A global energy company that hopes to build an industrial-scale biomass plant in Longview, touting it as a renewable energy source, has been fined for launching construction without a permit.

The Southwest Clean Air Agency, a regional environmental regulator, said it issued a $34,000 violation to Drax Group this summer after inspectors found foundations or building support structures on the Longview property right by the Columbia River, across from Rainier, Oregon.

Drax, a British-based company, has yet to receive a final air-discharge permit, which would allow it to begin construction at the site, the regional air agency said. The company must submit a revised application to relaunch the permitting process.

The biomass pellet industry is new to the Pacific Northwest but has operated for years in the American South. Critics say it has led to massive logging of whole trees and to negative impacts on local communities and the climate.

The Longview plant, which Drax plans to open late next year, is one of two industrial biomass plants going through the permitting process in Washington state. Two other plants are proposed in northern California, with one planning to source its wood from public forests and privately owned timberlands in southern Oregon. The companies say they plan to remove excess fire fuels from overgrown stands.

Drax already operates 18 wood-pellet plants in the South and in Canada. The company says the Longview plant would use sawdust and shavings from local sawmills to produce the pellets, which are used in power stations that have upgraded from coal. The Longview plant would produce nearly 1 million pounds of pellets and would ship them to Asia.

Biomass is considered a renewable source of energy because it comes from trees and tree by-products – organic, living matter – which absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow.

But environmental groups want to stop the Longview plant from being built. They say biomass is a false climate solution because producing and combusting wood pellets creates a lot more greenhouse gas emissions than using fossil fuels. Pellet combustion also releases harmful pollutants such as volatile organic compounds and small particulate matter, or PM 2.5, which can deteriorate local air quality.

In 2020, a Mississippi environmental agency fined a Drax-owned plant $2.5 million for violating air emissions limits, one of the largest fines in that state’s history.

Earlier this year, Northwest and national conservation groups filed an appeal to revoke an air permit that would allow construction and operation of another large wood pellet fuel plant in Hoquiam. The groups said that the air permit, issued to Pacific Northwest Renewable Energy, underestimated the amount of toxic and harmful pollutants the plant will emit and failed to take into account the plant’s impact on climate change.