An environmental group is claiming that B.C. old-growth trees are being burned to generate electricity in the U.K.
Stand.earth says in a report that wood pellets from three Drax mills in Northern B.C. are being made from some of the province’s oldest forests.
“Canada is the third largest exporter of wood pellets globally… and B.C. is the largest exporter,” Tegan Hansen, senior forest campaigner at Stand.earth said.
The company says it uses them to generate carbon-neutral electricity at its U.K. plants that used to be powered by coal.
Drax claims the pellets are made from wood waste or defective trees that conventional mills may not want to buy.
“Drax now also has a near monopoly on wood pellet production in British Columbia,” Hansen said.
Drax is a U.K.-based utility that makes power by burning wood pellets, many of them from British Columbia.
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The industry touts its green credentials by saying its model uses waste wood that would otherwise be burned or left to rot.
But in a recent study, Hansen and her colleagues say they travelled up to some of Drax’s yards in Northern B.C. to track down where their wood was coming from.
“We know for a fact that from January 2024 through July 2025, there were just over 3,000 trucks, at least over 3,000 trucks that Drax received at three pellet plants that came from areas that overlapped old growth,” Hansen said.
“And at least 90 of those trucks absolutely contained old growth and another 425 very much likely contained old growth because they came from areas where there was over 80 or 90 per cent overlap with these old growth forests that had been logged.”
Stand.earth’s investigation involved comparing clues they found in the field with government and satellite data, which they say revealed whole trees headed to Drax’s pellet mills, which would be hard to define as waste wood.
“We also visited one of Drax’s wood pellet plant yards, where I actually counted the rings on trees and counted several trees that were well over 250 years old,” Hansen said.
Global News reached out to Drax for a response to the story but did not hear back by deadline.
B.C.’s Ministry of Forests said it is reviewing the report.
“When it comes to, you know, a 250-year-old tree that’s perfectly healthy standing in a forest, there’s no realm of reason where you would look at that tree and call it waste,” Hansen said.
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