Exposing the Pellet Industry in BC

Also in 2020, Conservation North director Michelle Connolly joins a lawsuit against the Korean government because of the effect of the demand for feedstock on local primary forests. “International demand for wood pellets is driving increased logging in the last remnant patches of old-growth inland rainforest, a globally rare ecosystem. Logging forests that are such massive stores of carbon and harbours for biodiversity means goodbye to any hope of climate mitigation or nature preservation because the wood pellet industry will vacuum up everything in the ecosystem.” The lawsuit was ultimately unsuccessful: https://www.saurenergy.com/solar-energy-news/green-credentials-of-biomass-energy-challenged-by-korean-solar-industry.

In 2021 our pellet battle was featured in the New Yorker magazine and the Financial Times newspaper. Read humourist Sarah Miller’s entertaining piece about the Drax plant in the UK here: https://wwwE.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/the-millions-of-tons-of-carbon-emissions-that-dont-officially-exist.

Climate change journalist Camilla Hodgson’s equally important piece in the Financial Times called Climate change and the battle for Canada’s forests.

In 2022 journalist Brian Barth’s piece in the Walrus describes what’s at stake: https://thewalrus.ca/wood-pellets.

In 2022, the investigative team at CBC’s The Fifth Estate program produced an exposé of Drax and the pellet industry in BC. The program highlights Conservation North’s work locally and features the young UK campaigners fighting this industry from their side of the world.

Also in 2022, July, BBC’s investigative program Panorama came to north-central BC to investigate energy company Drax’s use of primary forest to make pellets and claims that their practices on the ground are sustainable. Their investigation was the result of Conservation North’s work in highlighting the risks to nature of this industry.

Following the BBC’s summer investigation and their discovery that Drax has a license to log rare old growth forest, Conservation North returned to the Middle River area in Tl’atz’en territory a few months later to document the logging happening there.