Britain's green power plant 'burnt wood from protected forests'

Britain's green power plant burned wood that had been chopped down in environmentally important areas of Canada, according to leaked internal emails.

The huge Drax site in North Yorkshire mainly uses old logs, 'low grade' wood and sawmill dust, according to its bosses.

But leaked emails reveal it was 'highly likely' the company had been burning wood from ecologically significant forests.

The communications revealed by the Financial Times appear to contradict claims by owners Drax Group that it burns only 'sustainable' wood – which allows it to claim huge taxpayer subsidies. 

Drax has received more than £7billion of public cash since the plant started burning wood pellets in 2012 under a government green scheme. It can get through up to seven million tons a year.

Wood is said to be a 'sustainable' fuel because carbon dioxide released during burning is recaptured when new trees grow. While it is not illegal to burn old-growth forests, experts say they should be preserved.

An investigation by watchdog Ofgem found no evidence Drax engaged in 'deliberate misreporting' over its wood came from.

But Ofgem said Drax did fail to properly record data about the wood it imported between April 2021 to March 2022. 

In response, it made a £25million payment to Ofgem's voluntary redress fund.

In internal emails exchanged in November 2022, Drax executives discussed how the source of its wood should be classified. 

The emails said: 'Drax Canada does take material from forests that are native species that has [sic] not been previously harvested.'

It added 'material from forests of native species that have not been previously harvested may come to Drax Power Station as processing residues'. 

Further emails show some wood sent to its Canadian mills had been sourced from old-growth areas, including those that experts commissioned by authorities in the state of British Columbia recommended be protected.

Some also came from 'high-risk' private land that lacked 'publicly available traceability information'. 

Given those findings, 'some of the [old growth area material] is highly likely to have come to Drax power station,' they said. 

The company's emails were in a response to a 2022 BBC Panorama documentary which claimed it was 'taking logs from some of the world's most precious forests'.

Drax said of the emails: 'The internal conversations reflect a small part of the extensive review held within Drax as a part of our response to Panorama in

October 2022 and are taken out of their wider context. Our internal emails reflect the open discourse we have.'