According to a BBC investigation, timber from British Columbia’s primary forests was used to fuel the UK’s largest power station. The company that runs it, which denies the allegations, has received more than $9 billion in green energy grants from the UK government.
The allegations are troubling to Mike Morris, the provincial representative for Prince George-Mackenzie in central British Columbia, near where the company operates.
“It’s concerning to me that another country will take our country’s primary forest and say they have a green electricity system in this country, and that’s sustainable,” Morris told CTVNews.ca. “In British Columbia, I watch the primary forests disappear.”
The company, Drax Group, purchased two woodlots in British Columbia in 2021, which were then operated by contractors. BBC investigators said they analyzed satellite imagery, logging licenses and drone footage, and even tracked a truck delivering logs to a Drax facility in British Columbia. plant in the north of England.
“These harvesting licenses have been transferred to other companies that salvage high-value timber from sites for use in sawmills,” a spokesperson for Drax told CTVNews.ca. “Eighty percent of the material we use in our pellets is sawmill residue – the rest is low-grade wood that would otherwise be burned or disposed of.”
“We collect the residue left on site”
Located near its namesake village in England’s Yorkshire county, Drax’s coal-fired power station opened in 1974. By 2018 it had been largely converted to burn biomass, such as the millions of tonnes of pellets that it now imports every year from the United States and Canada.
Drax is the UK’s largest power station by production, producing 12% of the country’s ‘renewable’ electricity. According to media reports, the company received £6 billion (around C$9.3 billion) of UK taxpayers’ money through green energy subsidies, including £893 million (almost C$1.4 billion) in 2021 alone. Drax’s operations are considered renewable because it largely uses industry by-products like sawdust to make pellets, and new trees are planted to compensate for what is burned.
Drax’s 2021 annual report describes its presence in Canada: seven wood pellet mills in British Columbia and two in Alberta, which “operate in areas that include old-growth forests” and ship through the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert . Drax’s Canadian facilities produced 1.8 million tonnes of biomass in 2021, mostly from “sawmills and other wood industry residues”, but also nearly 182,000 tonnes of “low-grade roundwood”. . In 2021, 15% of the biomass used in the UK’s Drax power station came from Canada.
“Drax does not harvest forests and forests are not harvested for biomass,” a company spokesperson told CTVNews.ca. “They are harvested for high-value wood used for construction. We take the residues left behind.”
The BBC investigation included a 30-minute documentary. Ahead of its broadcast on Monday, Drax released a statement online criticizing the BBC coverage for focusing “primarily on the views of a vocal minority who oppose biomass”.
“The people living in and around these forests are best placed to determine how they should be cared for, not the BBC,” the statement said. “Our lawyers have written to the BBC reminding them of their legal and regulatory obligations and we are considering further action.”
Drax shares fell during trading on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg.
‘A large inventory of whole logs in their yard’
Morris, the provincial representative for Prince George-Mackenzie, saw Drax’s pellet plants firsthand.
“I know the Drax plant just south of Prince George,” Morris told CTVNews.ca on Monday. “I actually drove past here just a few days ago. They have a large inventory of whole logs in their yard.”
Michelle Connolly, director of environmental group Conservation North, visited a suspected Drax logging site with the BBC. Speaking to CTVNews.ca, she described it as a “death zone” that once included “primeval forests” that “have never been industrialized”.
“Our biggest concern is that our government will allow this,” Connolly told CTVNews.ca from Prince George. “In a time of climate change, the best thing we can do for the climate is not to convert these forests into energy; we actually need to protect the natural forests.
CTVNews.ca contacted the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, which oversees and regulates the province’s forestry industry. A spokesperson confirmed that Drax had purchased two cut blocks, a third of which had been damaged by the mountain pine beetle, and said the department was following up with the company to ensure quality logs are not used to make wood pellets, most of which are then exported. .
“It would not make economic sense for a pellet company to use quality logs to produce pellets,” the ministry spokesman added. “Over 90% of industry inputs come from sawdust and shavings, shavings and crop residues. It is better to turn waste into bioenergy that replaces fossil fuels on a global scale instead of burning it in open waste piles or leaving it on the ground, which increases the risk of wildfires.”
Wildfires have ravaged British Columbia in recent years, burning an average of nearly 350,000 hectares of the province between 2010 and 2020. Researchers say climate change is exacerbating the loss of old-growth forests in British Columbia, which are already threatened by logging.
“Reliable Renewable Energy”
Drax describes biomass like wood pellets as “reliable renewable energy…that displaces fossil fuels like coal from energy systems, supporting climate goals.”
Gary Bull, a professor at the University of British Columbia, agrees, saying that while it may not be particularly familiar in Canada, biomass is used throughout central Europe and Scandinavia to power and heat large cities like Copenhagen and Stockholm.
“It’s definitely considered renewable energy,” Bull, who is part of the university’s forest resources department, told CTVNews.ca. “It’s also seen as a very sensible thing to do when you can’t do anything else with fiber, product-wise.”
Bull recently took part in a study by the Wood Pellet Association of Canada, which tracked truckloads of materials used to make pellets. He says 85% was sawmill residue like sawdust chips and bark, while 15% was “forestry residue” like “low-grade” wood.
“If there’s old growth going into (the pellets) or old trees that shouldn’t go into it, that would be less than 1%,” Bull suggested. “Every once in a while there’s a log left in the slash pile that could have, under the right economic circumstances, gone to the sawmill.”
But for Morris and activists like Connolly, low-value forest products don’t exist.
“What they don’t take into account is that there is more value in a forest, especially your primary forest, than the fiber itself,” Morris said.
“Renewable presumably means something that will come back,” Connolly said. “Trees may be renewable, but forests are not.”