Demand an end to subsidies for tree burning!

Did you know that the UK Government is wasting millions of pounds a year subsidising tree burning for electricity at power stations like Lynemouth and Drax, the UK’s single largest carbon emitter and the world’s biggest tree burner, with devastating impacts on forests, wildlife, communities and the climate? Drax alone was given £606.8 million in subsidies last year for biomass burning. Much of the wood that the company burns comes from the logging of some of the world’s most biodiverse forests in the Southern USA, Canada, Estonia and Latvia.

Drax is now lobbying the Government for even more subsidies to fund unproven bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) technology which will allow the company to continue burning trees and polluting communities for decades to come. This is expected to cost the UK public an estimated £31.7 billion. Drax has been denied the first round of funding for carbon capture and storage, which is a big blow for them, but now they’re lobbying even harder for subsidies. We cannot allow this to happen!

Drax has also been accused of driving ‘environmental racism’ in the Southern USA after paying $3.2 million to settle air pollution violation claims against its wood pellet mills in Louisiana.

Despite making record profits in the middle of the cost of living crisis, the biomass industry receives huge renewable subsidies from the UK Government to burn trees. Drax alone receives over £1.7 million every single day from the Government to burn wood and these subsidies are paid for through an extra charge on UK energy bills.

Please help to protect forests, wildlife, communities and the climate by calling on your MP to stop Drax from getting more subsidies under the guise of unproven carbon capture and storage technology that will allow them to continue burning trees and polluting communities.

If you would like to personalise your letter to your MP, please check out our MP briefing here for key issues around BECCS.