“UK-based Drax is still sourcing from old growth forests in BC. With Biofuelwatch, the Bulkley Valley Stewardship Coalition, we confirmed that some of the rarest old growth in northern BC is heading towards electricity plants in England and Japan.”

Drax Group Plc is a UK-based company that operates the world’s biggest biomass power station, and is also the world’s second biggest pellet producer, after Enviva. Drax burns pellets from its own production at Drax power station in England, and sells pellets to other companies, mostly in Japan.

Drax owns seven pellet mills in British Columbia (BC) after acquiring the province’s largest pellet producer, Pinnacle Renewable Energy Inc., in 2021. Its BC pellet mills produced over 1.3 million tonnes of pellets in 2021,1 accounting for almost 40% of Canada’s total pellet production. Drax sources its raw material from BC’s forests and forest industries, and maintains that its operations in BC are “sustainable.”

This analysis focuses on north-central BC, where all of the material feeding Drax’s pellet mills there originates from Primary forest, whether it arrives directly from logging operations or as byproduct from near-by sawmills. The vast majority of commercial logging taking place in BC is of Primary forest.

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