Search results for “drax”

  • Wall of logs await grinding up for wood pellets at pellet plant in Houston, BC. Photo: © Stand.earth.

    Will Drax’s claim that burning Canadian wood pellets is green go up in smoke?

    OECD investigates UK power company’s sustainability claims as Drax becomes the largest pellet-maker in Canada In April 2021, the United Kingdom’s Drax Group purchased Pinnacle Renewable Energy, becoming the largest wood pellet-maker in British Columbia and Canada.  The acquisition gave Drax control of the majority of pellet mills in the…

  • Energy giant Drax’s monopoly of BC’s wood pellet industry must be investigated

    The following letter has been sent to Matthew Boswell, Commissioner of Competition, Competition Bureau of Canada. Dear Mr. Boswell, We write today to formally request that the Competition Bureau of Canada investigate the Drax Group’s dominant position in the wood pellet industry in British Columbia, Alberta and Canada more generally.…

  • Aerial photo of Smithers mill surrounded by piles of logs

    Promises of cleaner air up in smoke

    Calls for BC environment minister to suspend pellet mill permit Every year, the air in the Bulkley Valley community of Smithers becomes hazardous to human health as thousands of fires known as slash burns are deliberately set at logging sites. The contaminated air can stay trapped in the valley’s airshed…

  • A wall of logs awaits conversion to wood pellets outside a mill co-owned by the Drax Group. Photo credit: Stand.earth

    Jobs and forests up in smoke: Coalition calls for investigation into wood pellet juggernaut Drax

    At 944,000 square kilometres in area, British Columbia is nearly four times larger than the United Kingdom.  But what the latter lacks in size it compensates for in reach, a reach that extends deep into the old-growth forests of Canada’s westernmost province.  To appreciate that reach it helps to consider …

  • Photo Stand.earth

    The Revolving Door: Troubling questions raised as BC’s chief forester prepares to work for global wood pellet giant, Drax

    At mid-afternoon on Monday (April 4), senior staff at British Columbia’s Ministry of Forests were told that one of their highest-ranking members—the province’s chief forester, Diane Nicholls—was entering the revolving door that would sweep her seamlessly out of government employ and into the industry her ministry regulates.  “Diane is leaving…

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    As wood pellet exports to Japan surge, BC’s primary forests feel the strain

    In the land of the rising sun, the light of a setting sun glints so brightly on the shiny metal piping of Renova’s Ishinomaki Hibarino power plant that you have to shield your eyes. Located near the city of Sendai, north of Tokyo, the new thermal electricity plant is one…

  • Burning wood pellets

    A burning question

    BC government needs to say how many trees are falling to wood pellet industry Recently, two respected news organizations aired investigative documentaries showing how trees in BC’s drastically over-cut primary forests are chopped down only to be turned into wood pellets that are burned by the millions of tons to…

  • Wall of logs await grinding up for wood pellets at pellet plant in Houston, BC. Photo: © Stand.earth.

    Burning our way to a new climate?

    As UK’s Drax makes play for BC’s wood pellet mills, questions grow about wood-fired electricity With its six massive 660-megawatt power units, the Drax power station in North Yorkshire is the United Kingdom’s largest thermal electricity plant. When it opened in the mid 1970s, the giant facility burned coal. Today,…

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    Leaked data reveals new threat to BC’s old growth forests

    BREAKING: officials in the Ministry of Forests have been working on a map that radically departs from the recommendations of a panel appointed by the provincial government to advise it on how to protect British Columbia’s imperiled old growth forests.

  • The sound of silence

    Weeks stretch to months, months to years as BC government clamps down on information  When debate on the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act began last fall Stephanie Cadieux, then Liberal MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, was among many to note how British Columbians are waiting longer and longer…

  • Thanks to generous BC government subsidies, wood pellet mill yards are overflowing with logs culled from the interior region’s primary or old-growth forests. Photo: Stand.earth.

    The great tree robbery

    As more old-growth trees topple and forest industry jobs plummet, an obscure government subsidy scheme fuels the collapse For more than 15 years, the BC government has rewarded logging companies with millions of additional old-growth trees to chop down thanks to an obscure “credit” program that allows companies to log…

  • Ottawa’s fixation with trees and climate: What exactly are we planting?

    By two significant measures, last year’s effort to plant 300 million tree seedlings in Canada’s most forest-rich province was a remarkable achievement. Not only was it a record for a single year in British Columbia, but it was achieved in the early throes of the first lockdown associated with the…