SACRAMENTO, California — A California group decided Wednesday to significantly scale back its controversial project to ship wood pellets from Northern California’s forests abroad following a faltering international market for the pellets and intense opposition from environmental groups.
What happened: The board of Golden State Natural Resources, an arm of the Rural County Representatives of California, voted 4-0 on Wednesday to retool its plan to build two industrial-scale wood pellet plants in rural Northern California and ship them out of the port of Stockton for use in energy production abroad.
Instead, the board voted to produce wood chips for a wide range of potential uses within the United States, including sustainable aviation fuels, carbon capture and engineered wood boards.
The pivot comes after the United Kingdom and South Korea, top export markets for U.S. wood pellets, significantly reduced their subsidies for energy production from wood pellets.
