potential to reduce global heating. Nevertheless, the industry has been caught red-handed, lying about their intentions to replant trees on multiple occasions.
How You Can Join the Fight
The Rachel Carson Council is building an activist army of national leaders through academia, grassroots organizing, and advocacy campaigns. Join our mailing list and follow us on social media to stay tapped into our publications and articles, events, action items, and more–all related to environmental justice and opposing the wood pellet industry.
You can help us protect forested ecosystems, the health of communities, and the livable future we all deserve.