Activists are racking up wins against a false climate solution

This article Activists are racking up wins against a false climate solution was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Last June, California climate and environmental justice groups celebrated a victory a long time in the making. After an opposition campaign that built alliances across movements, turned out supporters to hearings and generated 50,000 public comments, a company gave up plans that threatened to wreak havoc on the state’s forests.

The corporation behind the defeated project, Golden State Natural Resources, or GSNR, proposed building two mills in Northern California’s Tuolumne and Lassen Counties to turn wood from nearby forests into pellets to be burned for fuel. 

Globally, the burning of wood pellets made from trees, known as forest biomass, has become one of the fastest-growing false solutions to climate change. It is turning some of the world’s last intact forests into fuel that’s used as a substitute for coal, mainly in Europe and Asia. 

GSNR’s mills would have sourced wood from California forests already under strain from a drying climate. Burning wood contributes to climate change, with some estimates placing the carbon footprint of this type of energy generation close to that of coal. Even so, the company’s backers tried selling their project as “green” energy.

GSNR planned to export these pellets via the Port of Stockton, where local environmental justice organizations said increased industrial activity would further pollute communities already suffering from some of the worst asthma rates in the state. 

“This project would have transformed California in a very negative way,” said Gary Hughes, a California-based organizer for Biofuelwatch, one of the organizations involved in the campaign. “Grassroots organizing put a stop to it.” 

The coalition that stopped Golden State Natural Resources joined a global movement that has achieved real momentum, leading to major defeats for the industry last year in the Netherlands, Mississippi and Washington State.

“The movement against the forest biomass industry is winning,” said Michél Legendre, campaigns director for the Dogwood Alliance, which fights to protect forests in the U.S. South. “People exposing this industry for what it is have put it on shaky ground.” 

Uncovering false solutions 

The narrative propping up forest biomass as an energy source is that burning wood from trees is climate neutral, because the carbon that is released can theoretically be reabsorbed if the trees are replanted. However, this fails to account for how carbon from wood combustion remains in the atmosphere for decades or centuries before trees can fully regrow.

Other sustainability claims made by the industry, like that it uses mainly leftover slash from logging, have also been debunked. Industry whistleblowers and environmental groups engaged in ground-truthing — in which activists tail logging vehicles to see what they are cutting — say they have witnessed biomass companies harvesting whole, mature trees, including old-growth trees in British Columbia.

“This industry is a glaring example of corporations responding to the climate crisis with greenwashing as they try to make a profit,” said Merry Dickinson, a lead campaigner for the U.K.-based Stop Burning Trees Coalition. “In the process they’re destroying people’s health and livelihoods.”

Dickinson joined the movement against forest biomass while she was a university student in Yorkshire, home to the U.K.’s largest biomass power plant and single biggest source of carbon emissions. The Drax Power Station formerly ran on coal, but began transitioning to burn entirely wood pellets in 2012. The U.K. government supported the move by providing Drax with roughly a billion pounds in annual subsidies. 

“When Drax announced they would stop burning coal, we climate activists celebrated,” said Katy Brown, a campaigner with Biofuelwatch in the U.K. “But when they started burning wood instead, it began to feel like a hollow victory.”

Previous Coverage

West Coast climate activists battle the false ‘solution’ of forest biomass

Dickinson co-founded the direct action group Axe Drax in Yorkshire. This led to her becoming an organizer of Stop Burning Trees, a coalition working to educate the public about Drax’s climate impact. A major goal was to end Drax’s government subsidies, which were coming up for renewal.

“We did street outreach, knocked on doors in communities around the Drax plant, and built relationships with workers and unions,” Dickinson said.

In February 2025, the U.K.’s Minister for Energy made an announcement: Government support for Drax will continue through the period from 2027-2031, but at half the current level. This suggests Members of Parliament are at least beginning to see Drax’s subsidies as a liability. 

“Drax having its subsidies extended is far from what we wanted,” Dickinson said. “Still, the deal they got is far from being what Drax wanted, either.” 

U.K. activists have continued pressuring Drax. In May, Axe Drax nonviolently disrupted the company’s annual meeting, blocking entrances to the building where the gathering took place and delaying its start time by an hour. Meanwhile, biomass opponents won a victory in mainland Europe when plans for a massive biomass power plant in the Netherlands were canceled last year.

Drax, which has expanded into the global market, now operates pellet mills in the U.S. and Canada, sourcing much of the wood burned in its Yorkshire plant from the U.S. South. In 2024, Drax also entered a partnership with Golden State Natural Resources in California. 

But as support for Drax wanes in the U.K., it and other biomass companies are also running into trouble in North America. Thanks to opposition from local communities, several new or existing biomass pellet projects have been shelved or shut down in the past year — including in the industry’s heartland. 

Recent wins

When Mississippi state regulators denied a permit for a Drax pellet plant in the small community of Gloster last April, the decision showed how grassroots pressure is starting to push policymakers to take a harder line toward the forest biomass industry. 

Drax was requesting a change to its regulatory status that would have allowed it to emit more air pollution and increase the volume of pellets it could produce. When Mississippi’s Environmental Quality Permit Board met to discuss the plan, locals fed up with existing pollution from the plant turned out in force. 

“The community of Gloster packed the room,” said Legendre, the Dogwood Alliance campaign director. 

The board’s initial vote to deny the permit was later reversed after a flurry of public relations work by Drax convinced state regulators to backtrack and side with the company. However, the effort Drax had to expend to get its way in an industry-friendly state suggests the movement against biomass is having a real impact. 

Other biomass projects in Mississippi, a regional hub for the industry, were outright defeated last year. In February, biomass giant Enviva announced it would close a plant in the town of Amory, which once processed up to 115,000 metric tons of pellets annually. A massive new Enviva plant in Bond, Mississippi, is also unlikely to move forward. 

Industry attempts to expand to the U.S. West Coast have run into resistance, too. GSNR’s California development plans were opposed by a diverse coalition including forest defender groups, climate activists and environmental justice organizations like the Stockton-based Little Manila Rising. 

“It was a kind of unprecedented urban-rural alliance that came together to fight this project,” said Hughes, of Biofuelwatch. 

Another proposed Drax pellet mill in Longview, Washington, drew opposition from nearby residents and local climate groups. That project would have processed up to 450,000 metric tons of wood annually, exposing surrounding working-class neighborhoods to air and noise pollution. In December 2025, Drax put the project on indefinite hold.

“I am glad the Drax pellet project is gone from Longview,” said Diane Dick, a longtime climate organizer in the community. “I look forward to their forest destruction business being gone from North America.”

Drax also recently closed an existing pellet plant in British Columbia, citing a challenging business climate. Even so, the forest biomass industry in North America is far from defeated. Corporate giants like Drax and Enviva still operate pellet mills in Canada and the U.S. South. A smaller company called Pacific Northwest Renewable Energy has proposed building a large pellet plant in Hoquiam, Washington. Several existing power plants in New England also run on biomass pellets, with plans in the works for new projects that are opposed by activists. 

“As long as harm is being done to communities affected by biomass plants, this story isn’t over,” Hughes said. “We’re not going to declare victory when we’re far from getting to the end of this fight.”

Growing the movement 

Up to this point, organized resistance to forest biomass has come mainly from those who are directly affected by the industry, and a relatively small number of regional or international groups focused specifically on this issue.

“What we’ve done so far has been with a very small subset of impacted communities and those who care about Southern forests,” Legendre said. “I can only imagine what might happen when we bring the movement to a larger scale.”

Part of this process entails getting the broader climate movement to more explicitly embrace stopping forest biomass as one of its goals. 

“People who are already involved in other climate campaigns might feel, understandably, that they can’t take on another fight,” said Brown, of Biofuelwatch. “But something as simple as organizations who work on fossil fuels incorporating opposition to forest biomass into their existing messaging can really help, without creating a lot of new work.” 

In 2024, Enviva filed for bankruptcy, restructuring itself as a private company. Its troubles are another sign opposition to the biomass industry is having an effect — but activists fear the new structure will make it easier for Enviva to avoid public scrutiny. Meanwhile, Drax has floated building a data center in Yorkshire to prop up demand for its power plant.

“We have a real chance to put the final nail in the coffin of Drax and the biomass industry,” Dickinson said. “But they’re never going to be the ones to put themselves in the ground. It’s our job to fight them to the very end.”

This article Activists are racking up wins against a false climate solution was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

People-powered news and analysis

Source: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2026/02/activists-racking-up-wins-against-biomass-false-climate-solution/