50 Environmental & Health Organizations Urge End to UK Bioenergy

Last week hundreds of voices united to call time on dirty bioenergy. 

Companies like Drax have been burning trees in UK power stations for years. They've raked in billions of pounds by claiming this is low-carbon. 

Now, the UK Government plans to extend these lucrative subsidies after 2027, claiming this will give bioenergy companies time to figure out how to capture and bury the carbon dioxide they release. But this carbon capture technology for bioenergy doesn't exist yet. And even if it did work (which looks unlikely), it would still harm the climate, nature, and people by cutting down millions of trees every year, damaging forests' ability to absorb carbon and generating clouds of wood dust.  Extending these subsidies and building (completely speculative) carbon capture technology would also be incredibly expensive–analysis by Ember shows that Drax's bioenergy carbon capture project would require£43 billion in subsidies. The Government's plan to extend existing biomass subsidies could cost the British public £4 billion by 2030.

Thankfully, the Government’s proposal was met with widespread opposition from community members, British politicians, and health and environmental organizations, including:

• NRDC submitted a detailed response to the Government’s consultation setting out exactly why the UK should not extend these subsidies.
• US community members – who live near the mills where wood pellets (that are shipped to the UK and burned) are made – spoke about the impacts on their health and communities. You can watch a couple of the videos at the bottom of this blog post. Dr Krystal Martin said: "the last time I visited the community I saw two small children... they were playing right there as the dust was flying." She went on to say “"my mom has been in and out of the hospital... her doctor said she's dealing with some type of asthma... she can't enjoy life the way that she used to." Katherine Egland, Chair of Environmental and Climate Justice Committee, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said “this is environmental racism plain and simple that they are engaging in. These are the same communities in the southeast US that supplied the cotton that was fuelled by slavery.”
• Over 30 UK and US health and environment organizations – including NRDC, Southern Environmental Law Center, WWF UK, Greenpeace, Mums for Lungs, RSPB, and The Wildlife Trusts - urged the UK Government not to extend these subsidies. They were joined by over 20 Canadian organizations (here’s my colleague Courtenay’s blog on this) and over 160 scientists from around the world; and
• 30 British politicians wrote to the Government expressing their concern. New polling (by Savanta, for NRDC) of 102 MPs found that only 5% of them agree with subsidies for bioenergy (compared with 55% support for offshore wind, for example).

Also last week a new investigation by BBC Panorama revealed that Drax power station is buying trees that have been cut from old and ancient forests (over 250 years old) in Canada for  wood pellets. In 2022, Drax actually denied these very practices in response to a previous BBC Panorama investigation. Now the company seems to have stopped cutting trees from these no-go areas itself–it’s buying them from other companies instead. Turning primary forests into wood pellets is just as bad for the environment, even if someone else cut the trees down.

If you don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this situation, then you could listen to this popular British radio comedy show (from 7:00 minutes), which took aim at Drax. Paying billions in green subsidies to a power station that burns trees might make good material for a comedy show. But it’s no joke whatsoever for the people whose air is being poisoned, for the forests and wildlife that are destroyed, and for the British public footing the bill.