Is energy secretary Ed Miliband about to approve subsidies to keep Drax, the UK’s largest biomass power plant, open beyond 2027, as proposed by the previous government?

In 2023, Drax’s FTSE 250 owners received at least £539m - more than £2 million in subsidies every day - paid for through an extra charge on UK energy bills.

These handouts persist even though Drax is the UK’s top single CO2 emitter, pumping out nearly one-quarter (23%) of the UK power sector’s carbon emissions, while supplying less than 4% of the UK’s electricity in 2023.

Further reasons to drop Drax subsidies abound:

Calls are growing for biomass to be ineligible for subsidies, especially since truly clean, non-emissive renewables, such as solar and wind, compete for the same support. In 2021, more than 500 scientists and economists admonished governments that they ‘must end subsidies’ for the burning of wood.

Earlier this year, the Netherlands ruled out new biomass subsidies, citing the ‘large-scale destruction of nature’ and pledging to persuade the EU to follow suit. And in August more than 40 environmental groups urged Miliband not to grant new biomass subsidies, noting that UK plants burn wood ‘from some of the world’s most biodiverse forests in the Southern USA, Canada and Europe, with devastating impacts on communities, wildlife and the climate’.

Contrary to industry spin, biomass is neither ‘carbon-neutral’ nor ‘low-carbon’.

As hundreds of scientists point out: ‘wood burned for energy emits more carbon up smokestacks than using fossil fuels’. They warn that burning wood increases global warming for decades or centuries—and that growing new trees to absorb those emissions requires ‘time the world does not have’.

BBC Panorama and other media investigations revealed that Drax drives forest destruction in North America.

Discrediting company claims that it relies on waste wood and avoids sites with a ‘high biodiversity value’, these reports show that Drax harvests wood from old-growth forests, including specially designated ones that experts call ‘rare, at risk and irreplaceable’.

In the US states of Louisiana and Mississippi, Drax has paid millions of dollars in fines for violating the Clean Air Act. The company also stands accused of driving environmental racism by disproportionately exposing communities of colour to toxic pollutants from its processing plants.

Today the UK is the world’s number one end user of wood pellets and Europe’s top biomass subsidiser. Ask Miliband for a carbon accounting review.

For tips on making your voice heard, visit: biofuelwatch.org.uk and stopburningtrees.org.