Biomass Burning: Stop the Subsidies!
- climatenewcastle
- Mar 10
- 8 min read
Updated: Apr 4
Protests about continued biomass subsidies have taken place at Port of Tyne and other cities in support of a demonstration by climate activists outside the Department for Net Zero in London.
Drax subsidies are to be halved, with tougher rules on wood pellet sources and windfall profits - details here and here of recent Government announcement (10 February 2025). However, no confirmation has been provided of any decision on Lynemouth power plant, so a new e-action has been raised - please send to your MP.
These vital UK Government decisions are now being taken amidst growing opposition right across the political spectrum to the subsidies, detailed exposes by investigative journalists and protests by climate campaigners. This latest undercover investigation spells out how Lynemouth juggles its production to maximise subsidies, as well as contributing to deforestation overseas.
Climate Action Newcastle has campaigned for more than two years about the "hotspot" between Lynemouth, Drax and Port of Tyne, which imports huge quantities of wood pellets for burning.
Recent reports include The Times, “Can we now get our £7bn back from Drax?”; Private Eye's report "MPs and peers of all parties are increasingly raising pointed parliamentary questions"; and Labour's Climate and Economic Forum, "Labour must be brave" - a failure to act will cause bigger problems in the future.
It's also been revealed that new rules on biomass "carbon accounting" could make new subsidies even more indefensible. The details of work underway on this, by the IPCC, are outline below.
Why local protests are vital: Tyneside is plum in the middle of a "hotspot" for the two most shocking examples of "burning" our taxpayer funds. Lynemouth and Drax power plants are two of the the UK's biggest carbon emitters - fuelled by international deforestation and record quantities of wood pellets transported through the Port of Tyne.
Challenging coverage by journalists in the UK and North America:
Even the right-of-centre Spectator magazine has called these subsidies a "farce". It spelled out why biomass burning is as harmful - sometimes more so - than fossil fuels. It is destroying the forests we need to combat climate breakdown.
This autumn 2024 article by the Financial Times reveals internal emails from Drax and Lynemouth about wood pellets that were outside the rules for sourcing wood.
And BBC's Panorama has done several in-depth exposes of the unacceptable methods being used to obtain wood in various North America locations.
If you have access to information about the wood supplies that pass through Port of Tyne, for Drax and Lynemouth, please do get in touch with us.
Work underway on new regulations:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is working on new methodologies for what are called Carbon Dioxide Removal methods. The vital issue they are considering is which country is credited with carbon emission savings that are achieved. Change to the current rules would end the "conjuring trick" that tries to suggest biomass burning by UK power plants is "renewable". Biomass was credited as "renewable" because the loss of all the trees that are burnt to create energy was allocated to the overseas countries that exported the wood (rather than the country that burnt the trees). This crazy maths is explained extremely well in this Spectator article.
The IPCC work will conclude in 2027. The Government is currently due to take decisions on additional subsidies for biomass companies - but may end up doing so based on rules that may change and render the subsidies impossible to justify as "renewable".
BACKGROUND
The UK currently pays out the biggest subsidies for tree burning in Europe; Climate Action Newcastle is calling for our funds to be used instead to make positive changes for more sustainable futures for us all. The latest new subsidy for Drax - announced in January 2024 - is estimated to generate an additional £40 billion for Drax (see more info and link in "SO WHAT ABOUT THE £££££?" section below).
The Bermuda Triangle was famous for ships mysteriously vanishing. Our Biomass Triangle has seen vast sums of OUR money vanish - reducing our chances of keeping temperature rises below 1.5 degrees. The power stations north and south of us cost the UK more than £1 billion in direct subsidies in 2020 and 2021.
But awareness is rising - info here on protests and results achieved over past 2 years months
Autumn 2024: protest camp at Drax broken up by police. Previous protests included blocking train lines taking trees to Drax Power Station, resulting in court sentences, and the department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy has been covered in bright orange paint.
January 2024: Conservative MP Sir Peter Bottomley spells out that subsidies must stop. Included in powerful IEA report - link here.
19 October 2023: International Day of Action on Big Biomass - report here.
Groups working together: open letter sent to Energy Secretary Grant Shapps, making clear that the UK's net zero goals cannot be achieved if new subsidies go ahead. Signatories included the RSPB, the WWF and Greenpeace.
23 May 2023: campaigners across Europe called on one of the biggest financiers of Lynemouth Power Station's owner - EPH - to divest from the company. A protest was held at the Société Générale AGM took place in Paris.
Drax supplier Enviva share price collapse leads to bankruptcy: the Wall Street Journal reported in October 2024: "It's official: shares of America's largest wood-pellet exporter are worthless. The New York Stock Exchange said it would delist Enviva's stock on October 22 and that shareholders would receive no recovery. The notice cements one of the most dramatic collapses of the green-energy investing boom. Enviva's stock market value ballooned to nearly $6 billion in 2022 before a wrong-way bet on pellet prices bankrupted the firm." Enviva was formerly the world's dominant wood pellet supplier, exploiting subsidies in the UK, South Korea, Japan and the EU. The collapse is believed to be partly due to investor worries that protests may put at risk the subsidies vital for the profits of biomass companies. Report here.
TYNESIDE'S CONNECTIONS - TO OUR SOUTH: we have Drax power station in Yorkshire. Drax's grim statistics include:
world’s biggest wood-burning plant - 6.4m tonnes up in smoke in 2022
strips out wood in North America and Estonia/Latvia, affecting endangered species (such as caribou, flying squirrels) and incurring repeated fines for breaking rules designed to protect primary forests
second biggest producer of wood pellets globally, supplying companies across Europe and East Asia - local communities have protested with "I can't breathe" T-shirts due to respiratory and heart problems from factory pollution
emits more CO2 than any other facility in the UK - 12m tonnes in 2022
TYNESIDE'S CONNECTIONS - TO OUR NORTH: we have Lynemouth Power station, near Ashington in Northumberland - the UK's second largest biomass burner, after Drax. Lynemouth was originally a coal power station but was closed down by the previous owners, RWE, who then sold it to the Czech company EPH, which converted Lynemouth to burning wood pellets - it is now one of the largest biomass plants in Europe. Energy and Industry Holding Company has 20 power plants; its majority owner, Daniel Křetínský, is a billionaire. As it is privately-owned, it does not have AGMs.
TYNESIDE'S CONNECTIONS - A FEW MILES EAST ALONG THE RIVER TYNE: we have the Port of Tyne, which has been handling record imports of wood pellets, supplying both Drax and Lynemouth power stations. Its largest ever wood pellet shipment was 62,522.49 metric tonnes of sustainable biomass pellets for Drax, on a vessel sailing from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, US. The volume is not a surprise, with wood pellets being imported from around the world. You may have seen the recent BBC Panorama programme about logging pristine forests in British Columbia. Both Drax and Lynemouth power stations burn pellets made from wood that’s sourced from highly biodiverse and carbon-rich forests in the South-eastern USA and Canada. Drax also sources pellets from large-scale forest clearcuts in the Baltic States.
WHAT CAN WE DO TO STOP THIS??
Contact our local MPs: demand that the government stops subsidies for large-scale biomass electricity and doesn’t grant any future ones to Drax or Lynemouth.
Ask them to influence their own party's policy on biomass subsidies
Urge them to ensure their party policies do not support scam or "fake" carbon capture schemes
Encourage support to be switched to funds for positive benefits for taxpayers - insulation, renewable energy, green jobs
Use our social media: ask our supporters to contact their MPs and spread the word.
If you would like to get involved in future campaign activity, please email Olwyn.
USEFUL CONTACTS
Stop Burning Trees: https://stopburningtrees.org/
Biofuelwatch: https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk
BACKGROUND
DRAX:
Friends of the Earth briefing here.
Drax’s and Lynemouth’s biomass electricity counts towards the UK government’s goal of decarbonising electricity generation by 2035, even though scientists around the world warn that large-scale burning of forest wood for energy increases carbon emissions for decades (if not centuries) and is incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.
Drax’s pellet sourcing and production are linked to serious public health impacts in environmental justice communities in the Southeastern USA, i.e. in communities with an above-average level of poverty, many of them African American. A Greenpeace report accuses Drax of ‘environmental racism’ (https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2022/09/26/drax-accused-environmental-racism-further-pollution-claims-against-wood-pellet-mills-us/)
LYNEMOUTH:
Latest background report on Lynemouth and EPH here. Produced by Biofuelwatch, and includes detailed document to download as well.
A link to the YouTube coverage of the webinar in May 2023 can be seen here - it includes an eye witness report of areas being stripped of trees, with alarming projections of consequences for important forestry.
Background report on EPH here, published in January 2023 by Re-set: Platform for Socio-Ecological Transformation.
CAMPAIGNING - more resources and suggestions from Stop Burning Trees
Support for lobbying your MP!
Call on your MP to halt the £billions of subsidies given to Drax and re-allocate the money to genuine renewables and climate action.
FAQ on tricky questions that may come up
If you can do more to engage with your MP then please contact biofuelwatch@gmail.com
Email Schroders!
Schroders holds 9% of Drax’s shares and is a major shareholder. They have publicly called on Drax to not pursue category 2 licences in British Columbia following BBC panorama’s expose and pressure from their clients. Call on Schroders to divest approximately £220,000,000 worth of shares from Drax: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-schroders-to-divest-from-drax
Schroders
Andrew Howard, Global Head of Sustainable Investment
Schroders hold 9% of Drax’s shares and are a major shareholder. They already know that Drax's practices are not sustainable. Andrew Howard wrote to the UK Parliament's Environmental Audit Committee and requested a commitment from the firm not to pursue more category 2 licences in Canada, which permits access to forest timber. The Stop Burning Trees Coalition is calling on Schroders to #DivestfromDrax.
SO WHAT ABOUT THE £££££?
Drax received £606.8 million in subsidies during 2022. Thanks to those subsidies, it made a record-breaking £731 million in profits (and once again increased its pay-outs to shareholders). The subsidies were paid despite record wholesale electricity prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which significantly contributed to the cost of living crisis.The subsidies were even higher in recent years – almost reaching £1 billion in 2021.
As well as this article mentioned in the blog intro, The Times had another powerful article in late 2024: link here.
Drax’s and Lynemouth’s current biomass subsidies are due to end in 2027. In order to continue operating its power station, Drax has now succeeded in winning a new kind of subsidy, called Contract for Difference (CfD). It hopes to adjust its UK strategy, to fit with the Government’s 2021 Net Zero Strategy. That strategy includes an ambitious target for “greenhouse gas removals”, with BECCS (carbon capture and storage) as a supposed key technology. In May 2022, Drax submitted a planning application to install carbon capture equipment at two of its biomass units. The final decision has been made in January 2024 by the Secretary of State - report here.
Lynemouth received hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies every year, except in 2022, because of the high electricity prices then. It is now expected that EPH will also try to obtain post-2027 BECCS subsidies. Such subsidies could be paid for years, even if the equipment installed does not capture any carbon emissions at all.
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