Marginalised communities around the world—but especially in the U.S. Southeast—are paying the price for the UK’s continued reliance on biomass energy, including impoverished communities and communities of color.
Wood pellet manufacturing plants or “pellet mills”—where trees are processed into wood pellets to be burned—are 50% more likely to be sited in economically depressed areas of color. These same communities are disproportionately targeted for the siting of other dirty industries, such as coal and natural gas plants, waste-to-energy plants, and landfills.
Biomass companies like Drax have been fined repeatedly for breaching air pollution limits.
In 2025 Mississippi Department for Environmental Quality declined an application by Drax to become a ‘major’ polluter, which would have allowed it to increase the volume of Hazardous Air Pollutants its wood pellet mills release.