The farce of Drax’s wood pellets

When is the government going to stop pretending that chopping down trees in North American forests and shipping them across the Atlantic to burn them in UK power stations is a zero-carbon form of energy? The environmental-friendliness of Drax power station in North Yorkshire has been called into question yet again this week after BBC Panaroma investigation reported that some of the woodchips being burned there have allegedly been sourced from established ‘old growth’ forests in Canada rather than recent plantations. Drax has not commented on those specific allegations, but the investigation has thrown the issue back into the spotlight. How and where the wood is sourced has a dramatic difference on the overall calculations of carbon emissions from biomass burning – quite apart from the environmental issues involved with chopping down established forests.

But wherever the wood comes from, the whole business of counting biomass burning – which accounted for 11 per cent of Britain’s electricity generation in 2022 – as zero carbon is deeply flawed.