Senior executives at Drax, the operator of Britain's largest power plant, raised internal concerns about the validity of the company's sustainability claims while publicly denying allegations that it sourced wood from environmentally important forests, according to court documents.
The documents, submitted to an employment tribunal involving Drax's former top lobbyist, reveal that executives privately acknowledged a lack of sufficient evidence to back up sustainability assertions. This came after a BBC Panorama documentary in October 2022 alleged that Drax burned wood from 'old-growth' forests in Canada.
Drax has received over £7bn in subsidies tied to household energy bills, conditional on biomass pellets being made from waste or low-value wood from sustainable forests. The company publicly denied the BBC's findings, with chief executive Will Gardiner assuring then-energy secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg that Drax complied with subsidy requirements.
However, the former head of public affairs, Rowaa Ahmar, alleged in her tribunal evidence that she was sacked after warning Gardiner that the company was 'misleading the public, government and its regulator'. Her witness statement claims Drax's head of compliance admitted in an email that the company may have burned old-growth pellets 'consistently' since at least 2019, which would constitute 'significant misreporting of burn data' under subsidy schemes.
Ahmar also stated that the compliance chief later said Drax lacked data to prove the exact origin of all wood pellets, meaning it could not demonstrate its biomass was sustainable and legal under government requirements. Chief commercial officer Paul Sheffield confirmed awareness of these concerns in his own witness statement.
