State Denies Drax, a Repeat Violator, Ability to Expand Emissions
Gloster residents and protesters gather at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on Thursday, March 28, 2024, to protest against the pollution caused by Drax Biomass Inc. Amite Bioenergy in Gloster. Credit: Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
After over three hours and two executive sessions on Tuesday, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality’s Permit Board denied Drax’s application to become a “major” source of Hazardous Air Pollutants, or HAPs. The new permit would have allowed the company’s wood pellet facility, Amite BioEnergy, to release more potentially harmful air pollutants than what its currently allowed under state regulation.
Drax, a British wood pellet manufacturer, opened the facility just outside downtown Gloster in southwest Mississippi in 2016. The company turns locally sourced wood into pellets that it then ships to other countries for their clean energy goals, although many scientists believe the practice is actually more harmful than other energy sources in terms of net carbon emissions. Drax and other wood pellet companies have faced a wave of both local and international scrutiny for repeated air emissions violations across multiple Southern states.
In 2020, MDEQ fined Drax $2.5 million for underestimating certain pollutants it had released into the air since 2016, one of three times the state has fined the facility and one of the largest such penalties in the state’s history.
Last year, the state fined Drax $225,000 for releasing over 50% more than its permitted limit of HAPs into the air. Shortly after, MDEQ announced Drax’s application to upgrade the facility from a “minor” source of HAPs to a “major” source. Doing so would have removed the limit over how much HAPs the facility could release, but it also would have put in stricter regulation over the rate at which it released HAPs. 04-08-25
