According to a study, Britain’s biggest renewable power plant is destroying carbon-rich forests while getting billions in green energy subsidies from UK taxpayers.
Tonight on Panorama, it is revealed that Drax purchased logging permits to clear two tracts of western Canadian forest. Drax burns wood pellets at its Yorkshire power facility to provide 12% of the UK’s renewable energy.
The firm asserts that it solely used waste wood and leftover sawdust from the woods, although the BBC documentary The Green Energy Scandal Exposed shows the loading of forest logs onto a Drax truck and subsequent unloading at one of the company’s pellet mills.
A Canadian forestry database reveals that just 11% of the logs sent to two of Drax’s pellet facilities are the tiny, twisted, or rotting timber the firm claims it utilizes. The program claims that Drax’s power station burnt more than seven million tonnes of imported wood pellets every year.
Panorama emphasized that even if burning wood emits more climate pollutants than burning coal, Drax has already earned £6 billion in green energy subsidies.
The two ecologically significant forest regions in British Columbia, Canada, where Drax purchased logging permits, have never been cleared for development.
Large portions of one of the locations are known to be uncommon, old-growth forest. The main and old-growth forest will “avoid harm or disruption,” according to Drax’s own ethical sourcing strategy. According to the BBC, satellite images indicate Drax is now clearing this woodland.
According to the corporation, logging at this location would lessen the likelihood of wildfires.
The second Drax logging permit covers an established primary forest that has already been cleared. Drax claimed to the BBC that it had instead given other businesses the logging permits rather than destroying the forest itself.
The British Columbian authorities did, however, confirm to Panorama that Drax still had the licenses.
Drax eventually confirmed to Panorama that it had used forest logs to produce wood pellets, despite saying that the species were unwanted by the timber sector.
The corporation claimed that the locations highlighted by Panorama were not primary forests because they were close to highways, but the BBC pointed out that the United Nations’ definition of main forest makes no mention of this. According to a Drax representative who spoke to the BBC, sawmill byproducts, which would be disposed of otherwise, make about 80% of the material in its Canadian pellets.
An investigation by Unearthed, a division of Greenpeace, revealed last week that Drax had secretly agreed to pay millions of dollars to resolve air-pollution charges against its wood-pellet operations in the United States.
In response to the BBC’s inquiry, a Drax representative stated: “Drax does not harvest forests and has not removed any material directly from the two sites.”
Tonight at 8 p.m., Panorama: The Green Energy Scandal Exposed will air on BBC1.