Activists occupy the office of 5654 & Company, one of Drax's main lobbyists, after new subsidies were announced for Drax last year| Credit: Axe Drax
By Katy Brown
Biomass is classed as ‘renewable’ energy and as such currently receives huge amounts of money in subsidies – through a levy on our energy bills – intended to support low carbon electricity generation.
But burning biomass (i.e. wood) actually releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It’s also very costly, making our electricity more expensive, unlike investing in wind and solar which could bring bills down. Biomass also inflicts severe harm on forests, wildlife and communities, as Katy Brown of Biofuelwatch, part of the Stop Burning Trees Coalition explains.
Fuel Poverty Action and burning biomass have one thing in common. Drax power station in North Yorkshire was the site of the first ‘Climate Camp’ in 2006. The last ‘Camp for Climate Action’ in 2011 was the birthplace of FPA.
15 years on, FPA is fighting to bring down our energy bills… while Drax is driving them up.
Following the announcement of a coal phase out in 2015, most coal-fired power stations closed down. Unfortunately, Drax took a different path and decided to burn wood instead, converting 4 of its units to run fully on biomass by 2018.
Theoretically there’s a logic to this: if you burn wood – unlike coal which takes thousands of years to form – the trees can grow back in our lifetime and therefore be considered a renewable fuel source. In the setting of European carbon accounting rules it was decided to take this a step further and class burning wood as not just renewable but carbon neutral as well, with the assumption that all trees burnt will grow back and reabsorb the carbon emitted when burned.
This was a very convenient way for many countries to ‘balance the books’ of their carbon emissions in order to meet their carbon reduction targets. Unlike developing genuinely low carbon electricity solutions such as wind and solar, coal to biomass conversions could be done with little infrastructure build, and at a scale that would help supply sufficient baseload power and flexible supply to the grid.
This may all have seemed like a genuinely good idea at the time but the consequences for the climate, forests, wildlife, communities and energy costs have been disastrous. Here are five reasons why.
Biomass isn’t carbon neutral
Burning biomass for electricity directly releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Drax is the UK’s single biggest carbon emitter, emitting 13 million tonnes of CO2 in 2024. That this will be reabsorbed into the atmosphere is based on an assumption that the trees Drax burns will grow back, but there is no obligation on Drax or its wood pellet suppliers to replant any trees.
In any case, where trees do grow back it is estimated that it will take 44-104 years for trees that take seconds to burn to regrow sufficiently to reabsorb all the carbon emitted.
Biomass burning harms forests
Without wishing to state the obvious, wood comes from trees, and trees come from forests. It’s impossible to extract wood from forests at the scale required to feed Drax’s greedy appetite without harming forests.
The UK doesn’t have enough trees to meet Drax’s demand for wood, making us reliant on expensive imports.
Drax claims that the wood it burns comes from offcuts and sawmill residues. However campaigners on the ground have followed logging trucks carrying whole trees directly from mature forests which have been clear-cut all the way to the wood pellet mills. In these mills, they are dried and compressed into wood pellets to be shipped over to the UK and burnt at Drax.
Biomass production harms health and communities
Those living near these wood pellet mills, particularly in the US South East – where the majority are sited near majority Black economically deprived communities – complain of health problems from their exposure to wood dust.
Recently, the community in Gloster Mississippi, where Drax has been fined for air pollution violations, managed to persuade the MDEQ (Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality) not to grant Drax a permit to increase the amount of hazardous pollution it can emit. However Drax appealed this decision and the permit board changed its mind and awarded the permit.
Mississippi residents are now suing Drax, alleging that the mill unlawfully exposed them to excessive levels of chemicals and pollutants, putting them at greater risk of diseases such as cancer and respiratory illness. Drax is also facing lawsuits from workers who claim that they have developed asthma from exposure to wood dust while working at Drax’s Selby plant.
Biomass is expensive
In 2024, Drax received £869 million in subsidies from UK energy bill payers whilst making almost £1.1 billion in profits, and is set to receive billions more. Its current subsidies run out in 2027 but the government has now signed a contract committing to extending these subsidies to 2031.
Although Drax will be running for less of the time, the price guaranteed to them will be higher than under their current subsidy arrangement, meaning Drax will continue to earn over £1m a day. This guaranteed price for burning wood pellets is far higher than that offered to wind and solar developers, making biomass incredibly poor value for money.
Despite having received such huge amounts of public money, in 2023 when electricity prices spiked Drax exploited a subsidy loophole, losing bill payers £639m.
Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage
Drax claims that using carbon capture technology ‘Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage’ (BECCS), it will be able to capture the CO2 it emits and its biomass burning will become carbon negative.
This has been estimated to cost £30 billion in subsidies. But BECCS is an unproven technology. We can’t afford to waste this money, or time, on unproven technologies that are unlikely to deliver any carbon removals but will encourage the continued emitting of CO2 into the atmosphere.
We need to prioritise genuine, proven, low carbon non-emissive technologies that can be implemented now, such as wind, solar, grid improvements, heat pumps and home insulation. Not only will these deliver immediate benefits for the climate, they will also bring down the cost of electricity, and with it our energy bills.
Stop Drax, Stop Dirty Data Centres
The business behind Drax is proposing to build a new AI data centre next door to its power station, providing Drax with justification to continue its dirty polluting ways and its harm to forests, wildlife, communities and the climate.
We can’t let the expansion of data centres prop-up dirty energy and undermine climate targets.
Please add your name to this petition and stand against big tech’s dangerous deals with dirty energy.
Katy Brown is a dedicated environmental, social justice and animal rights campaigner who has campaigned against tree burning at Drax for several years and works for Biofuelwatch, part of the Stop Burning Trees Coalition
