Drax power station’s further reporting failure exposed by BBC News | Global News Avenue

BBC News found that a British power plant that has received billions of pounds of government subsidies has reported that it has burned wood in major forests more than once.

Drax power stations that require burning wood particles can report the wood it comes from and whether it comes from natural, previously untouched forests.

The company paid a £25 million fine for misunderstanding the data last year after an investigation by energy regulator OFGEM, and now the BBC has found another year of misreporting the error report that regulators have not done yet. Investigation.

Instead of denied misunderstanding its sustainability data, the company said it “focused on implementing lessons learned.”

The power plant is a converted coal-fired power plant in North Yorkshire that produces about 6% of UK electricity and has received billions of pounds of subsidies from government and bill payers as wood burning is classified as renewable energy. source.

BBC Panorama and BBC News have previously reported that Drax holds a logging license in British Columbia, Canada and holds pellets from major and old growing forests using timber (including whole trees).

These are natural forests that have never been industrially logged in and locked in and stored a lot of carbon as well as providing critical wildlife habitat.

The company said it does not own a forest or sawmill, no longer bid for logging permits, and has stopped sourcing timber from certain locations, and the British Columbia government has asked the company to order further.

However, public logging records show that although it says in its own sustainability standards the company will “avoid damage or interference to high-carbon forests”, the province’s main forests can still be cut from other companies in the province. The whole forest is obtained from the whole forest. As the main forest”.

Modern industrial logging only really started inside British Columbia in the 1960s, meaning that areas that have been recorded and replanted in recent decades are not mature enough that these plantations cannot be harvested.

Almost all industrial logging that occurs within the province comes from “woodlands of native species without obvious signs of human activity and ecological processes”, a wording used by OFGEM to define the main forests.

Drax was asked to report to Ofgem that it had sourced timber from these areas for 2020-21.

That year, Drax burned more than 1.2 million tons of wood pellets from Canada, a large portion of which came from primary forests inside British Columbia.

The company did not answer the BBC’s questions about why it misunderstood its sustainability data and whether it misleads governments and energy regulators using wood in major forests.

After that, Drax appears to have reduced its dependence on Canadian wood. The company said only about 2.5% of the pellets used in its power plants in 2023 come from British Columbia, mainly from public forests that have been designated to be harvested.

“Recognizing the importance of sustainable procurement of biomass, we work to ensure that our particles are legally harvested and meet strict sustainability requirements from the UK, US and Canadian governments, as well as the EU,” the company said.

Current UK biomass sustainability standards do not prohibit the use of whole trees for wood pellets.

The company added that the error reports previously identified by OFGEM are “essentially” and “do not affect the level of ROC (subsidy) gained.”

According to OFGEM, accurate sustainability data enables the government to “understand and monitor the extent of original major forests and jagged shapes in wood biomass, which have had an impact on carbon emissions and biodiversity”.

After an investigation last year and Drax subsequently fined £25 million for misunderstandings on data, Ofgem’s regulator said that if further errors were made, “action was not hesitant to take action”.

However, when the BBC approached, the regulator did not take any specific actions related to further error reports found by the BBC.

“We thank the BBC for sharing information related to the same issues we found in our investigation of Drax,” an OFGEM spokesperson said in a statement.

They added that Ofgem is making Drax “conduct a complete independent external audit of global supply chain analytics data to meet our appropriate processes and controls, adding: , we will investigate again.”

Drax’s current renewable subsidy program ends in 2027, and the BBC has found Drax further misreported sustainability data as the government is expected to announce the looming Drax (Drax) Subsidy.

The government said it is carefully considering revising current biomass sustainability standards and will release an update soon, but has not confirmed whether it will prevent wood from being used for wood pellets.

A spokesperson for the Department of Energy Security and Net Component said: “The situation we inherit for large biomass generators is unacceptable.

“Ofgem needs further review and they are working closely with Drax to ensure that no error reports occur again.”