EPA’s final biomass rule casts a shadow over Southern forests

The Environmental Protection Agency today issued a final rule exempting biomass-energy facilities from limiting carbon pollution is a step backwards from efforts to address climate change, and cast a shadow over Southern forests.

The biomass industry and utilities have been moving briskly forward with plans to build new wood-burning plants, wood pellet factories and to convert fossil-fuel power plants to biomass. While biomass must be a part of an overall diverse portfolio of new energy sources in the U.S. for a cleaner, more sustainable power supply, all biomass is not equal. Biomass operations must be accountable for the carbon pollution that comes out of their smokestacks. This rule exempts them from any such accountability.

Read SELC's press release.

View our map showing the growth of the industry in the South.