A Mammoth Biomass Project Withers in California 

Wood biomass production in the United States is primarily based in the South and Southeast, where companies source trees to grind into pellets the size of rabbit food. From there, the pellets get loaded into silos or warehouses, and eventually, exported overseas to European and Asian markets and burned for energy. 

NRDC’s forest advocates explain that the biomass industry has been itching to gain a foothold on the West Coast. A key reason? Setting up shop there offers easier access to other importing countries across the Pacific, particularly as the industry’s predominantly European customer base has started to walk back its biomass investments. 

The United Kingdom, for example, recently halved subsidies for its main biomass power station, fed chiefly by the U.S. wood pellet industry, in favor of greener energy sources, like wind and solar. But now biomass markets are cropping up in South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. As a result, says Rita Frost, a forest advocate formerly with NRDC, “the industry in the United States has been chomping at the bit to get their hands on western forests.” 

Shipping costs represent one of the biggest expenses for the U.S. wood biomass export market. Currently, most pellets produced in the industry’s strongholds of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and North Carolina travel through the Panama Canal to reach customers in Asia—a slow and costly route. 

GSNR looked to capitalize on the opportunity to get the pellets overseas faster through its Forest Resilience Project. The group planned the pair of processing plants for Tuolumne County and Lassen County, and the storage and expert terminal for Stockton, California. The organization would manage the entire pipeline of wood pellet production, from collecting the wood materials to shipping out the pellets. Together, the two processing plants would have the capacity to produce 1 million metric tons of wood pellets per year—about an eighth of the country’s entire annual export supply. 

Manufacturing that massive load would require around 1.5 million metric tons of what the industry calls “wood feedstock”: wood in various forms (including lumber waste and by-products), taken right from California’s national forests that surround the processing plants. The storage facility in Stockton would have the capacity to receive 10,000 rail cars of pellets each year from the two plants and maintain a fleet of 29 cargo ships to transport the materials abroad. It would be a mammoth operation—and a dangerous one.

“The biggest misconception about this industry is that it could be sustainable or carbon-neutral in any way,” says Elly Pepper, NRDC’s director of forest policy. Unlike true renewables—such as solar, wind, and geothermal—the supply of trees feeding pellet plants isn’t endless, she adds. While GSNR claims it would only use salvaged wood, residual wood from commercial lumber mills, and wood from forest-thinning projects, Pepper notes that this is unlikely given its massive production goals. Similar claims have been made by production companies in the Southeast, and investigators have found that the industry, in fact, relies on whole trees from mature hardwood forests. 

Not only does deforestation and forest degradation destroy precious ecosystems and weaken their carbon sequestration powers, but the production process for wood pellets itself endangers our planet. The associated carbon emissions that result from creating the wood pellets and transporting them via trains and ships all worsen the climate crisis. GSNR estimates that running the two processing plants would take 238 million kilowatts of electric power per hour, per year. That’s equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from about 12,600 gasoline-powered cars driven annually. And burning these pellets only generates more emissions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the U.K.-based company Drax—the largest bioenergy plant in the world—is also the United Kingdom’s top polluter.

Bioenergy also exacerbates biodiversity loss, destroying habitat for thousands of species. The GSNR project would have been no different, with the organization acknowledging its facilities may harm protected plants and wildlife species, federally and state-protected wetlands, and fish habitat. 

Wood pellet facilities also pose health risks to public health, due to the associated air pollution. Surrounding communities must contend with emissions of fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and methanol.

For Stockton, which would house the export and storage facility, this would have been an added risk for local residents. The city has faced a long history of environmental racism since World War II, with redlining displacing and excluding Black, Latine, and Asian residents from more desirable neighborhoods. As a result, communities of color found themselves bookended by a highway and a port, absorbing abundant pollution from both. 

Gloria Alonso Cruz, the environmental justice advocacy coordinator at Little Manila Rising, is keeping her community abreast of the industries looking to expand in their backyards. The thousands of additional train cars running through the city’s arteries would exacerbate emissions in and around the city’s port. “The Port of Stockton is in really close proximity to some of the most vulnerable communities in south Stockton,” she explains, “specifically, the large Filipino community and other communities of color that have suffered from the consequences of discriminatory policies.” Little Manila Rising, a core member of the biomass campaign coalition, met with the port’s board of commissioners to amplify these concerns. 

The history of Little Manila Rising also includes a legacy of standing with other marginalized groups to advance shared social justice causes. “If we were to welcome this industry here, it would almost be like giving them a pass on how they treated other communities like ours in the Southeast,” Cruz says.  

Meanwhile, advocates are aware that this latest threat could endanger communities beyond Stockton too. While its initial project proposal only included two manufacturing plants, GSNR ultimately planned to establish 24 additional facilities.

Still, GSNR did not have carte blanche to get to work. Because it would be conducting business on public lands, the group’s leaders needed to go through California’s environmental review process to get state and local government approvals, as required under the California Environmental Quality Act. 

NRDC was part of a large coalition rallying for awareness of GSNR’s plans. Other core members of the group included Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch, Environmental Protection Information Center, Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center, Partnership for Policy Integrity, and Valley Improvement Projects. 

The coalition organized and educated people in Lassen and Tuolumne, particularly among the rural residents living near the proposed plants and export facility who would have borne the bulk of the air pollution impacts. And as members of the public learned more about the details of GSNR’s proposal, they began to sound the alarm. “California’s forests are incredibly popular outdoor and recreational spaces,” says Pepper. “And now they were at risk of being chopped up and burned for somebody to charge their iPhone.” 

The public resistance to the project drummed up enough momentum to propel the coalition’s advocacy work forward. After GSNR submitted its draft environmental impact report (DEIR) in October 2024, 50,000 California residents submitted comments asking GSNR to abandon the project. Around two-thirds came from NRDC members. 

The coalition’s hard work paid off when GSNR announced in June 2025 that it would be effectively canceling the project, stating that its decision was based on the public comments and the current biomass market conditions. “This was a big win,” says Pepper. “NRDC has always had this kind of stick-to-it-ness, and this victory showed us that it does eventually bear fruit.” 

Unfortunately, the advocates will likely need to regroup. While GSNR canceled the wood pellet project, the company states that it may pivot to producing wood chips for domestic use instead, bypassing the need for an export terminal in Stockton altogether. Wood chips are a less processed product compared to wood pellets and can be used in more sustainable ways, besides getting burned for energy. 

“We can’t say that it’ll be less of an environmental impact; it’ll just depend on what they end up doing with the wood,” notes Pepper. “Let’s see if they come up with a responsible second option.” 

GSNR is currently revising its DEIR and will resubmit it for review in 2026. NRDC will continue to play the watchdog role to make sure GSNR doesn’t greenwash its business activities as wildfire mitigation and climate protection. California’s forests and people are counting on it.