From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dave Ward/Robin Guenier
The BBC have lastly caught up! There have been complaints for years about this:
An organization that has obtained billions of kilos in inexperienced vitality subsidies from UK taxpayers is slicing down environmentally-important forests, a BBC Panorama investigation has discovered.
Drax runs Britain’s greatest energy station, which burns thousands and thousands of tonnes of imported wooden pellets – which is classed as renewable vitality.
The BBC has found a few of the wooden comes from main forests in Canada.
The corporate says it solely makes use of sawdust and waste wooden.
Panorama analysed satellite tv for pc photos, traced logging licences and used drone filming to show its findings. Reporter Joe Crowley additionally adopted a truck from a Drax mill to confirm it was selecting up entire logs from an space of treasured forest.
Ecologist Michelle Connolly advised Panorama the corporate was destroying forests that had taken 1000’s of years to develop.
“It’s actually a disgrace that British taxpayers are funding this destruction with their cash. Logging pure forests and changing them into pellets to be burned for electrical energy, that’s completely insane,” she mentioned.
The Drax energy station in Yorkshire is a transformed coal plant, which now produces 12% of the UK’s renewable electrical energy.
It has already obtained £6bn in inexperienced vitality subsidies. Burning wooden is taken into account inexperienced, however it’s controversial amongst environmentalists.
Panorama found Drax purchased logging licences to chop down two areas of environmentally-important forest in British Columbia.
The Panorama workforce used drones to survey the world
One of many Drax forests is a sq. mile, together with massive areas which were recognized as uncommon, old-growth forest.
The provincial authorities of British Columbia says old-growth forests are significantly vital and that firms ought to delay logging them.
Drax’s personal accountable sourcing coverage says it “will keep away from harm or disturbance” to main and old-growth forest.
Nevertheless, the most recent satellite tv for pc photos present Drax is now slicing down the forest.
Satellite tv for pc photos present forests lower down in British Columbia
The corporate advised Panorama lots of the bushes there had died, and that logging would scale back the danger of wildfires.
Your entire space lined by the second Drax logging licence has already been lower down.
Drax advised the BBC it had not lower down the forests itself and mentioned it transferred the logging licences to different firms.
However Panorama checked and the authorities in British Columbia confirmed that Drax nonetheless holds the licences.
Drax mentioned it didn’t use the logs from the 2 websites Panorama recognized. It mentioned they have been despatched to timber mills – to make wooden merchandise – and that Drax solely used the leftover sawdust for its pellets.
The corporate says it does use some logs – basically – to make wooden pellets. It claims it solely makes use of ones which are small, twisted, or rotten.
However paperwork on a Canadian forestry database present that solely 11% of the logs delivered to the 2 Drax vegetation previously yr have been categorized because the lowest high quality, which can’t be used for wooden merchandise.
Panorama wished to see if logs from main forests lower down by logging firms have been being transferred to Drax’s Meadowbank pellet plant. The programme filmed a truck on a 120-mile spherical journey: leaving the plant, gathering piles of entire logs from a forest that had been lower down by a logging firm after which returning to the plant for his or her supply.
Drax later admitted that it did use logs from the forest to make wooden pellets. The corporate mentioned they have been species the timber business didn’t need, and they might usually be burned anyway to cut back wildfire dangers.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/information/science-environment-63089348
It’s wonderful how Drax have modified their story as proof mounts in opposition to them.
There was loads of investigative work within the US, the place Drax additionally function, which has come to comparable conclusions. All alongside although, Drax has insisted they by no means use prime wooden. That’s now confirmed to be a lie.
I’m additionally happy that the BBC has identified the nonsense that these bushes will quickly be replanted, with the carbon offset. As they word:
Main forests, which have by no means been logged earlier than and retailer huge portions of carbon, aren’t thought-about a sustainable supply. It’s extremely unlikely that replanted bushes will ever maintain as a lot carbon because the outdated forest.
The federal government nevertheless finds itself within the horns of a dilemma. With out this faux discount in carbon emissions, it will be nowhere close to assembly its local weather targets.
If it decides to cease treating biomass as renewable, it must drastically ramp up wind and photo voltaic as an alternative.
Bioenergy accounts for 13% of the UK’s electrical energy technology, which is greater than onshore wind.
