Dogwood Alliance Inc

Campaigns: Policies passed at a national level over the past several years provide major new subsidies for the biomass industry. In 2024 we led an effort to stop Enviva from receiving IRA subsidies, organized a tour of wood pellet impacts for 5 federal agencies, met with top officials from CEQ, DOE, and the White House, and cultivated two congressional champions from the South. We continued to play a support role relative to the Cut Carbon Not Forest Campaign in the UK and other campaigns in Europe. We are also part of a coalition working to leverage the EU policy on deforestation to protect Southern forests. Our collective, sustained campaigning in Europe and the UK has tempered the biomass industrys expansion. While the UK and EU markets are still driving wood pellet exports from the US South, markets in Asia - primarily Japan - are driving new expansion of wood pellet production in the Gulf region.

Organizing: At the state, and local levels, North Carolina continued to be a top priority for our organizing in 2024. Our work coordinating the Impacted Communities Against Wood Pellets continued to achieve results. NCDAQ required Enviva to reduce the fugitive dust pollution from its export facility in Wilmington. We launched a new effort demanding that NCDAQ require Enviva to do the same at all of its wood pellet mills in North Carolina. We organized a conference in Georgia with 9 organizations attended by over 200 people, Biomass was at the top of the agenda. Thus far, the organizing and legal strategies around the proposed wood pellet mills in Adel, Georgia have led to an indefinite delay in construction. This year we reached out to the community impacted by a wood pellet mill owned by FRAM in Lumber City which planned to expand production. The local opposition combined with a legal strategy resulted in the permit for that expansion being revoked. Over 80 residents in the small town of Gloster showed up to the public hearing to oppose Draxs permit to expand production. Meanwhile, Enviva was denied a local economic development grant in Mississippi, shuttering plans to expand wood pellet production in the state.