rapid ukrainian military made rapid gains. at least seven people have been killed in the latest attack against civilians. now on bbc news, it is panorama. tonight on panorama... he's braking, and he's indicating left. ..we expose an environmental scandal. so clearly, we've tracked the logs all the way back to the pellet plant. how precious forests are used to make electricity in the uk. can you see what's going on there when you look through? the conveyor is feeding the logs through a chipper. we reveal how britain's supposedly green power station is harming the planet. you very publicly say that you avoid damage or disturbance to high carbon forests. that's a lie. 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 chimneys right now is more than 13 million tonnes of c02 every year. we've spent an enormous amount of subsidies and the result coming out of the chimney is more greenhouse gases. it's getting the cash because the government classes wood pellets

as renewable energy. the co2 emissions created by burning wood don't have to be counted in the uk. the important point is that our c02 isn't fossil fuels, it comes from forests which are naturally replenishing themselves. and by enhanced management as the trees are cut, new ones are planted, new trees grow and take the c02 out of the sky. so trees are replanted, and they should soak up the carbon emissions from the wood—burning. but there's a big issue with the timing. drax is burning wood now, and the new trees take decades to grow and recapture that carbon, and that could be too late for the planet. this is being touted as a climate solution. burning wood, drax says, is good for the environment. that's just not true,

but intuitively it seems like it's got to be better to burn a tree than to burn coal because the trees can grow back. so that's true. they can grow back. but it takes a really long time for that to happen, and in the short run, you're putting more carbon in the air, and that makes climate change worse. the amount of wood pellets drax burns is astonishing. you get a sense of the amount of wood needed when you see one of these trains. it's got 25 wagons and can carry up to 1,800 tonnes of wood pellets, and all of that will only keep the power station going for about two hours. drax says its wood pellets meet stringent sustainability standards with independent verification. they're imported from

all over the world. this ship has just arrived in the uk after a journey of 11,000 miles. she's just docked with about 60,000 tonnes of wood pellets which are now being off—loaded, ready to be taken to drax power station and burned. i want to know whether this wood really is sustainably sourced. this is where that shipment came from. british columbia in the west of canada. its forests are some of the most important in the fight against climate change.

so we're in an old growth stand in the rainforest. i might have guessed it's a rainforest! he laughs these primary forests with their tall, thin trees capture and store vast amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. primary forest is a natural forest of any age that has never been industrially logged. what is so important about them, primary forests in particular? primary forests are where the carbon is. they're where the wildlife habitat is. they're by definition non—renewable. once you've industrially logged in the area, it'll take hundreds if not thousands of years to come back to anything resembling this.

but primary forests are under threat. this part of british columbia is being transformed. now, as soon as you turn off the highway onto these forest roads, it's clear that this is an industrial landscape. and here, industrial logging means clear—cutting, which is basically logging absolutely everything in a section of forest, razing it to the ground. and so instead of the dark greens of mature forest, you start to see all these brown and yellow patches, and almost every valley and hillside is pockmarked by them. now, this has been going on for decades, of course, for the paper and timber industries, but campaigners say now the demand for pellets is making matters much worse. drax gets 20% of its wood from canada.

but it says it avoids damaging primary forests and that the pellets it produces are made using leftover material from local saw mills. 80% is sawdust from sawmills. the last 20% is from well—managed, well—regulated forests which are only harvested for timber, and we take the bits of the tree which cannot be used for lumber because it's too small, it's diseased, it's hollow. and that material would have been left on the ground to decay, or in many cases in british columbia, burnt anyway. if it's genuine waste, it can make environmental sense to burn wood for electricity. drax does use sawdust and waste wood from the timber industry. but we don't think that's all

the company turns into pellets. 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,

they're like proper whole trees. exactly. there are thousands of tree trunks here, ready to be turned into pellets. so, ben, that blue piece of equipment in the foreground, there's a digger next to it. yeah. you can see the logs are just getting taken off the bed of a logging truck and the conveyor is feeding the logs through a chipper, which is then going to be the supply for the mill. so the truck has just reloaded and it's come back down. it's going up to the conveyor belt. look at the size of those logs, ben. they are really significant. it's pretty much a given, i think, that all the logs that we're seeing are going to get

ground up to make pellets. drax is now the world's second—biggest producer of wood pellets. this is its meadowbank plant near the logging city of prince george. once again, piles of logs are stored all around the site. wow. the scale of this plant! you can see the pellet plant itself pouring out that steam and that smoke. and then all those between us and that is just layer upon layer, row upon row of all these tree trunks. it's staggering. drax says it only uses waste wood, but that's not what some of these logs look like.

i can see a massive log pile in front of me. so i just want to get a bit closer. there are some small and rotten logs, but many of them seem to be good quality. wow! look at the size of that. when it comes to climate change, the best use for logs is wood products, like construction materials or furniture. that keeps carbon locked up rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. drax says it doesn't burn logs that could be used to make wood products. i want to know

whether that's right. let me show you some pictures i took at drax�*s nearest pellet plant to you. so i've come to show our evidence to a local furniture maker and campaigner. there's some big stuff in there, isn't there? you've got big douglas fir in there. i mean, there is true waste in that pile. let's not pretend that that's100% good wood, but there is a huge proportion of that pile that is usable quality saw logs. that's a nice aspen there. so a little bit of discolouration there, but that's all good wood all around there. i mean, yeah, this is... this is crazy that we're burning it. so you could use these logs in this workshop? 0h, guaranteed. you say that you will not use material that could be used for solid wood products, but that's not true, is it? we're talking about the logs in our yard and when you go there, you see that they're twisted, they're bent. no, some of them are. i've been there and there's plenty that aren't. what i'm saying is our business model works on taking sawdust

and diseased and rotten wood, and everything we do is based on that business model. we stand by the notion that we only use wood which can't be used for timber. but our evidence suggests that's not true. after the interview, we searched a canadian forestry database. we found documents that show the quality of every log delivered to the pellet plants we visited in the last year. some are grade one or two — that's quality saw logs. the vast majority are grade four, most of which can be used to make wood products or paper. 0nly11% are grades six or z — that's the small, diseased and rotten wood that drax

just told us it uses. it's notjust the quality of the logs that matters, it's the type of forest they come from. cutting down primary forest has a climate cost. even though it will be replanted, it's unlikely land like this will ever lock up as much carbon again. drax�*s sustainability policy says it should avoid damaging high carbon or primary forests. but we can reveal it's breaking its own rules. we've discovered the company has bought licences to cut them down. now, this is an auction list where the provincial government sells the rights to log primary

forest here in british columbia and there's a listing here for over 600 acres — that's about a square mile of primary forest. and when you look up the results, this is interesting — nearly all of the bidders were timber companies, but they were all outbid by drax�*s pallet firm, pinnacle. this is what drax has bought — rare old—growth primary forest. drax initially told us that logging the area would reduce the risk of wildfire because many of the trees are dead. then, it said it had transferred the logging licence to another company. but we checked — drax still holds the licence. and the latest satellite images show the trees are being cut down right now.

we've found another section of primary forest where drax bought the logging licence. ok, here we are. let's go and have a look, shall we? the company claims neither of the logging sites are primary forests because they're near roads. but they appear to meet the un definitions of primary forests, which don't mention proximity to roads. drax had to build a track 500 metres long just to get to this site. wow, look at this. pinnacle drax. oh, yeah, look. goodness me. this whole area was logged in the matter of a couple of weeks. it's devastating.

this was a mature primary forest. now, a company getting billions of pounds in environmental subsidies has cut it down. this area of primary forest, of forest that was in

it seems like a lie. yeah, i think we're being lied to. it's left these piles of waste behind, when the claim of the pallet industry is that only waste and residuals, or mostly waste and residuals, is going towards the creation of pellets. clearly that's not true. drax was the only bidderfor this site.

so the trees could still be standing if it hadn't bought the licence. logging naturalforests and converting them into pellets to be burned for electricity, that is absolutely insane. there's no other word for it. you said you don't cut down forests. so explain to me why you did cut down primary forest. our business model is based on, you know, using the materials other companies like the sawmill sector cannot use. where we have those logging licences, that same rule applies. right, so you are logging primary forests? we're not logging primary forests. you are, because you bid for the licence to log the primary forest, you won the licence to log the primary forest, you cut down the primary forest and then you paid the wood duties on the primary forest you'd cut down. the important thing is that we didn't use that material. the material from that area went to sawmills to make lumber. we took the sawdust, which we would have done anywhere else in the world, and in that particular case, because of the distances involved, we didn't take the slash. 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 pallet plants in a place called meadowbank. it'sjust gone 10am 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 pallet 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 pallet mill. and all we can do now is see where he goes. we follow the truck for 60 miles before it turns off a main road.

british columbia's logging roads can be dangerous because of all the heavy, fast—moving trucks. use dayton road. dayton road. ur7. we're going up, aren't we? road users stay safe by announcing their position on a two—way radio. dayton zero up, pick up. got to try the accent, haven't you? helpfully, the truck we're following is announcing its location too. voice on radio: two up. two up. ah, did you hearthat? so, that's our truck. he's just announced exactly where he is. he's two kilometres up the road, and we should hear where he comes off the road. there are very, very,

very fresh tyre prints. so we're still on his tail. nine up dayton. he's coming off there isn't he, at nine? nine up. it's too muddy to follow, so we send up the drone. it's clear that trees have been felled. once again, drax claims this isn't primary forest because it's near a road. but the nearest paved road is six miles away. and the site appears to meet the un definitions of primary forest. we can see the drax truck being loaded up with tree trunks.

we then follow it back to the highway. this is the road. yeah, this is the pavement. and it all goes to the right, so we're all good. drax says it avoids damaging primary forest, but these logs are heading towards its pellet mill. ok, this should be the moment of truth. and he's braking. he's braking, he's braking, and he's indicating left... that's it. so clearly, we've tracked the logs all the way back to the pellet plant. and we know these have come from a primary forest. and now they're destined to be made into pellets. you see all the logs piled up, and there's a whole truckload to add to them here. there he goes, he's turning in.

and straight onto the weigh scales. and you can see, "welcome to drax meadowbank." you very publicly say that you avoid damage or disturbance to high carbon forests. there is no way you can make that statement. that's a lie. but we're not taking whole trees. we take the sawdust... no, no, you are. ..from the sawmills. i saw the truck with whole trees going from primary forest that had just been destroyed to your pellet plant. so let's talk about the business model for drax. no, no, can wejust engage with what i've seen? you're saying you don't destroy primary forests but how are you not destroying primary forests when you take trees from primary forest that's been destroyed? so we take sawdust from the sawmills. our business model is not built around taking whole trees from forests as you described. in a written statement, drax gave a different explanation. it accepts logs were taken from this forest, but says they were tree species the timber industry didn't

want, so they'd have been burned anyway. back in the uk, ourfindings come at a crucial time. politicians are questioning the financial and environmental cost of drax�*s wood burning. britain's chancellor, kwasi kwarteng, seems to be one of them. he was secretly recorded talking to mps about the sustainability of transporting wood pellets from north america.

but that's not the government's public position. it told us that wood pellets and other biomass have... and that the uk only supports biomass that: our investigation shows drax is damaging precious forests while receiving billions in green subsidies. but it could be difficult for the government to change track as burning wood is a key part of the uk's plan to fight climate change. this power plant produces 5% of our electricity. and calling it "renewable" helps the uk meet its net zero targets. the government is due

to publish a new biomass strategy later this year. and some think big changes are needed. we only have a few short years, a few short decades, to get to net zero emissions. we have to stop throwing money at things that don't work. burning wood, burning pellets, makes climate change worse when we need to be cutting emissions as fast as possible. this supposedly green power station is pumping out more greenhouse gases than when it burned coal. precious forests are going up in smoke, and we are paying billions to make it happen.

you'd cut down.

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