Drax Group (LSE:DRX) likely burned wood sourced from ecologically significant forests in Canada to fuel its North Yorkshire power station, the company’s own emails have reportedly shown.
Internal emails seen by the Financial Times said it was “highly likely” wooden pellets used in the plant had come from old forests dubbed environmentally important and “high risk” by local authorities.
“Drax Canada does take material from forests that are native species that [have] not been previously harvested,” one said.
“That material from forests of native species that have not been previously harvested may come to Drax Power Station as processing residues,” another added.
The emails emerged after Drax in August agreed to pay a £25 million fine over inaccurately recording the types of wood used to fuel its power plant.
Drax was cleared of deliberately breaching rules though and was found to have met UK sustainability thresholds ensuring 70% of its fuel came from sustainable sources.
Emails showed the company’s executives had discussed how the use of wood from the old forests would be classified, according to the Financial Times, with one noting unharvested areas should not necessarily be reported as primary forest.
Wood taken from Canada was ultimately labelled as “naturally regenerated forest”.
It comes as Drax awaits the government’s decision on further publicly-funded green subsidies, of which it has been paid £7 billion since 2012, from 2027.
Drax has historically been paid to support power generation at the Yorkshire plant, which used to run on coal, given biomass is classed as carbon neutral.
Environmental groups urged Britain’s new Labour government earlier this week not to offer Drax new subsidies, pointing out the Yorkshire biomass plant was the single biggest source of emissions in the UK and that it relied on expensive imports, such as those from Canada.
"We take the sustainability of the biomass we use extremely seriously, and any suggestion of non-compliance is investigated rigorously," a Drax spokesperson said.
"These internal conversations reflect a small part of the extensive review held within Drax as a part of our response to Panorama in October 2022 and are taken out of their wider context.
"Our internal emails reflect the open discourse and debate we have, which is critical for our communications to be as accurate and transparent as possible."