By Will Atwater

“Displace fossil fuels. Grow more trees. Fight climate change.” That’s the pitch on the website of Enviva, the world’s largest producer of industrial wood pellets largely used as fuel for power generation.

Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, says on its website that its projects capture methane from hog manure and convert it into “clean, low-carbon renewable natural gas.”

Environmental advocates pushed back on those “green” pitches at a Climate Week panel in New York last month.

“Wood pellet biomass, manure biogas and crop-based biofuels are dirty, expensive and only harm our climate, environment and communities,” said Matt Williams, a senior forest protection advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council, in opening remarks at “Bio-Energy or Bio-Scam: A Course Correction for Climate and Communities,” a panel at the event.

As the impacts of climate change — higher temperatures worldwide, more intense storms, more frequent droughts — grow harder to ignore, the bioenergy industry, which turns trees and animal waste into fuel, is pitching itself as a clean alternative to fossil fuels. Critics of that industry say those claims leave out the costs to the climate and to nearby communities.

For North Carolinians, it’s not a theoretical problem. Two forms of bioenergy — wood pellets and manure biogas — have a large footprint in the state. Enviva operates four pellet plants, and hog operations are concentrated in the southeast — surrounded primarily by low-income communities of color.

The case against wood pellet production

Heather Hillaker, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, told the Climate Week audience that when she talks about wood pellets or forest-based biomass, she’s talking about “cutting down trees,” often in “mature natural forests.” 

She said the trees go to industrial mills, where they are dried, cut, compressed and crushed into pellets, which are then shipped overseas and burned for electricity at large power plants. Hillaker said some of the wood used for pellets to be burned comes from the southern U.S. That includes North Carolina, in an area known as the North American Coastal Plain, “which is a global biodiversity hotspot … an area already under pressure, so it’s just exacerbating harms to these forests.” 

Hillaker also challenged the industry’s climate claims. “When you burn wood, it actually emits more CO2 per unit of energy generated than coal,” she said. She cited a 2020 analysis by Argonne National Laboratory, a Department of Energy lab. It estimated that a biomass power plant burning forest residues emits about 1,456 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour, compared with about 1,012 for a coal plant and about 392 for a combined-cycle natural gas plant.

The U.S. exported about 10.1 million metric tons of wood pellets in 2025, worth roughly $1.9 billion, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. About 1.4 million metric tons of that, or roughly 14 percent, cleared customs through North Carolina’s customs district.

Enviva’s four wood pellet plants in North Carolina are in Northampton, Hertford, Richmond and Sampson counties. According to permit data provided by the law center, the plants are allowed to produce a combined maximum of 2,693,255 oven-dried tons of pellets a year: Northampton County, 781,255; Sampson County, 657,000; Hertford County (Ahoskie), 630,000; and Richmond County (Hamlet), 625,000.

Enviva did not respond to requests for comment.

Enviva says on its website that it supports “sustainable forest management by sourcing our wood from landowners that intend to maintain their land as forests in the long-term.”

Hillaker noted that no law requires landowners to replant trees after they are cut. And even when trees are replanted, she said, it takes years for them to mature and replace the carbon capturing capability of the mature trees that were removed.

For residents of the rural communities that host the mills, and for the advocates who gathered in New York, the questions are whether a fuel that is marketed as a climate solution is actually delivering one — and who bears the cost if it isn’t.

Northampton County resident and community advocate Belinda Joyner said she lives three to four miles from the Enviva plant.

Joyner said she can hear the plant, particularly in the winter when sound-baffling leaves are gone. “If I’m sitting up at night, I can hear that bump [sound] from the debarker, which is a long pool tube they put the whole tree in and spin it around to get the bark off.” Joyner said this sound can go on day and night continuously.

She admitted that she’s got it better than residents who live closer.

“They experience the noise, the dust, the whole nine yards. Because the only thing that separates them from Enviva is some trees,” she said.

Living near a pellet mill also carries health risks, according to a 2024 report from the Southern Environmental Law Center. The group says dust and air pollution from the mills cause significant health problems for nearby residents, including asthma, respiratory diseases and cancers. In four of the five communities SELC surveyed, 86 percent of households reported at least one family member diagnosed with a disease associated with pellet mill pollution, according to the report.

Living next to industry

Wood pellet mills aren’t the only bioenergy-related industry that eastern North Carolina residents say affects their health. The state is ranked second among hog-producing states and is among the leaders for poultry production. One of the nation’s epicenters for large hog and poultry farms and bioenergy facilities is eastern North Carolina — including Sampson County. These industries are predominantly located in rural communities of color — so much so that advocates refer to these areas as “sacrifice zones” because of the health and quality-of-life concerns faced by the residents.

Sherri White-Williamson, executive director of the Environmental Justice Community Action Network, who is from Sampson County, said the county hosts a large number of hog and poultry operations, a landfill, a biogas system and a wood pellet plant. She said it is also one of the state’s most economically distressed counties according to the N.C. Department of Commerce.

“There are 30 hogs for every person in the county,” White-Williamson said. “Sampson County is not one of those counties that you can expect a lot of economic development in.”

Community advocate Naeema Muhammad, told NC Health News that residents who live near hog operations described arranging their days around the smell. 

“I feel like I’m negotiating with the air,” she said, repeating what residents have told her. “I have to open my door just a little bit to see whether or not it’s stinking. If it’s not stinking, I rush out to do what I have to do so I can get back in before the odor comes.”

White-Williamson said the benefits of the industry often go elsewhere. She pointed to reporting that a North Carolina hog biogas project has earned credits under California’s low-carbon fuel standard, a program that requires higher-carbon fuel producers to buy credits from lower-carbon ones.

“The states that are claiming to be helpful in doing the right thing are actually subsidizing something that is very harmful to the communities in Sampson County,” she said.

Truck traffic is another problem for residents.

“That landfill gets 250 trucks a day,” she said, referring to the Sampson County Regional Landfill, which captures methane. Traffic to Enviva’s plant is lower, she said, but her group is working on noise studies. “If you are being awakened at 4:30 in the morning with trucks passing your house, the rest of your day is pretty shot,” she said. Her group has found that truck traffic peaks around that hour, she said.

A recent report by the Environmental Protection Network — an organization created by former officials and scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency — says federal regulatory rollbacks under the Trump Administration leave North Carolinians more exposed to pollution from animal waste, among other sources. The group says recent EPA proposals would leave more waterways near hog and poultry operations in eastern North Carolina without Clean Water Act protection and stall evaluation of their air emissions. Exposure to the pollution from the open-air waste lagoons and sprayed fields increases the risk of kidney disease, anemia, lower birth weights, cancer and respiratory problems, the report says.

Who bears the cost

Chris Heaney, an associate professor in Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the missing piece in the debate is health evidence. Companies like Enviva often describe their products as renewable and a climate solution, and sometimes as safe, he said, but there is little research on what it is like to live near the facilities. Absence of evidence of harm, he said, is not evidence there is none.

His team has asked residents near bioenergy facilities in North Carolina and on the Delmarva Peninsula to take part in 14-day studies, he said. Twice a day, participants sit outside for about 10 minutes and rate the odor, and each day they swab dust from surfaces in their homes. In North Carolina, where swine and poultry operations are often close together, the swabs have turned up DNA markers from swine and poultry waste, Heaney said, a sign that material from the operations reaches nearby homes.

Heaney also raised concerns about leaks from biogas pipelines. He said pilot-scale studies of hog operations producing biomethane allowed for raw biogas with hydrogen sulfide concentrations of 1,000 to 4,000 parts per million. That is well above the 100 parts per million that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health identifies as unhealthy.

Gas entering pipelines is expected to be cleaned, he said, but a leak in rural areas where people spend time outdoors could be dangerous. He added that studies of neighbors of hog operations without biogas systems found neighborhood health effects at hydrogen sulfide levels of 30 to 90 parts per billion, far below workplace safety thresholds.

Heaney also said that in Duplin County, new lagoons are being built and capped as digesters while older lagoons remain uncovered, based on his review of satellite images.

Smithfield Foods disputed that. A company spokesperson said in a statement that no new lagoons are being dug in North Carolina. Some farmers are enhancing their existing systems, the company said, by digging lined, covered digesters that treat manure and capture methane. The existing lagoons are then used to store treated material, which lets farmers apply nutrients to crops at agronomic rates, it said. All lagoon and digester systems in the state operate under permits from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources, the statement said.

On leaks, Smithfield countered that captured biogas leaves farms in airtight underground pipes at very low pressure. The systems are designed to prevent leaks, it said, because air in the biogas makes it essentially worthless. The company said the pipes are monitored continuously, leaks are uncommon, and it has not seen any in these systems.

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