BURNING TREES IS NOT GREEN.

Drax power station in North Yorkshire burns 27 million trees annually - twice the number of trees in the New Forest. It is the single largest emitter of CO2 in the UK. It has admitted to taking these trees from biodiverse primary forests in British Columbia, despite initial claims to only burn offcuts. And, as a UK citizen, you’re subsidising it.

Not only does Drax receive £1.7m DAILY from the bills of UK energy consumers, but virgin woodland habitats in the Southeastern US and Canada are being destroyed for this greenwashing exercise.

So how do they continue to get away with it? Biomass is marketed as green energy because Drax claims that the trees they replant will sequester the CO2 released during incineration, and thus the practice is ‘carbon neutral’. This is a lie. Even if Drax replants every single tree that it cuts down, the ‘carbon debt payback period’ for each tree is estimated to be between 44 and 104 years. For this to be truly renewable, the new tree could never be cut down. But it will be. Cutting down every single tree in the US and Canada would power the US for only one year.

It would actually be greener to burn coal. And much greener to burn natural gas as we transition to truly renewable sources of power. The Partnership for Policy Integrity has found that burning biomass releases 150% more carbon per unit energy than burning coal, and 300% to 400% more CO2 than burning gas. 

Burning trees for biomass is increasing CO2 emissions, destroying forests that would otherwise be sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere, and being labelled as environmentally friendly under the false premise that the burnt tree will be replanted and never chopped down.

It is government-scale hoodwinking that takes people for fools and it needs to stop.

Help put an end to the greenwashing. Sign the petition.