Drax Continues To Generate "Sustainable" Energy By Burning 250-Year Old Trees From Canada

[hatrack]

Drax power plant has continued to burn 250-year-old trees sourced from some of Canada’s oldest forests despite growing scrutiny of its sustainability claims, forestry experts say. A new report suggests it is “highly likely” that Britain’s biggest power plant sourced some wood from ecologically valuable forests as recently as this summer. Drax, Britain’s single biggest source of carbon emissions, has received billions of pounds in subsidies from burning biomass derived largely from wood.

The report, by Stand.earth, a Canadian environmental non-profit, claims that a subsidiary of Drax Group received hundreds of truckloads of whole logs at its biomass pellet sites throughout 2024 and into 2025, which were likely to have included trees that were hundreds of years old. The report could raise fresh questions for the owner of the North Yorkshire power plant, which has been forced in recent years to defend its sustainability claims while receiving more than £2m a day in green energy subsidies from UK bill payers.

The report’s findings suggest that the power plant was burning “irreplaceable” trees even as its owners lobbied the UK government for the additional green energy subsidies, which were granted earlier this week. The company has claimed that it sources wood only from “well‐managed, sustainable forests” to manufacture the pellets that are shipped from its sites in Canada and the US to be burned at its UK power plant.

EDIT

Tegan Hansen, the lead author of Stand.earth’s report, told the Guardian that the loss of British Columbia’s old-growth trees was “a big problem that’s getting bigger”. “The region where Drax is operating is an area where we’ve tracked a disproportionate amount of logging in high-risk forests with our satellite monitoring system Forest Eye. With how logging works here in BC, there isn’t really a way for Drax to be operating in these areas and not include old-growth forests in their wood supply. The people of the UK should know that the risk of old-growth trees being cut down to produce wood pellets is higher than ever,” Hansen said. As part of the investigation, Hansen visited a biomass pellet production site, owned by a Canadian subsidiary of Drax, where the company’s reliance on whole logs was apparent. “It was quite stark. The yards are sprawling and there were huge piles of logs there. These were large, healthy trees of different ages. We saw some trees which had been scorched by fire, but they were still alive when they were cut, which was apparent by the oozing sap,” she said.

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/09/drax-still-burning-250-year-old-trees-sourced-from-forests-in-canada-experts-say

[markodochartaigh]

1. It seems counter-intuitive

that any scheme which ships wood half way around the planet to be burned could be called sustainable. Perhaps if it was shipped in the otherwise empty cargo hold of a plane carrying a billionaire.

/s

[usonian]

2. Drax?

[hatrack]

3. Buh-dah-BOOM!