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Stop Burning Trees (SBT) is a grassroots coalition working to end all subsidies for wood fueled power stations. The coalition was founded in 2022 by a mixture of environmental, social and worker justice groups in Yorkshire and now has a national membership. We now have 25 membership groups, three thousand supporters and 50 active members, and has become a crucial organisation in the fight against Drax. We connect each element of the campaign, both resourcing the grassroots folk fighting Drax and supporting political push through NGOs and unions.
SBT fosters the necessary relationships while providing the resourcing and information for the campaign against Drax to function. We act as a link between each element of the Drax campaign including government groups, NGOs, grassroots activists and local campaigning groups.
We believe in democratic control over climate policy, and that starts within our coalition. Member groups control the strategic direction of the coalition through our steering group, which directs staff in their work.
Our work breaks down into political engagement, just transition and resourcing for campaigns.
Worker justice is a core organising principle of SBTC. Our work includes developing an alternative ‘Beyond Drax’ green jobs reports to challenge Drax’s ‘jobswash’ both publicly and to politicians; building relationships with unions and workers and laying the groundwork for the coproduction of a ‘roadmap’ to Yorkshire beyond Drax through these relationships.
Political engagement is vital to ending the regime of subsidising tree burning power stations. SBTC takes a multi-level approach, working on a local, regional and national level to influence decision makers. We support people and groups to engage with their local politicians and institutions and work closely with big NGOs, supporting the grassroots side of all political engagement. This allows us to engage with formal processes through grassroots organising tactics, mobilising and supporting widespread opposition through structures often inaccessible to the public.
SBTC supports the work of multiple campaigns to boycott Drax. This includes campaigning for Drax sponsorship to be dropped (i.e. York Pride, York Nature Fair); supporting parents to exert pressure on schools to cut ties with Drax, and providing training and information for other distributed campaigns working towards widespread boycott and divestment focused campaigns.
