Papers obtained by bbc panorama show drax took timberfrom papers obtained by bbc panorama show drax took timber from rare forest in canada that it had claimed were no go areas. It comes as the government decides whether to give the firms yorkshire side billions more in environmental subsidies, funded by energy bill payers. Drax says its wood pellets are sustainable and illegally harvested. Lets get more on this from our reporter who conducted that investigation. What did you find . This is about a Power Station in england. This is the worlds biggest woodfired Power Station. It does say by burning wood pellets. It receives a huge amount of public subsidy, as you just mentioned, because these wood pellets, when you burn for electricity, that is counted as renewable energy. The Power Station gets through an awful lot of wood pellets each year, about 6. 5 million tonnes. All of these are imported into the uk from overseas, many of them coming from the us and canada, where drax runs 17 pell
We dont take whole trees. You do. And how billions of pounds of our cash is funding this. Logging naturalforests and converting them into pellets to be burned for electricity, that is absolutely insane. Theres no other word for it. This is britains biggest Single Source of electricity. The Drax Power Station in yorkshire used to burn coal, but its switched to burning wood pellets as part of the uks drive to cut Carbon Emissions. And that means the company has received around £6 billion in green subsidies. Theres just one problem. Burning wood pellets actually gives out more Greenhouse Gases than coal. Now, Carbon Dioxide is invisible to the human eye, so you cant actually see all of the carbon coming out of that chimney, but wood burning releases plenty of it, even more than coal. So were actually paying for this Power Station to kick out more Greenhouse Gases than before. And drax is in line to get billions more from the taxpayer. Actually coming out of those chimneys right now is mo
we don t take whole trees. you do. and how billions of pounds of our cash is funding this. logging naturalforests and converting them into pellets to be burned for electricity, that is absolutely insane. there s no other word for it. this is britain s biggest single source of electricity. the drax power station in yorkshire used to burn coal, but it s switched to burning wood pellets as part of the uk s drive to cut carbon emissions. and that means the company has received around £6 billion in green subsidies. there s just one problem. burning wood pellets actually gives out more greenhouse gases than coal. now, carbon dioxide is invisible to the human eye, so you can t actually see all of the carbon coming out of that chimney, but wood burning releases plenty of it, even more than coal. so we re actually paying for this power station to kick out more greenhouse gases than before. and drax is in line to get billions more from the taxpayer. actually coming out of those chimne
we re heading towards one of drax s pellet operations in the community of burns lake. ben parfitt has been investigating the timber industry for years. we re going to look at one of drax s pellet plants. what you re going to see when you get here is that this operation is using a lot more thanjust wood chips. there it is. wow! gosh, that is a big site, isn t it? it is a very big site. and you can see from here, there s a big, big pile of wood chips and sawdust at the front, but then, if you look beyond that, you can see a massive line of logs. oh, wow, you can. stretching way off into the distance. they are big, they re long,
we ve proved drax does damage primary forests. the company did it to get sawdust. but where do all these logs come from? so, we re sitting outside one of drax s pellet plants in a place called meadowbank. it sjust gone 10:00am, and i ve seen a big lorry with three lengths of logs, so it s a truck and a trailer, turn in to meadowbank. so it s clearly dropping off some rather big logs to the pellet plant. drax gets most of its logs from other companies. we re going to follow this truck to see if they re coming from a primary forest. so, this is our truck that we re following. he s gone north out of drax s pellet mill. and all we can do now is see where he goes. we follow the truck for 60 miles before it turns off