Drax’s announcement won’t change what’s happening in BC’s Natural Forests.
Prince George, B.C. – Drax, a UK-based energy company that controls much of the trans-oceanic wood pellet trade has announced that its Yorkshire, England power plant will stop burning wood from BC within the next year. Drax owns seven plants in BC, which turn wood from primary forests into pellets that are shipped overseas to be burned for electricity.
“The decision to stop feeding the Yorkshire plant with BC pellets will change almost nothing on the ground in BC, unfortunately,” explains Conservation North director Michelle Connolly. “BC pellet mills mainly serve Japan, which has taken about 75% of the pellet export share over the last few years. This trend continues and will get worse if Asian markets expand.”
Japan imported 1.29 million tonnes of pellets from Canada in 2025.
In 2020, Conservation North documented that the BC government was issuing primary forest logging licenses to pellet companies. In 2022, investigations by the BBC’s Panorama and CBC’s Fifth Estate revealed that Drax was logging old growth and other natural forests in B.C. Throughout 2023, Drax obtained logs and chipped wood from the rarest old growth forests in the province.
Drax continued to procure wood from old growth forests for their BC mills in January of 2024, and throughout 2025. In August of last year the company was audited by the Financial Conduct Authority for its statements on biomass sourcing. Drax continues to obtain its woody raw material from old growth forests in BC.
“Despite the practice being banned in other countries, the BC government continues to allow industrial logging in forests that have never been logged before. That material goes to sawmills, pulp mills and Drax,” states Jenn Matthews, a volunteer with Conservation North.
Drax cites economic challenges as the reason for the decision to stop sending wood from BC to the Yorkshire plant to burn. “If there has been a financial hit to Drax it’s because awareness was raised here in BC of the ecological consequences of the industry,” adds Matthews.
The BC government has a crediting system in place whereby logging companies get an equivalent volume of wood for every load of pellet-grade logs harvested and delivered to Drax. For example, if Canfor brings 500 logs to a Drax pellet mill, Canfor could then harvest 500 logs of any quality for itself. This is called the Grade 4 Credit system, and it effectively doubles the logging footprint of the pellet industry.
According to Connolly: “As long as Drax is here, we lose the same amount of wildlife habitat whether our forests end up burning in the UK or elsewhere.”
Conservation North is a community group that launched in 2017 in the ancestral lands of the Lheidli T’enneh. Seventy years of unrestrained industrial logging has left our communities with degraded landscapes and biodiversity loss. Conservation North is calling on the BC government to legally protect primary forests in the interior and enable a just transition towards second-growth forestry and other industries.