Tag: investors

The sustainable development goals

21 March 2018

Sustainable business

In 2015, the United Nations launched 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all by 2030. At Drax, improved performance has guided our business purpose for over four decades. We are committed to play our part in achieving the UN SDGs through our operations, the services we deliver to our customers and in partnership with others.

Drax Group has the most significant impact on the Global Goals listed below:

Affordable and clean energy

We provide 6% of the UK’s electricity and play a vital role in helping change the way energy is generated, supplied and used as the UK moves to a low-carbon future. In 2017, 65% of the electricity we produced came from biomass, rather than coal. Our B2B Energy Supply businesses encourage customers to be more sustainable, including through the provision of reliable, renewable electricity at no premium compared to fossil fuel-generated electricity.

Customers

Low Carbon

Decent work and economic growth

We directly employ over 2,500 people in the United Kingdom and United States and their health, safety and wellbeing remains our highest priority. Our B2B Energy Supply business offers energy solutions and value-added services to industrial, corporate and small business customers across the UK.

Society

Industry, innovation and infrastructure

We develop innovative energy solutions to enable the flexible generation and lower-carbon energy supply needed for a low-carbon future. We also innovate to improve the efficiency of our operations and increase our production capacity, notably in our biomass supply chain. Our B2B Energy Supply business offers “intelligent sustainability” and innovative products and services to our customers.

Customers

Low Carbon

Climate action

Our electricity generation activities are a source of carbon emissions. We are committed to helping a low-carbon future by moving away from coal and towards renewable and cleaner fuels, including biomass electricity generation and our planned rapid-response gas plants. We also help our business customers to be more sustainable through the supply of renewable electricity.

Low Carbon

Life on land

We source sustainable biomass for our electricity generation activities and engage proactively with our supply chain to ensure that the forests we source from are responsibly managed. We work closely with our suppliers and through tough screening and audits ensure that we never cause deforestation, forest decline or source from areas officially protected from forestry activities or where endangered species may be harmed.

Low Carbon

Sourcing

Environment

Partnerships for the goals

We engage with stakeholders regularly and build relationships with partners to raise our standards and maximise what can be achieved. Our collaborations align closely with our business, purpose and strategy.

Stakeholder Engagement

Society

Commitment to the UNGC

Sustainable business

In 2017, we initiated a process which will allow us to participate in the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) a global sustainability initiative and we will evidence progress next year. We made progress in preparing for participation outlined in the following sections:

Human rights

We seek to safeguard fundamental human rights for our employees, contractors and anyone that is affected by our business. We ensure that our suppliers apply high standards to protect human rights.

Modern Slavery Statement

Labour

We have policies and standards in place to safeguard our employees and contractors. We respect our employees’ rights in areas such as freedom of association and collective bargaining and we do not tolerate forced, compulsory or child labour. We are committed to providing a safe and healthy workplace for all our people and we strive to prevent discrimination and promote diversity in our workforce.

People

Environment

As a generator and supplier of electricity, we take our responsibility to protect the environment very seriously. We have transformed our generation business and are seeking to further reduce our environmental impact. We focus on reducing our emissions to air, discharges to water, disposal of waste, and on protecting biodiversity and using natural resources responsibly. We have invested heavily in lower-carbon technology as we continue to transition away from coal to renewable and lower-carbon fuels.

Customers

Low Carbon

Environment

Anti-corruption

We do not tolerate any forms of bribery, corruption or improper business conduct. Our “Doing the Right Thing” framework sets out the ethical principles our people must uphold, which is supported by the Group corporate crime policy. Our strict ethical business principles apply to all employees and contractors and we expect the same high standards from anyone we do business with.

Ethics and Integrity

Drax Biomass invests in greenhouse gas efficiencies

Sustainable bioenergy
close-up of truck raising and lowering

We have increased the capacity at Drax Biomass Amite and Morehouse pellet plants to increase capacity and made them more greenhouse gas (GHG) efficient. Central to the projects was the addition of storage silos and handling equipment to allow increased use of dry shavings and other mill residuals. The developments included the addition of an extra truck dump at each facility to allow delivery of increased volumes of these feedstocks.

Drax biomass pellet trucks

Use of mill residuals and dry shavings reduces the energy required to make a pellet, as such material does not need to be de-barked, chipped and re-sized in the same way as roundwood. Some of the material has a low moisture content and is therefore able to enter the process after the dryer, which effectively increases the capacity of each plant. This drives down the average GHG emission per tonne of pellets produced. A key measure of this is the KWh of electricity per tonne of pellets, and we saw this reduce by about 10% in the final months of the year compared with the start of the year, with further savings anticipated.

LaSalle BioEnergy in Louisiana

At LaSalle, a significant amount of our investment is going into allowing pellets to be transported to the port by rail, rather than truck. For the 250 km trip to Baton Rouge, a significant carbon saving compared to trucks will be achieved when LaSalle reaches its capacity of 450,000 tonnes per year. Moving pellets by rail should start in the next year.

Active management of forests increases growth and carbon storage

28 July 2017

Sustainable bioenergy

A study on the historical trends in the forest industry of the US South, carried out by supply chain consultancy Forest2Market, and commissioned by Drax Group, the National Alliance of Forest Owners and the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, found that over the last 60 years, as demand for forestry products has increased, the productivity of the area’s forests has increased too. In short, the more we’ve come to use them, the more forests have grown.

A forest is not like a mine – there is not a finite amount of wood in the ground that disappears when it is extracted, never to return. Forests are a renewable resource that can be replanted, improved, and harvested for as long as the land is managed responsibly.

What’s more, landowners have a strong financial incentive to not only maintain their holdings but to improve their productivity – after all, the more of something you have, the more of it you have to sell. It is an economic incentive that works.

Six decades of growth

The Forest2Market report found that increased demand for wood is statistically correlated with more annual tree growth, more wood volume available in the forest, and more timberland.

For example, between 1953 and 2015, tree harvests increased by 57%, largely driven by US economic growth and increased construction. Over the same period, annual wood growth increased by 112%, and inventory increased by 108%. In total, annual growth exceeded annual removals by 38% on average.

Annual forest growth in the US South increased from 193 million cubic metres in 1953 to 408 million cubic metres in 2015. Inventory increased from 4 billion to 8.4 billion cubic metres.

The forest products industry funded private-public research projects to enhance the quality and performance of seedlings and forest management practices to ensure a stable supply of wood. Because of these efforts, landowners saw the value of active management techniques, changing their approach to site preparation, fertilization, weed control, and thinning, and the use of improved planting stock. Healthy demand made it easy for landowners to take a long-term view, investing in more expensive management practices up front for greater returns in the future. And the results were extraordinary: seedlings established in the last 20 years have helped plantations to become nearly four times as productive as they were 50 years ago.

A changing market

Markets for wood have changed over the last two decades, precipitated by decreased demand for writing paper and newsprint, increased demand for absorbent hygiene products and containerboard and increased demand for biomass. These changes in demand have not impacted the way that landowners manage timberland, however. As sawtimber (the largest trees in the forest) remains the most valuable timber crop, it also remains the crop the landowners want to grow. Pulpwood is harvested from the forest only when the forest is being thinned to create optimal conditions for growing sawtimber or when sawtimber is harvested and the forest is being cleared for replanting.

Pellet production has expanded rapidly in the US South, though its overall footprint is still small in comparison to more traditional forest product industries.

In some local wood basins, however, like the one surrounding Bastrop, Louisiana (the location of one of Drax’s US production facilities), the use of biomass to create pellets has filled a gap left by the closure of an 80-year old paper mill. Drax’s decision to locate in this area is integral to supporting forest industry jobs and landowners who carefully consider local demand when deciding whether to continue growing trees.

According to Tracy Leslie, Director of Forest2Market’s biomaterials and sustainability practice, “As history has shown, forests in the US South have benefitted from increased demand for all types of wood. The rise of the pulp and paper industry did not detract from landowner objectives to maximize production of higher value sawtimber nor did it result in a shift in focus to growing only pulpwood. This new demand did, however, provide landowners with important interim and supplemental sources of income. Forest2Market’s research shows that an increase in demand for pellets will have the same effect, incentivizing landowners to grow and re-grow forests, increasing both forest inventory and carbon storage.”

The real threat to forests

Not only does demand for forest products increase the productivity and carbon storage of forests and provide an incentive for landowners to continue growing trees, but it also helps counter factors that irrevocably destroy this natural resource. The real threat to forests in the US is not demand for wood, but urbanisation. Nearly half of all US forestland that converted to another use between 1982 and 2012 was cleared for urban development.

Commercial forestry protects forested lands from development; between 1989 and 1999, just 1% of managed pine plantations in the US South were cleared for non-forest development compared to 3% of naturally-regenerated forest types.

Urbanisation, not the forest products industry, places the most pressure on forests in the US South. Forest2Market’s findings demonstrate that demand associated with healthy timber markets promotes the productivity of forests and mitigates forest loss by encouraging landowners to continue to grow, harvest, and regenerate trees.

Read the full report: Historical Perspective on the Relationship between Demand and Forest Productivity in the US South. An At A Glance version plus an Executive Summary are also available as a separate documents.

 

What’s next for bioenergy?

11 July 2017

Sustainable bioenergy
Morehouse BioEnergy in Louisiana

Discussions about our future are closely entwined with those of our power. Today, when we talk about electricity, we talk about climate change, about new fuels and about the sustainability of new technologies. They’re all inexplicably linked, and all hold uncertainties for the future.

But in preparing for what’s to come, it helps to have an idea of what may be waiting for us. Researchers at universities across the UK, including the University of Manchester and Imperial College London, have put their heads together to think about this question, and together with the Supergen Bioenergy programme they’ve created a unique graphic novel on bioenergy that outlines three potential future scenarios.

Based on their imagined views of the future there’s plenty to be optimistic about, but it could just as easily go south.

Future one: Failure to act on climate change

Dams on river

In the first scenario, our energy use and reliance on non-renewable fuels like oil, coal and gas continues to grow until we miss our window of opportunity to invest in renewable technology and infrastructure while it’s affordable.

Neither the beginning nor the end of the supply chain divert from their current trends – energy providers produce electricity and end users consume it as they always have. Governments continue to pursue growth at all costs and industrial users make no efforts to reverse their own rates of power consumption. In response, electricity generation with fossil fuels ramps up, which leads to several problems.

Attempts to secure a dwindling stock of non-renewable fuels lead to clashes over remaining sources as nations vie for energy security. As resources run out, attempts to put in place renewable alternatives are hampered by a lack of development and investment in the intervening years. The damages caused by climate change accelerate and at the same time, mobility for most people drops as fuel becomes more expensive.

Future two: Growing a stable, centralised bioenergy

Rows of saplings ready for planting

A future of dwindling resources and increasing tension isn’t the only way forward. Bioenergy is likely to play a prominent role in the energy mix of the future. In fact, nearly all scenarios where global temperature rise remains within the two degrees Celsius margin (recommended by the Paris Agreement) rely on widespread bioenergy use with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). But how far could the implementation of bioenergy go?

A second scenario sees governments around the world invest significantly in biomass energy systems which then become major, centralised features in global energy networks. This limits the effects of a warming climate, particularly as CCS technology matures and more carbon can be sequestered safely underground.

This has knock-on effects for the rest of the world. Large tracts of land are turned over to forestry to support the need for biomass, creating new jobs for those involved in managing the working forests. In industry, large-scale CCS systems are installed at sizeable factories and manufacturing plants to limit emissions even further.

Future 3: The right mix bioenergy

Modern house with wind turbine

A third scenario takes a combined approach – one in which technology jumps ahead and consumption is controlled. Instead of relying on a few concentrated hubs of BECCS energy, renewables and bioenergy are woven more intimately around our everyday lives. This relies on the advance of a few key technologies.

Widespread adoption of advanced battery technology sees wind and solar implemented at scale, providing the main source of electricity for cities and other large communities. These communities are also responsible for generating biomass fuel from domestic waste products, which includes wood offcuts from timber that makes up a larger proportion of building materials as wooden buildings grow more common.

Whether future three – or any of the above scenarios – will unfold like this is uncertain. These are just three possible futures from an infinite range of scenarios, but they demonstrate just how wide the range of futures is. It’s up to us all – not just governments but businesses, individuals and academics such as those behind this research project too – to to make the best choices to ensure the future we want.

This is how you unload a wood chip truck

30 June 2017

Sustainable bioenergy
Truck raising and lowering

A truck arrives at an industrial facility deep in the expanding forestland of the south-eastern USA. It passes through a set of gates, over a massive scale, then onto a metal platform.

The driver steps out and pushes a button on a nearby console. Slowly, the platform beneath the truck tilts and rises. As it does, the truck’s cargo empties into a large container behind it. Two minutes later it’s empty.

This is how you unload a wood fuel truck at Drax Biomass’ compressed wood pellet plants in Louisiana and Mississippi.

What is a tipper?

“Some people call them truck dumpers, but it depends on who you talk to,” says Jim Stemple, Senior Director of Procurement at Drax Biomass. “We just call it the tipper.” Regardless of what it’s called, what the tipper does is easy to explain: it lifts trucks and uses the power of gravity to empty them quickly and efficiently.

The sight of a truck being lifted into the air might be a rare one across the Atlantic, however at industrial facilities in the United States it’s more common. “Tippers are used to unload trucks carrying cargo such as corn, grain, and gravel,” Stemple explains. “Basically anything that can be unloaded just by tipping.”

Both of Drax Biomass’ two operational pellet facilities (a third is currently idle while being upgraded) use tippers to unload the daily deliveries of bark – known in the forestry industry as hog fuel, which is used to heat the plants’ wood chip dryers – sawdust and raw wood chips, which are used to make the compressed wood pellets.

close-up of truck raising and lowering

How does it work?

The tipper uses hydraulic pistons to lift the truck platform at one end while the truck itself rests against a reinforced barrier at the other. To ensure safety, each vehicle must be reinforced at the very end (where the load is emptying from) so they can hold the weight of the truck above it as it tips.

Each tipper can lift up to 60 tonnes and can accommodate vehicles over 50 feet long. Once tipped far enough (each platform tips to a roughly 60-degree angle), the renewable fuel begins to unload and a diverter guides it to one of two places depending on what it will be used for.

“One way takes it to the chip and sawdust piles – which then goes through the pelleting process of the hammer mills, the dryer and the pellet mill,” says Stemple. “The other way takes it to the fuel pile, which goes to the furnace.”

The furnace heats the dryer which ensures wood chips have a moisture level between 11.5% and 12% before they go through the pelleting process.

“If everything goes right you can tip four to five trucks an hour,” says Stemple. From full and tipping to empty and exiting takes only a few minutes before the trucks are on the road to pick up another load.

Efficiency benefits

Using the power of gravity to unload a truck might seem a rudimentary approach, but it’s also an efficient one. Firstly, there’s the speed it allows. Multiple trucks can arrive and unload every hour. And because cargo is delivered straight into the system, there’s no time lost between unloading the wood from truck to container to system.

Secondly, for the truck owners, the benefits are they don’t need to carry out costly hydraulic maintenance on their trucks. Instead, it’s just the tipper – one piece of equipment – which is maintained to keep operations on track.

However, there is one thing drivers need to be wary of: what they leave in their driver cabins. Open coffee cups, food containers – anything not firmly secured – all quickly become potential hazards once the tipper comes into play.

“I guess leaving something like that in the cab only happens once,” Stemple says. “The first time a trucker has to clean out a mess from his cab is probably the last time.”

3 ways decarbonisation could change the world

27 June 2017

Sustainable business

Mitigating climate change is a difficult challenge. But it’s one well within the grasp of governments, companies and individuals around the world if we can start thinking strategically.

On the behalf of the German government, The Internal Energy Agency (IEA) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) have jointly published a report outlining the long-term targets of a worldwide decarbonisation process, and how those targets can be achieved through long-term investment and policy strategies.

At the heart of the report is a commitment to the ‘66% two degrees Celsius scenario’, which the report defines as, ‘limiting the rise in global mean temperature to two degrees Celsius by 2100 with a probability of 66%’. This is in line with the Paris Agreement, which agreed on limiting global average temperature increase to below two degrees Celsius.

Here are three of the findings from the report that highlight how decarbonisation could change the world.

The energy landscape will change – and that’s a good thing

Decarbonisation will by definition mean reducing the use of carbon-intensive fossil fuels. Today, 81% of the world’s power is generated by fossil fuels. But by 2050, that will need to come down to 39% to meet the 66% two degrees Celsius scenario, according to the report. But, this doesn’t mean all fossil fuels will be treated equally.

Coal will be the most extensively reduced, while other fossil fuels will be less affected. Oil use in 2050 is expected to stand at 45% of today’s levels, but will likely still feature in the energy landscape due its use in industries like petrochemicals.

Gas will likely also remain a key part of the energy makeup, thanks to its ability to provide auxiliary grid functions like frequency response and black-starting in the event of grid failure.

Renewables like biomass will likely play an increasing role here as well, particularly when combined with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

Overall, renewable energy sources will need to increase substantially. In the report’s global roadmap for the future, renewables make up two thirds of the primary energy supply. Reaching this figure will be no mean feat – it will mean renewable growth rates doubling compared with today.

Everyday electricity use will become more efficient 

The report highlights the need for ‘end-use’ behaviour to change. This can mean everyday energy users choosing to use a bit less heat, power and fuel for transport in our day-to-day activities, but a bigger driver of change will be by investment in better, more efficient end-use technology – the technology, devices and household appliances we use every day.

In fact, the study argues that net investment in energy supply doesn’t need to increase beyond today’s level – what needs to increase is investment in these technologies. For instance, by 2050, 70% of new cars must be electric cars to meet decarbonisation targets.

Infrastructure design could also be improved for energy efficiency – smart grids, battery storage and buildings retrofitted with energy efficient features such as LED lighting will be essential. There’s also the possibility of increased use of cleaner building materials and processes – for example, constructing large scale buildings out of wood rather than carbon-intensive materials such as concrete and steel.

Decarbonisation will cost, but not decarbonising will cost more

The upfront costs of meeting temperature targets will be substantial. A case study used in the report estimates that $119 trillion would need to be spent on low-carbon technologies between 2015 and 2050. But it also suggests another $29 trillion may be needed to meet targets.

However, failure to act could mean the world will pay out an even higher figure in healthcare costs, or in other economic costs associated with climate change, such as flood damage or drought. Therefore, the sum for decarbonisation could end up costing between two and six times less than what failing to decarbonise could cost.

On top of this, the new jobs (including those in renewable fuel industries that will replace those lost in fossil fuels) and opportunities that will be created between 2015 and 2050 could add $19 trillion to the global economy. More than that, global GDP could be increased by 0.8% in 2050, thanks to added stimulus from the low carbon economy.

Achieving a cleaner future won’t be easy – it requires planning, effort, and the will to see beyond short-term goals and think about the long-term benefits. But as the report demonstrates, get it right and the results could be considerable.

How sustainable biomass crosses the Atlantic to power the nation

21 June 2017

Sustainable bioenergy

In the UK, we’re so accustomed to using electricity we rarely think of the journey it takes from power station to plug.

In fact, electricity must travel across a network of cables, wires and substations before it makes it from the power stations generating it to the homes and businesses using it. At Drax Power Station, which supplies 16% of Great Britain’s renewable power, there’s another journey that takes place even before the electricity leaves the power station.

This journey – the journey of more than half of the compressed wood pellet fuel Drax uses to generate electricity – has its origins in the expanse of forestland in the southern USA.

From forest to fuel

The journey starts in the huge, working forests of the southern states of the USA where low value wood – such as the thinnings cleared as part of a forests’ growing cycle – is collected in a responsible and sustainable way to make high density wood pellets, which Drax Power Station uses to produce more than 60% of its electricity.

Drax Group’s own pellet manufacturer, Drax Biomass, produces around 15% of the power station’s renewable fuel. After pelletisation locally at its Amite and Morehouse facilities, located in Louisiana and Mississippi respectively, the biomass is transported to Drax Transit at the Port of Greater Baton Rouge, on the Mississippi River. From Morehouse, trains made up of closed-top grain cars, each capable of carrying 120 tonnes, transport the pellets 221 miles to Baton Rouge. At Amite, just 60 miles from Baton Rouge, fuel-efficient trucks carry 25-tonne loads between plant and port.

Once at the port, the truck and train cargoes are unloaded into one of two biomass storage domes – each holding 40,000 tonnes of biomass – before being loaded into the ships for their transatlantic journey.

A boat arrives at Peel Ports in Liverpool

From port to port

Drax uses a range of ships to carry the pellets on their 8,000-mile journey to the UK, ranging from big ‘Coastal’ ships, capable of hauling 20,000 tonnes, to truly massive Panamax ships, more than a quarter of a kilometre in length and capable of carrying up to 80,000 tonnes.

The ships leave the port and spend 24 hours travelling the 200 miles down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, around Florida, and into the Atlantic. From here, it’s a 19-day voyage to reach ports in the UK. To put that into perspective, it took Columbus more than two months to make his first trip across the Atlantic.

The ships pull into ports in Tyne, Hull, Immingham and Liverpool, where they are unloaded. At the bespoke biomass port facility at Peel Ports in Liverpool an Archimedean screw removes the pellets from the ship’s holds and transports them onto a conveyer belt, which loads them onto trains. These four ports can process up to 12 million tonnes of biomass every year, combined.

From port to power station

Like the stateside journey, Drax uses trains to carry its cargo from port to power plant. The difference on the UK side, however, is that the UK trains were designed specifically to carry biomass wood pellets. Clever design and engineering was used to maximise the space inside each carriage and ensure the trains carry large loads despite UK rail restrictions.

These trains carry the pellets across the country (and even over the Pennines for trains coming from Liverpool) to Drax Power Station in Selby, North Yorkshire. Roughly 14 trains arrive at the plant every day and collectively unload about 20,000 tonnes of pellets every day, from Monday to Saturday. A system of conveyor belts carry these pellets to one of Drax’s four giant biomass storage domes, each capable of housing about 80,000 tonnes of pellets.

Then, when needed, the conveyor system takes the pellets on their final journey: into the furnace. The pellets are combusted, which boils water to create steam, which turns a turbine connected to a generator, which then feeds electricity to the national grid. The electricity travels across miles of cables, and wires, through substations and transformers, and finally into your power socket.

An engineer looking into a Drax furnace

Long journey, low emissions

Despite the number of miles travelled, the journey of biomass is tracked and managed to ensure the Drax Power Station supply chain is as low-carbon as possible. The result is that, even with all supply chain emissions considered, the power generated has a carbon emissions profile that is more than 80% lower than coal.

It might be one of the most impressive supply chains involved in powering this island – but it’s not the only one to travel thousands of miles. The journey of biomass to England joins liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipped from the Middle East, coal from Colombia and solar panels manufactured in China – imports that ensure we have readily available access to power on our shores.

What is a working forest?

1 June 2017

Sustainable bioenergy
An illustration of a working forest

For centuries, civilizations have relied on forests and forest products. Forests provided fuel, food and construction materials, and there were plenty of them.

But when, in 18th century Europe, the needs of growing industrialisation sent development into overdrive, a problem arose: forests were struggling to meet demand.

In Germany, the problem was acute. The growing steel industry had increased demand for wood to power its smelters and for wood used in mining operations. Large areas of forestland were stripped to meet industry’s needs and overall supply was quickly decreasing.

No one was more acutely aware of the challenge than Hans Carl von Carlowitz, who at the time was the head of the Saxon mining administration.

So, in 1713 he published ‘Silvicultura Oeconomica’, a book which advocated the conservation and management of German forests so they could provide for industries in the long term. Although he drew on existing knowledge from around Europe, it was the first time an important term was used: Nachhaltigkeit, the German word for sustainability.

Carlowitz explained this new term: “Conservation and growing of wood is to be undertaken in order to have a continuing, stable and sustained use, as this is an indispensable cause, without which the country in its essence cannot remain.”

It was arguably the start of the scientific approach to forestry, and although our needs of forests have changed (as have the words we use to describe them – working forest, plantation forest and managed forest all refer to largely the same thing), that same principle is at the heart of how a modern working forest functions: to ensure what exists and is useful today will still be there tomorrow.

This approach relies on responsible forest management, which sets out a few key principles on how a forest should be managed to sustain its life.

Providing room to breathe

Working forests are commonly managed to produced sawlogs – high value wood that can be sawn to make timber for construction or furniture. For a forester to optimise the quality and quantity of sawlogs, regular thinning is required. Thinning is the process of periodically felling a proportion of the forest to aid its overall health and vigour. This means there are fewer trees fighting for the same resources (water, sunshine, soil). More than that, thinning can promote diversity by providing more light and space for other flora.

Thinning can occur several times in a forest’s cycle. It can be used to increase the size and quality of the remaining trees and also to encourage new seedlings to establish in place of the harvested trees when managing for continuous forest cover.

Nothing should be wasted

The roundwood produced by thinning is often too small to be sold as sawlogs, but that doesn’t mean it’s worthless. It can be sold to the pulp industry to make paper, or for particleboard or to the biomass industry to make compressed wood pellets, which can be used to fuel power generation – as is done at Drax Power Station. These industries also provide a market for the lower grade roundwood removed when the more mature trees are finally harvested.

In areas where there was no robust market for this low grade wood, it would often be left on site and become a fire risk or a haven for pest and disease attack. Too much low grade material left on site can also inhibit the regrowth of the next tree crop. So markets for this material are important for the health of the forest and the value of the land to the forest owner. Also in the Baltic countries markets for pulpwood are limited and the energy sector provides a valuable opportunity to clear the site for replanting and provide additional revenue to the forest owner.

This process of utilising all parts of the forest is essential for a healthy working forest. On the one hand, the revenue can cover the cost of thinning. This husbandry enhances the quality of the final tree crop and ensures that money is available to invest in future planting and regeneration, ensuring the forest area is consistently maintained and improved.

Red Pine, Pinus resinosa - thinned plantation with natural seedlings

Young regeneration in a shelterwood system, demonstrating the continuous forest lifecycle

The carbon benefits of a working forest

Rather than diminishing it, actively managing a forest helps its ability to sequester – or absorb and store – more carbon.

Carbon sequestration is directly related to the growth rate of a tree – a young, growing tree absorbs more carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere than an older one. Older trees will have more carbon stored (after a ‘childhood’ spent absorbing it), but if these are not harvested they are more susceptible to fire damage, pests and diseases and their carbon absorption plateaus.

In an actively managed forest, older trees ready for sawlog production can be harvested and replaced with vigorously growing young trees and in the process maximise the CO2 absorption potential of the forest.

The by-products of this process – the low grade wood and thinnings – can be used for the pulp and biomass industry, which both aids the health of the remaining forest, and provides revenue for the forester to invest in the long term life of his or her forest.

Three centuries of sustainability

In the 300 years since Carlowitz published his book on sustainability a lot has changed. And while it’s unlikely he foresaw forests providing fuel for renewable electricity and renewable heat, the approach remains as relevant.

What is a working forest? It is one that is as productive and healthy tomorrow as it is today. That we’re using the same resource today as we were 300 years ago is evidence to suggest it’s a practice that works.