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Today’s blog is written by Mair Floyd-Bosley, Senior Policy Officer for Bioenergy, on recent investigations into Drax’s impacts on global forests.
Recent investigations, including by the BBC, show that wood burned in Drax power station is harvested from precious forest habitats around the world and they receive millions of pounds in “zero carbon” subsidies to do it.
This week, a BBC Panorama investigation has revealed that Drax power station (the UK’s single biggest emitter of carbon) logs and burns trees from important primary forest habitat in Canada.
Panorama analysed satellite images, traced logging licences and filmed a truck on a 120-mile round trip: leaving Drax’s wood pellet plant, collecting piles of whole logs from a primary forest that had been cut down and then returning to the plant for their delivery.
Why is burning wood a problem for nature and our climate?
Environmental campaigners have long been raising the alarm that harvesting forests to burn for bioenergy is dangerous for climate and nature.
Primary forests, which have never been logged before and store vast quantities of carbon, are precious for both climate and nature, having built up carbon stores and wildlife habitat over centuries. It is highly unlikely that replanted trees will ever hold as much carbon as the old forest, and not on timescales required for us to urgently halt climate breakdown.
The BBC’s recent Panorama investigation adds to the evidence that pouring these vast subsidies into an industry that burns imported trees will lead to unsustainable logging, regardless of voluntary sustainability regimes.
Previous investigations point to a similar conclusion. Stand.earth, a Canadian environmental organisation, found that wood pellet plants in Canada use whole trees, ‘likely’ being made with wood from threatened species habitat, including the endangered woodland caribou. NGOs in the US have found wood sourced using damaging logging practices, including clear-felling of mature and highly biodiverse hardwood forests, enter the UK energy market. Recent Channel 4 News and CNN investigations both found wood sourced from clearcuts of old and biodiverse forests supply the wood pellet industry under current sustainability regimes. Additional recent research suggests that wood imported to Drax from Estonia may be in breach of the UK’s own sustainability criteria.
How is Drax getting “zero carbon” subsidies?
Despite the massive impact on the climate and nature, the UK spends millions in subsidy to import and burn wood for electricity. From 2012-2019 Drax has received over £4 billion in subsidy, and its subsidy until 2027 is expected to be a further £5.8 billion. This is due to a loophole in energy policy which classifies bioenergy as ‘renewable’ and ‘zero carbon’, making it eligible for renewable energy subsidies and green tax breaks.
We believe that the majority of UK billpayers would object to their money being directed to this harmful industry under the guise of ‘renewable energy subsidies’ – if only they knew.
Ending carbon emissions and protecting the world’s precious remaining habitats has never been more important. Large-scale forest biomass burning has been proven, time and time again, to undermine this imperative. This is especially important now, as the UK Government are poised to commit further millions, or even billions, to Drax for unproven ‘negative emissions technology’, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Learn more about BECCS here.
Taking action
The RSPB are calling on the UK Government to fix this. The first step should be ending renewable energy subsidies for primary forest biomass.
You, can spread the word. Share the recent Panorama investigation and ask your MP to object to further subsidies for forest biomass burning.
Further reading: Read more about our work on biomass here.