Wood from B.C. forests is being burned for electricity billed as green — but critics say that's deceptive

From the highway just south of Prince George, B.C., you can see the logs, thousands of them, piled neatly in rows. 

They were cut from trees in old growth and primary forests in the province's Interior.

This timber won't be used to build homes or furniture, or even to make paper. These logs will be ground and compressed into tiny pellets, shipped to Europe and Asia and burned to produce fuel for electricity.

Britain's largest power plant, Drax Power Station, controls most of B.C.'s pellet production and has ambitious plans to expand operations in Canada.

The industry and the B.C. government pitch wood pellets as a renewable source of energy that will help countries meet their climate targets, and as a way to create jobs in the forestry sector.

An investigation by CBC's The Fifth Estate has found that Drax catapulted a small industry it says is green into an investor-driven, international operation dependent on logging in areas that include B.C.'s old growth and primary forests. 

Activists, scientists and environmentalists argue that far from being green, wood pellet production generates few jobs and actually makes the climate crisis worse. And they say it's all happening with the support of B.C. Premier John Horgan's NDP government, long criticized for being too close to the forestry industry. 

"The greenwashing of the pellet industry needs to stop," Bob Simpson, the mayor of Quesnel, a town in B.C.'s Interior whose fortunes rise and fall with the forestry sector, told The Fifth Estate. 

The industry says it is renewable because trees grow back while fossil fuels do not. Scientists say that forests take decades, even centuries, to regenerate, and that burning wood produces more emissions than coal.

"We need to see it for what it is: It is a money-making machine for a few people based on subsidies in the U.K. at the expense of British Columbia," said Simpson.

The wood pellet industry has been endorsed by Horgan, who calls it a "win-win" for the economy and the environment. B.C. Forests Minister Katrine Conroy has promoted the expansion of the sector into Asia.

Concerns about the industry and its relationship with those who oversee it were exacerbated earlier this year, when the province's longtime chief forester, Diane Nicholls, was hired by Drax as a vice-president.

"Whenever a bureaucrat jumps ship lockstep to an industry that that bureaucrat has made decisions about supporting, I think a polite term is messy," said Simpson. "I think it begs an investigation."

Horgan declined an interview with The Fifth Estate. In a statement, Conroy said Nichols was "instrumental in ushering in a new era of forest management planning" and the wood pellet industry helps reduce waste in the forest.