“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.”

UK-based power company Drax is still sourcing logs from old growth forests in BC. These logs are ground into pellets at plants here in northern and central BC and shipped to electricity generation stations in England and Japan. Drax Group Plc 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.

In early 2024, Conservation North, Biofuelwatch UK, and the Bulkley Valley Stewardship Coalition analyzed where Drax plants in north-central BC were obtaining their raw material. We found that contrary to their public statements, much of it continues to originate from rare and unprotected old growth forests.

Drax now owns seven pellet mills in 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,accounting for almost 40% of Canada’s total pellet production. As noted above, 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.

Click here to listen to a CBC radio interview about how we did this analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvJF8ivQk-s

Click here to download the full report: https://conservationnorth.org/wp-content/uploads/Drax-in-BC-report.pdf