The power station, a converted coal plant in North Yorkshire, generates approximately 6% of the UK’s electricity and has received billions of pounds in subsidies from the government and bill-payers because wood-burning is classed as a source of renewable energy.
BBC Panorama and BBC News has previously reported that Drax held logging licences in British Columbia, Canada, and used wood, including whole trees, from primary and old-growth forests for its pellets.
These are natural forests that have never been industrially logged and lock up and store significant amounts of carbon as well providing key wildlife habitats.
The company says it does not own forests or sawmills, no longer bids for logging licences and has stopped sourcing wood from some sites, where the British Columbia government has asked companies to pause further logging.
However, public logging records show Drax still sources whole trees from primary forests that are felled by other companies in the province, despite stating in its own sustainability criteria that the company will “avoid damage or disturbance to high carbon forests” which “can be defined as primary forest”.
Modern industrial logging only really began in the interior of British Columbia in the 1960s, which means the areas that have been logged and replanted in recent decades are not yet mature enough for these plantations to harvested.
Nearly all the industrial logging that takes place in the interior of the province is from “woodland of native species where there is no clearly visible indication of human activities and the ecological processes are not significantly disturbed”, the wording used by Ofgem to define primary forests.
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