Review of the initial investigation found UK officials had influenced OECD findings in favour of Drax

The OECD will recommence its review of environmental claims made by Drax, and the UK government is to stay out of it – that’s the conclusion of a report published today by an independent panel charged with reviewing how the OECD handled an NGO complaint concerning the wood-burning giant.

Detailed information on how Drax misleads consumers regarding climate and forest impacts of burning trees for electricity is laid out in a 2021 complaint to the OECD from The Lifescape Project, The Partnership for Policy Integrity, and other NGOs. The NGO complaint argues that Drax’s public statements describing its pellet manufacturing and wood burning operations are inconsistent with the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct, which require corporations to disclose verifiable information on potential environmental impacts of their activities. In Drax’s case these impacts include millions of tonnes of carbon pollution from burning wood pellets and destruction of forests logged for biomass.

The OECD Guidelines state that corporate statements cannot be misleading and instead must be accurate and sufficiently clear to enable consumers to make informed decisions about a company’s activities. Although the NGO complaint included extensive evidence that Drax has made misleading statements about its environmental impacts in contravention of the OECD Guidelines, the OECD’s UK National Contact Point (NCP) instead evaluated Drax’s statements as to whether the company’s claims are aligned with the UK biomass ‘sustainability’ rules. These rules allow companies to clearcut forests for fuel, including old-growth and primary forests, and count burning forest biomass as having net zero CO₂ emissions, despite this clearly contravening international GHG reporting rules that the UK is committed to follow under the Paris Agreement.

Given the NCP’s failure to evaluate Drax’s claims in light of the OECD’s own Guidelines, the NGOs requested that the NCP Steering Board review the UK NCP’s report, as provided under OECD rules.

The Steering Board’s report, published today, substantially agrees with the NGO complaints. The report finds the UK NCP committed multiple procedural breaches in its handling of the case, failed to apply the correct OECD standards, and at a minimum created the appearance of bias against the NGOs and in favour of Drax.

Specifically, the Steering Committee found that the UK NCP:

• Failed to assess Drax’s conduct directly against the OECD Guidelines, instead treating alignment with UK biomass policy as evidence that Drax was compliant with OECD rules;
• Ignored how Drax’s claims to have net zero CO₂ emissions contravene IPCC GHG reporting guidance, although the OECD Guidance explicitly says that international standards should be taken into account (“In the case at hand, we consider that IPCC Guidelines constitute a ‘relevant … international standard’”);
• Violated the OECD’s own transparency rules by sharing a draft with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), and failed to disclose meetings with government departments and agencies during the examination;
• Went beyond the permitted factual corrections in the final editing phase, changing the report in response to instruction by DESNZ.

The NGOs had used an Environmental Information Request to obtain emails between the NCP and DESNZ, uncovering that the NCP had allowed DESNZ to edit the report and that government lawyers had advised caution given that Lifescape was engaged in a legal case against the Government over the Biomass Strategy.  The Steering Committee report particularly examines the appearance of bias against the NGOs given these exchanges.

The Steering Committee concluded that the cumulative failures were sufficiently serious to create the appearance of bias thus warranting abandonment the NCP’s first report and a new assessment of Drax’s misleading claims.

Drax under scrutiny by multiple entities

The renewed OECD examination comes as Drax is also facing scrutiny from UK regulators, including investigation by Financial Conduct Authority and the Financial Reporting Council, both of which are evaluating misleading statements by Drax. Despite this scrutiny, the UK government has announced it will continue to grant billions of pounds to Drax in renewable energy subsidies beyond 2027.

Elsie Blackshaw, Director of Legal at The Lifescape Project, said:
The fact that the NCP allowed government lawyers to influence the report raises questions about the independence of the OECD complaints process, particularly in cases involving companies with which the UK government has very close relationships. Independent oversight of climate claims is vital to ensuring consumers are not mislead by companies such as Drax.

Mary Booth, Director of the Partnership for Policy Integrity, said:
It seems like UK government officials have their thumb on the scale of every so-called independent investigation into bioenergy and its harms to forests and the climate. We’re pleased to have been vindicated by the Steering Committee’s report, but it really shouldn’t be this hard to get a simple acknowledgement that logging and burning trees is bad for the environment.

Michelle Connolly of Conservation North said:
Here in British Columbia, we’ve been documenting since 2020 that the wood pellet industry is logging ancient and irreplaceable forests. We joined this complaint to the OECD in 2021, only to find that in 2026, the NCP’s assessment was biased and invalid and they need to start over. Millions of tonnes of trees have gone up Drax’s smokestack while this process dragged on. When will there be real accountability for Drax and the damage it’s doing to forests and the climate?

Almuth Ernsting from Biofuelwatch said:
We were extremely concerned that the NCP’s report treated the UK’s very controversial policy on biomass ‘sustainability’ as the gold standard, even though the UK ignores forest clearcutting and millions of tonnes of carbon pollution from burning wood. It is great to see the review committee agree with us that the OECD’s transparency rules should apply.

Liina Steinberg of Save Estonia’s Forests said:
Estonia’s forests turned from carbon sink to a carbon source in recent years, in large part due to logging by the so-called “sustainable” wood pellet industry. Burning Estonia’s trees in the Drax powerplant only makes the climate crisis worse. We need some kind of honest process to force policymakers to acknowledge the reality of what bioenergy is doing to our forests.

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Notes

The OECD, its guidelines and the complaint process to date

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organisation that works to “build better policies for better lives.” They establish ‘evidence-based international standards’ for responsible business conduct and find solutions to ESG challenges.

The NGOs’ complaint to the OECD’s National Contact Point (NCP) for the UK has been ongoing since 2021.

• The original complaint was submitted to the UK National Contact Point (NCP) of the OECD in October 2021. A copy is available here.
• The NCP’s Initial Assessment was published in July 2022 which agreed that the complaint merited full assessment (this is not the NCP’s final report, however).
• The NCP’s final statement was shared with the complainants in May 2024. It dismissed the NGOs’ claims on the basis described above.
• The NGOs filed their request for review to the NCP Steering Board in June 2024.The steering Board can consider claims that an NCP has failed to comply with NCP Complaints Procedures and/or claims that NCP has failed to treat a party to a complaint with appropriate fairness in the circumstances of the case.
• In July 2024 the NGOs filed an Environmental Information Request to the Department for Business and Trade (which hosts the NCP) for all information and documentation held in relation to the Complaint. The emails provided in response (summarized in a letter to the Steering Committee) showed significant procedural impropriety and interference in the OECD complaint process by other government departments including DESNZ lawyers involved in defending Lifescape’s case challenging the government’s Biomass Strategy.

 

The Complainants

The complaint was filed by The Lifescape Project and The Partnership for Policy Integrity, acting collectively as the Forest Litigation Collaborative and is supported by the NGOs detailed below. Law firm Mishcon de Reya LLP are the legal advisors to The Lifescape Project and The Partnership for Policy Integrity.

Lifescape is a rewilding charity which aims to create, protect and restore wild places to ensure a sustainable future for life on Earth. The Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI) uses analysis, litigation, and strategic communications to promote policies that protect climate, ecosystems, and people. The two organisations comprise the Forest Litigation Collaborative, which pursues strategic litigation to promote the protection and restoration of forest ecosystems and their associated carbon sinks, with particular emphasis on countering the use of forest biomass for renewable energy.

Also joining the complaint were The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSBP), Canadian nature advocacy group Conservation North, UK NGO Biofuelwatch, and NGO Save Estonia’s Forests. The RSPB uses expertise in birds and nature to provide evidence-based solutions to the nature and climate emergency; Conservation North is dedicated to combating declining wildlife caused mainly by habitat loss and degradation; Biofuelwatch focuses on the UK and EU biomass industry; and Save Estonia’s Forests fights for forest policies that take into account the ecological, cultural, economic and social value of Estonian forests.