Drax power company, which has received £6bn in U.K. green subsidies, has kept burning wood from some of the world’s most precious forests, a BBC investigation has found.
Papers obtained by Panorama show Drax took timber from rare forests in Canada it had claimed were “no go areas”.
It comes as the Government decides whether to give the firm’s Yorkshire site billions more in environmental subsidies funded by energy bill payers.
Drax says its wood pellets are “sustainable and legally harvested”.
The Drax Power Station, near Selby in North Yorkshire, is a converted coal plant which burns wood pellets. In 2023, it produced about 5% of the U.K.’s electricity. The site has become a key part of the Government’s drive to meet its climate targets.
Its owner, Drax, receives money from energy bill payers because the electricity produced from burning pellets is classified as renewable and treated as emission-free.
In fact, the power station emits about 12 million tonnes of carbon a year, but under international rules the U.K. doesn’t have to count these emissions.
All of the 6.5 million tonnes of wood pellets burned by Drax each year are produced overseas. Many come from Drax’s 17 pellet plants in the U.S. and Canada.
In 2022, Panorama revealed the company had obtained logging licences in the Canadian province of British Columbia and filmed logs being taken from what the programme said was primary forest to a pellet plant owned by Drax.
Primary forests are natural forests that have not been significantly disturbed by human activity.
Following the BBC investigation, Drax denied taking wood from primary forests but said it would not apply for further logging licences in the province.
However, the company still takes whole logs from forests that have been cut down by timber companies.
Panorama has obtained documents from British Columbia’s Ministry of Forests that show the company took more than 40,000 tonnes of wood from so-called ‘old-growth’ forests in 2023.
Old-growth is some of the oldest forest which the provincial Government says provides “unique habitats, structures and ecological functions”.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
“...it would be completely mad for Ukraine to deliberately kill its own civilians...”
Isn’t this how it all started in the first place though, Mr Rons? Wasn’t Ukraine already ‘completely mad’ because it was killing its own civilians from 2014 onwards? I’m not saying the Russians didn’t blow the dam – who knows, maybe they did to deny the Ukrainians irrigation or to lower morale – but you have to agree that a high degree of madness exists in that failed state and amongst its lowest moments was the deliberate campaign against its ethnic Russian community.
Agree. Makes little sense for the Russians to do this. Given the US 51rst state’s recent activity, it seems more credible that the US proxy is at fault, though in all honesty no one really knows including Ian who seems intent on drinking the propaganda kool aid spooned out by the CIA et al.
What do you mean by 51st state, exactly? Ukraine itself?
Rons is a mono-maniac – rationality is wasted on it.
Got it in one (that is intended to be a play on “mono”).
In addition to the matters described, a report on Al Jazeera came up with a rough financial guesstimate for the loss of revenue due to reduced export of agricultural products, e.g. wheat. Can’t remember the numbers exactly, but it was in $billions.
Ian Rons is single handedly making subscribers question their continued payments to The Daily Sceptic.
I am forced to assume that he pays for the column inches.
I now look upon it as humorous relief in the fiction department.
Yes I said to my husband this morning I would be out if another pro Ukraine piece appeared. Maybe they did blow it up, maybe Russia did, but the point of DS is to be sceptical not to present a one sided view of a foreign war.
We’re here on The Daily Sceptic to get away from all the lies, propaganda and omissions in the main stream media NOT to have them reinforced by the establishment leaning articles by Ian Rons.
I like to read a range of views, not just those that I already agree with. I don’t want to pay to be in an echo chamber.
I don’t want to pay to read Ian Rons ridiculous establishment views that I can read in the main stream media for free.
I want The Daily Sceptic to inform us with different versions to government and their vested interests mantras.
There is nothing wrong with The Daily Sceptic being an “echo chamber” of dissent.
I cannot understand the criticisms of this post. It is detailed well argued case. That should be enough by itself to justify taking it seriously.
It is also very convincing. It is incredibly far fetched to suppose Ukraine had a motive but the clincher is that they didn’t have the kit to do it and Ian has shown this in detail. What Ian might have explored more is whether it was approved at the highest level by Russia, whether whoever did it anticipated how awful it would be, or whether it was an accident based on the explosives Russia had in place.
Perhaps you ought to consider why the Ukrainians left the taps turned on full upstream so that the reservoir filled, literally, to overflowing, ensuring maximum pressure on a dam already weakened by previous Uke artillery and missile attacks, and then turned them off once the dam was breached to ensure the reservoir drained as quickly as possible. The Russians certainly had no hand in either action.
I don’t understand – what “taps” are these? In any case the water level was under Russian control as all they had to was open the floodgates a bit more to lower it.
The “taps” are the flow controls on the dam by the Dieper power station in Ukrainian controlled Dnieperpetrovsk. Normally the water flows through the generation turbines, but the Ukrainians gave up making electricity in return for opening their sluice gates to achieve maximum water flow for the first time in living memory. Most normal people would wonder why
I have scoured the internet but cannot find an reference to this story. Do you have one?
Opinion is not evidence. It argues opinion – not the evidence which the author said was abundant but doesn’t mention.
But the article is packed with evidence! You can dispute it but it is certainly there.
No evidence of anything….just opinion and the usual one-sided propaganda and I happily dispute it…..all of this is based on Ukrainian or anti-Russian analysis…there isn’t a single Russian or independent person or publication mentioned throughout…It might convince you but I’d just ask..what do you think the Ukrainians WOULD say LOL!
Really Ian I can’t be bothered with you anymore after you embarrassed yourself commenting on your last work of fiction, and this doesn’t get any closer to engineering sense, despite your reference to an ex RE, who by looking at his Twitter feed is hardly likely to have a balanced view on Ukrainian issues.
Thanks for another interesting post, Ian Rons. I’m a DS subscriber and really appreciate them.
Love the irony.
PS I am sceptical about the Welsh too, after 3 years at a Welsh uni.
I don’t even know why people try to use their judgment in regard to analysis of such events. There are no standards to assess anything by in a rapidly moving situation and to pretend that you can understand it from an armchair is absurd. As long as you are aware of the the Anglo-American schtick and all that follows from it then you don’t really need to ask any further questions.
I don’t mean to criticise anyone but I do feel that is in a sense unseemly to talk about overseas wars and more than that it is the opposite of what we are fighting for. Believe me in the next six months western support among the general populace will collapse. But unfortunately the Yanks have opened up their big storage sites in the desert and they are taking everything out of storage, thousands of aircraft. This is a huge operaton costing about $1 million dollars per plane and several weeks work. Just be aware that the next stage, an aerial war, won’t be as abstract and faraway as it has been.
Let me know if I have summarised your article correctly, Ian:
‘Destroying the dam with missiles is difficult for Ukraine, therefore somehow Russia destroyed it.’
Could the downvoters please explain where I have gone wrong with my attempt to summarise Ian’s article?
They´re paid 77th.
You know who did it cut the crap we all know who did it. If youj want me to lay it out in triplivate I can give you details of Ukrainan threats on this site and previous reports of missile strikes on this site.This isn’t rocket science we know who did it.
Just atacking sites and destroying people’s lives for the sake of some dead political battle. And then to be used by the West as some sort of last ditch attempt to keep things going. Avoid these forces. A time is coming where a man’s word will be his bond.
Biden owes Ukraine a lot, the funding isn’t going to stop.
All this report needed to say was:
1
the power of explosive device(s) needed for an outside attack was not available to Ukraine and possibly not even the Wedt
2
Russia benefits at least in the short term from the damage. At no stage does it benefit Ukraine.
enough said.
(OT)
To be fair Ian (re. James Delingpole “mad” over satanists controlling global weather theory) I actually took issue with a Delingpole theory in the comments of the recent London Calling episode (Town v. Country living), namely that an all meat diet (and certainly an all cooked meat diet) is a good idea as salad and fruit and raw food is genuinely beneficial (together with a proportion of meat/fish/eggs) as part of a balanced diet (see Phillip Day).
I love the sheer comical irony and bathos of the “We don’t come to this explicitly free-speech orientated site to hear views we don’t agree with. Shut up or we’re going to take our money elsewhere’ type comments (and their upticks) on this and similar threads.
Mind you it would be astonishing if those who support the neo-fascist invasion of an independent country for daring to try and maintain multi-party liberal-democratic institutions and values would feel any genuine affinity with the free-speech principles of The Daily Sceptic – as opposed to simply seeing it as a relatively undefended platform to be captured for propagandist purposes.
And again it’s quite funny watching tyranny trying to impose itself over freedom when it doesn’t have any of the usual intimidatory mechanisms (eg gun-totting police and troops) to back it up, just verbal tantrums and attempts at financial blackmail based on tiny amounts of cash.
Anybody who believes the USA and its lackey states are supporting Ukraine because of their commitment to national independence and multi-party liberal-democratic institutions is, at best, desperately naive.
I’m going with ‘simple-minded’..it’s about the kindest….
let’s face it..to get to that conclusion you have to ignore years of history and politics and precedent…..
Just like a child, boil it down to only good v evil..where you know which is which..and everyone else is wrong and tainted by association..it’s the same argument with the climate..LGB+ etc…as it was with Convid…..if you don’t follow the ‘official propaganda’ you are the enemy..and there is no room for neutrality….
Luckily I truly believe the vast majority of the people in the World see the Western hypocrisy for what it is..along with a good amount of people who actually live in the West.
They have to keep this manufactured good/bad thing going because it’s all they have got..and even they know it’s rubbish….
Lies and pretence take too much time and effort..eventually people see through it…this will be no different…..
The very knowledgeable and entertaining (and definitely not simple minded) Jeffrey Sachs on The Duran…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkrQokUYMmY
Biden is in deep shit when Ukraine loses and his corruption is exposed, hence the funding will continue.
“neo-fascist invasion of an independent country for daring to try and maintain multi-party liberal-democratic institutions and values”
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
Your so funny.
1.The neo-fascist have run Ukraine since at least 2014
2.”independent” with Blackrock owning at least 30% of it.
3.”multi-party liberal-democratic institutions and values” that Zelensky has band.
Yes…if Ukraine is a multi party (Elenskyy banned them all..LOL) liberal democracy…I reckon Epstein was a youth outreach worker….
Yeh, right . . .
You underestimate the SBS.
NordStream was incontrovertibly blown up by the Russians, Ukrainians, Swedes, Poles, British and Americans, at the last count.
I will continue to believe nothing that comes out of either side..
It doesn’t sound like Incontrovertible, it sounds like we don’t know but it must have been because we don’t have any evidence. If “it would have been blatantly obvious to the RC-135 Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft operated by the U.S. and the U.K. which are in constant rotation near Ukraine,” surely these spy planes and satalites could have seen where the planes came from and where they went back to. The USA is not above such actions, having a long history of corruption in starting wars and working in the background fanning the flames.
there are so many uncontrolled assumptions and confounding variables in this assessment, it doesn’t even qualify for the adjective ‘forensic’.
It’s more reminiscent of religion.
‘Over the past week, much evidence has come to light which puts beyond reasonable doubt the conclusion that Russian forces occupying the Kakhovka Dam were responsible for its destruction…’
With so much ‘incontrovertible’ evidence coming to light, I was rather hoping you were going to share some of it with us.
Instead a lot of speculative waffle about how the Ukrainians couldn’t technically do it, whereas the Russians could.
You would have done better to stop at “for defensive purposes – as in this instance”, Ian! The article up to there is an interesting description of why Ukraine probably did not destroy the dam.
After that, though, you descend into suppositions, speculation and opinions. You state, for example, that it would have been “legitimate under the laws of war” for Ukraine to destroy sluice gates to hamper a Russian retreat, but imply that it is not legitimate for Russia to destroy the dam.
You cite without comment a “signal intercept” released by the SBU (Ukrainian intelligence) as evidence that Ukraine was not responsible.
You state that “the scale of the flooding does seem to have taken Russia by surprise”, without noting that this surely is at least some evidence that Russia was not responsible.
You state that Ukraine did not have a motive “given their adherence to the Geneva Conventions” – even if it were true that they are adhering to those conventions, I am not sure why that would affect whether they had a motive for blowing the dam.
You also state that “it would be completely mad for Ukraine to deliberately kill its own civilians by blowing the dam – citizens that they are in the process of liberating” – this is ridiculous since the same would obviously apply to the Russian side, especially as their own troops were among those affected.
And you say that “The loss of agricultural irrigation both in these regions and in Crimea (which was, in any case, without irrigation between 2014–22) is of little significance to Russia – they have almost no regard for the lives of their troops, and none for Ukrainian civilians.” This is a complete non sequitur – even if it were true that the Russians do not care about the lives of their troops (which I find extremely unlikely to be honest), why would that affect whether they cared about loss of irrigation, especially in Crimea?
You have produced a compelling case that the Russians blew the dam – and then wrecked it with a very silly second half of the article.
Increasingly the outflow of water is not the same as destroying a dam, causing a flood affecting civilian areas.
I said that it was “supposedly between Russian soldiers”, not that it was between Russian soldiers, and I also included a lot of other “chatter” – described as such – which goes toward making a circumstantial case.#
I don’t agree that it is evidence of that. There were different forecasts of what would happen if the dam were blown, and it was an inherently uncertain and risky undertaking. “You were only meant to blow the bloody doors off!”, etc.
Ukraine would have to have been crazy not to see the consequences, including from the very self-interested angle of Western support.
Nonsense. Russia is not “liberating” people it calls “kokhols”. You totally misunderstand what’s happening.
I don’t think you non sequitur means what you think it means. Perhaps you missed the phrase “…and none for Ukrainian civilians”. Obviously irrigation affects civilians living in Ukraine (which includes Crimea), but they don’t care about them. There are of course some Russians who’ve moved into Crimea, so perhaps I should have said they don’t care about them either.
One day we’ll all come to recognise Ian Rons as one of the true comedic geniuses of his generation.