This story initially appeared on Grist and is a part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Wooden pellets, by design, are extremely flammable. The small items of compressed woody leftovers, like sawdust, are utilized in all the pieces from residence heating to grilling. However their flammable nature has made for harmful work circumstances: Since 2010, not less than 52 fires have damaged out on the services that make wooden pellets throughout the US, in accordance with a database of incidents compiled by the Southern Environmental Legislation Heart.
Of the 15 largest wooden pellet services, not less than eight have had fires or explosions since 2014, according to the Environmental Integrity Venture, a nonprofit based by a former director of the US Environmental Safety Company.
On the similar time, the world’s largest biomass firm, Drax, is slicing down bushes throughout North America with a promise to promote them as a substitute for fossil fuels. However even its monitor 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 fireplace 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 fireplace damages, Drax is urgent on with a brand new enterprise proposal; it entails not simply slicing down bushes 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 accomplice group, Golden State Pure Assets, or GSNR, “a nonprofit public benefit corporation,” 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 threat.
GSNR has since touted its shut work with group members. Nonetheless, in accordance with Megan Fiske, who instructs rural employees at a area people faculty, residents residing near the proposed pellet mill websites weren’t all the time conscious of the plans. “People who were a hundred feet away from the [proposed] pellet plant had no idea about it,” mentioned Fiske.
Each of the proposed mills are in forested areas which were threatened by wildfires. When requested concerning the dangers that manufacturing wooden pellets poses, Patrick Blacklock, govt director of GSNR, advised Grist, “We sought to learn from those incidents. The design features can go a long way to mitigating the risk of fire.”
If county representatives approve the plan, loggers shall be allowed to take “dead or dying trees” 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 mentioned she’s seen cases, unrelated to Drax, the place loggers weren’t skilled correctly and ended up taking extra wooden than ought to have been allowed below a wildfire resilience scheme. “There’s a difference between what the loggers are told and what happens on the ground,” mentioned Fiske. You might have “inexperienced or young people who are underpaid, maybe English isn’t their first language, so there are a lot of barriers.”
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