Wood pellets in Hoquiam: When green energy gets the blues

A consortium of foreign investors wants to build a wood pellet plant in Hoquiam. The plant, if built, would take almost a million tons of Olympic Peninsula trees every year, grind them up, and compress the sawdust into pellets. The pellets are exported to East Asia, where they are mixed with coal and burned in power plants.

The Biden administration wants to build out green energy. The state of Washington wants to support rural manufacturing. Between the two, this foreign-investor consortium, doing business as PNWRE, has received a half million dollars in subsidies, even before breaking ground on the plant.

That’s right — $500,000 in taxpayer dollars to this investor consortium, even though it’s unclear that the consortium has any actual “skin in the game” in the form of private capital. Just think what the city of Hoquiam could do with that amount of money instead.

Washington needs rural manufacturing, and America needs to move away from fossil fuel dependence. But this green energy project gives me the blues. Here’s why:

• The availability of feedstocks (raw materials) to make wood pellets depends on a massive expansion of logging effort. This plant’s proposed output is equivalent to the current total annual biomass production from Washington state. The whole state.

• None of the energy from this tree cutting is destined for U.S. markets. It’s all for export. The plant would do nothing for U.S. energy security — green or not.

• How do you grind up a million tons of trees? Hammermills. The plant design calls for the use of four hammermills. These are loud. Very loud. Think four of the loudest train whistles you’ve ever heard — operating continuously. Continuously, because the plant design also calls for 24/7 operation. Sweet dreams, Hoquiam.

• Those loud hammermills will be less than a mile from Hoquiam schools. Good luck concentrating through all that noise, kids.

• Did we mention the air pollution? Existing wood pellet plants in the Southeast have been fined millions of dollars for large releases of toxic pollutants. In addition to the toxins, there’s the dust — fine particulate matter — that would blanket this community. Asthma sufferers, you better find a new place to live. Kids, better stay inside during recess.

• PNWRE’s air pollution modeling was so slipshod that several Grays Harbor groups are now appealing the plant permit decision. PNWRE could have used actual “stack tests” (direct measures of pollutants emitted) but instead they chose only to submit “modeling data.” Whether this is due to incompetence, or a desire to deceive the people of Grays Harbor — does it really matter? Whether dishonest or incompetent, PNWRE isn’t a business that the county should welcome.

I’m a big supporter of the Evergreen Manufacturing grant program. It’s helped jump-start some good businesses around the state. I also think the current administration’s spending on green energy is, for the most part, desirable and necessary.

But Big Biomass in the form of export-oriented pellet plants isn’t a green solution. Greenhouse gas emissions from biomass burning are actually higher than coal, per unit of usable energy.

Big Biomass also isn’t a fiscally sound solution. The largest U.S. pellet exporter, Enviva, went bankrupt in early 2024. Thousands of mill workers lost their jobs. Do we really think that a foreign investor consortium cares about job creation — or retention — in Grays Harbor County?

Finally, Big Biomass imposes major air and noise pollution costs on communities and adjacent environs. This plant, proposed for a site on Moon Island Road, would also damage the amenity values of the National Wildlife Refuge. Hoquiam could lose one of its important tourism assets, as birds and birdwatchers flee the noise and dust.

The city of Hoquiam could revise or revoke the SEPA (state environmental protection) “determination of non-significance.” It’s hard to see how pulverizing a million tons of wood a year, with toxins and dust and noise imposed on the community, can be seen as “non-significant.”

We’ll see what happens with the air permit appeal process. We’ll see if the city of Hoquiam lays down some operating guidelines for PNWRE to help maintain the quality of life here.

Until that happens, however — this green energy project just gives me the blues.

Janet Strong

President

Grays Harbor Audubon Society