From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dave Ward/Robin Guenier
The BBC have finally caught up! There have been complaints for years about this:
A company that has received billions of pounds in green energy subsidies from UK taxpayers is cutting down environmentally-important forests, a BBC Panorama investigation has found.
Drax runs Britain’s biggest power station, which burns millions of tonnes of imported wood pellets – which is classed as renewable energy.
The BBC has discovered some of the wood comes from primary forests in Canada.
The company says it only uses sawdust and waste wood.
Panorama analysed satellite images, traced logging licences and used drone filming to prove its findings. Reporter Joe Crowley also followed a truck from a Drax mill to verify it was picking up whole logs from an area of precious forest.
Ecologist Michelle Connolly told Panorama the company was destroying forests that had taken thousands of years to develop.
“It’s really a shame that British taxpayers are funding this destruction with their money. Logging natural forests and converting them into pellets to be burned for electricity, that is absolutely insane,” she said.
The Drax power station in Yorkshire is a converted coal plant, which now produces 12% of the UK’s renewable electricity.
It has already received £6bn in green energy subsidies. Burning wood is considered green, but it is controversial among environmentalists.
Panorama discovered Drax bought logging licences to cut down two areas of environmentally-important forest in British Columbia.
The Panorama team used drones to survey the area
One of the Drax forests is a square mile, including large areas that have been identified as rare, old-growth forest.
The provincial government of British Columbia says old-growth forests are particularly important and that companies should put off logging them.
Drax’s own responsible sourcing policy says it “will avoid damage or disturbance” to primary and old-growth forest.
However, the latest satellite pictures show Drax is now cutting down the forest.
Satellite images show forests cut down in British Columbia
The company told Panorama many of the trees there had died, and that logging would reduce the risk of wildfires.
The entire area covered by the second Drax logging licence has already been cut down.
Drax told the BBC it had not cut down the forests itself and said it transferred the logging licences to other companies.
But Panorama checked and the authorities in British Columbia confirmed that Drax still holds the licences.
Drax said it did not use the logs from the two sites Panorama identified. It said they were sent to timber mills – to make wood products – and that Drax only used the leftover sawdust for its pellets.
The company says it does use some logs – in general – to make wood pellets. It claims it only uses ones that are small, twisted, or rotten.
But documents on a Canadian forestry database show that only 11% of the logs delivered to the two Drax plants in the past year were classified as the lowest quality, which cannot be used for wood products.
Panorama wanted to see if logs from primary forests cut down by logging companies were being transferred to Drax’s Meadowbank pellet plant. The programme filmed a truck on a 120-mile round trip: leaving the plant, collecting piles of whole logs from a forest that had been cut down by a logging company and then returning to the plant for their delivery.
Drax later admitted that it did use logs from the forest to make wood pellets. The company said they were species the timber industry did not want, and they would often be burned anyway to reduce wildfire risks.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63089348
It is amazing how Drax have changed their story as evidence mounts against them.
There has been plenty of investigative work in the US, where Drax also operate, which has come to similar conclusions. All along though, Drax has insisted they never use prime wood. That is now proven to be a lie.
I am also pleased that the BBC has pointed out the nonsense that these trees will soon be replanted, with the carbon offset. As they note:
Primary forests, which have never been logged before and store vast quantities of carbon, are not considered a sustainable source. It is highly unlikely that replanted trees will ever hold as much carbon as the old forest.
The government however finds itself in the horns of a dilemma. Without this pretend reduction in carbon emissions, it would be nowhere near meeting its climate targets.
If it decides to stop treating biomass as renewable, it will have to drastically ramp up wind and solar instead.
Bioenergy accounts for 13% of the UK’s electricity generation, which is more than onshore wind.
and much much MUCH worse – relentlessly lying about it
That is the crime here, the mendacity, and is why Everything Is Now Wrong in this world and why it, and everybody on board, is fuqqed
I would just like to point out that so-called “old growth” forest – which the enviro-crazies worship – do not provide any food for the deer or the bears. The forest floor, shaded by the dense canopy, is basically bare. But open spaces in the forest become meadows for a number of years before the conifers take over, where deciduous trees (birch and alder, primarily) and berry bushes (huckleberries) grow. When I was growing up, my Dad knew all the best places around where we lived to pick mountain huckleberries, which look a lot like blueberries and are larger and sweeter than the red huckleberries that grow closer to the coast.
The people who were already living in BC when the Europeans arrived would regularly set fires in the forest to clear areas for meadows.
At what point are these lying hound dogs going to be held accountable? These people disgust me.
“The government however finds itself in the horns of a dilemma. Without this pretend reduction in carbon emissions, it would be nowhere near meeting its climate targets.”
To hell with your climate targets, they are absolute nonsense. You are putting good people at risk for no good reason, lying to cover your bad behavior and looking more and more like criminals than public servants.
Ummm…did we forget that trees are a renewable resource? They grow back. But you need an awful lot of them to replace the energy and heating needs of Earth’s population. Burning forests is an inefficient way to heat and produce power. It’s what our ancestors did before they discovered petrol and built hydroelectric power plants and nuclear power plants. But if European governing elites want to regress back to unsustainable technology from the Dark Ages, well, burn your own forests.
Regardless of the foolishness of burning wood pellets in a power station, it appears to be a really expensive proposition to ship wood pellets from British Columbia. They would have to travel about 5,000 kilometres by (diesel powered) train just to get to an east coast port before getting shipped across the Atlantic.
There are in fact plenty of trees in the boreal forest of eastern Canada, much closer to seaports. And mostly they are not in “old growth” forests.
It looks as if being in receipt of massive subsidies has distorted the economics of the business by allowing Drax to source wood pellets anywhere, regardless of shipping costs.
Alternatively, the BBC may have got the whole thing wrong (which wouldn’t surprise me).
I’m not one to normally advocate watching anything by Michael Moore, but his movie “The Planet of the Humans” is definitely worth a watch. He mostly skewers the sustainable, green efforts of a bunch of folks and covers this exact topic. You can see it on YouTube.
Dont get too excited. The BBC has not yet realised that the whole Drax biomass business is a scam, only that Drax are breaking their own rules by burning the wrong trees.
This seems just a copy of Michael Moore´s “planet of humans” last year (the 2nd half of it .. I am afraid the first half does not seem very accurate)
This is known for a long time and no none does anything to save the nature.
It figures that British Columbia would allow part of its forests to be cut down because, like a few other jurisdictions, it talks a good game about fighting climate change until it stands to profit in less environmentally-friendly ways. For example, Vancouver is one of the largest coal-exporting ports in North America, and the province doesn’t hesitate to ship liquefied natural gas overseas either. So it’s also exporting its emissions in the process. Yet that hasn’t helped it guard against extreme weather events in the least since it’s been plagued by wildfires and droughts for several years now.
The vast majority of coal exported from Tsawassen is metallurgical coal, not thermal. Without metallurgical coal one cannot build towers for wind turbines.
The Prime Minister Canada identifies as Chinese [and Black].
And the Chinese don’t give hoot about trees or CO2
I burn wood, and coal to heat my home. I care not at all what the greenies say. The wood I buy, and the coal I buy, cost me a third of what my neighbors pay for heating their homes.
That must be one of the most absurd business practice, ever.
Using fossil fuels to cut down wood, ship it by land or sea many thousands of miles, yet claim it is environmentally friendly or cost efficient.
That is a clear misuse of UK taxpayer funds.
Why BBC.Is it because of the left wing media ignoring this. Similar to ignoring all real news.