Who are Grayling?
Grayling are an international corporate lobbying and PR firm, opperating in 9 UK cities and over 30 countries. Grayling UK have close relationships with the media, and both Labour and Conservative MPs. They opperate a ‘revolving door’, with many of their staff being previous or future senior employees of mainstream media organisations or the Labour or Conservative parties. Their clients include multiple international fossil fuel companies (including Engie, RWE, and EPH), as well as biomass comapny Drax Group.
These connections give them easy access to those holding the levers of power, most notably cabinet ministers. Who better to hire if you waned help to scam the taxpayer?
Who are Drax?
Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire was once the UK’s largest coal-fired power plant. Starting in 2003, it was gradually converted to run on biomass, and it now burns millions of tonnes of imported wood pellets every year.
This was sold as a green alternative to fossil fuels, and Drax has already pocketed billions in government subsidies on that basis.
But in reality, Drax’s green credentials are based on dodgy accounting – burning biomass for power in this way creates as much carbon pollution as coal or gas.
Drax is actually the UK’s single largest carbon emitter and world’s biggest tree burner (woody biomass burning power station). Drax’s actions have been repeatedly linked to driving environmental racism and causing huge amounts of harm to communities, forests and biodiversity.
Now Drax is now pushing for even more public money to fund unproven carbon capture technology.
Grayling and Drax
Grayling’s lobbying efforts has allowed Drax to successfully secure over £2 million a day in public subsidies, despite the environmental harm they cause. Simply put, this is greenwashing – passing off environmentally harmful practices as ‘green’.
These subsidies come out of the standing charge added onto our energy bills – costing all of us.
Drax were able to persuade ministers to extend subsidies beyond 2027 based on false promises around ‘bioenergy carbon capture and storage’ (or BECCS) technology they claim they aim to implement, despite it never having worked at such a large scale.
Grayling’s support was likely key to continuing this scamming of the public.
Our demand
Grayling claim they “would never accept fees or a contract from a company that we know to have knowingly broken environmental regulation in of the countries in which we operate”, yet their client Drax has broken US environmental protection laws over 11,000 times.
Simply, we’re calling on Grayling to live up to this claim and drop Drax as a client.
While Grayling’s relationship with Drax continues, Grayling are complicit in Drax’s environmental racism and burning of forests.
Why here, why now?
We’re in Leeds to support the Drax 15, who are on trial between 22nd September and 2nd October for “going equipped to lock on” after being arrested for trying to set up a peaceful climate camp against Drax in August 2024.
Read more about the Drax 15.
Take action with us
We will be blocking the phone lines of Grayling to make sure they get the message to cut ties with Drax now!
Please call Grayling’s offices as many times as you are able to on Tuesday 23 September, using the following phone numbers:
| London | 020 3861 3750 |
| Birmingham | 0121 265 2760 |
| Bristol | 0117 910 6360 |
| Edinburgh | 0131 226 2363 |
| Leeds | 0113 273 9900 |
| Glasgow | 0141 471 9771 |
| Manchester | 0161 819 6891 |
Some guidelines:
- Please be respectful to people – no threats, no shouting.
- The aim is to block the phone lines and be inconvenient, rather than as a tactic of worker outreach. You are unlikely to convince someone that they should quit their jobs.
- Don’t take this personally – chances are, they’ve had a fair few phone calls already that day which were misleading or antagonising. They might hang up or be disproportionately frustrated at you, and that’s OK! You can choose to ring again, or just move on the another number.
If they answer the phone, you can:
- Talk to them about why you’re calling
- Talk to them to stall for time and hold the line
- Hang up
Option 1: Talk about why you’re calling
Hello, I’m ringing to check if you’re aware that Grayling has a policy stating that they will not do business with companies that knowingly break environmental legislation in their country of operation.
Did you know that Drax have over 11,000 environmental breaches in the US?
Drax that you lobby for is the single largest carbon emitter in the UK and is responsible for driving environmental racism and causing huge amounts of harm to communities, forests and biodiversity.
Are these issues things that you’re aware of?
[if they don’t hang up keep talking and keep them on the phone line as long as you can:]
Drax’s pellet mills in the Southern US are causing devastating harm to people’s health, leaving majority black, poor communities unable to breathe in their own homes.
The issue is so bad that the UK government has been accused of funding environmental racism because of the subsidies it provides Drax. To quote directly about the impacts of a Drax pellet facility:
“Residents said their health had declined after Drax began operations in the town in 2014, and complained of breathing difficulties requiring inhalers or oxygen tanks, experiencing dizzy spells, rashes, nosebleeds and occasional burning sensations and irritated eyes when standing outdoors.
“Drax needs to clean up their mess,” said one resident, who says her health began to decline five years ago. “We started getting sick after they put that plant down there and we didn’t know where it was coming from.”
She suffers from asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and chronic bronchitis, and has to use medical oxygen, a nebuliser, an inhaler and a nasal spray to manage her conditions. “Sometimes I experience nose bleeding,” she added, “and when I gargle… I spit blood out.”
Another nearby resident said the air in the area can smell like “rotten flesh”. She also suffers from COPD, and said she noticed her health decline soon after she moved back onto her great-grandparents’ land in the area three years ago.
“I mentioned to my husband on numerous occasions that there was something in the air, there had to be something in the air because my breathing was horrible and it still is.”
“We’re suffering, she added. “The smell is horrible. It gets to the point where you can’t breathe. You would have to smell it in order to know what it’s like.”
In 2020, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality fined Drax’s Amite BioEnergy pellet plant $2.5m for breaking its VOC emission limits since 2016.
Amite had been pumping out VOCs at an average of 796 tonnes per year, which is more than three times its permitted limit of 249 tonnes per year and nearly five times the estimate of the plant’s emissions that Drax had initially given officials.
To quote an an assistant professor in epidemiology, we know these VOCs are cancer causing.
What do you think about that? Was it something you were aware of? What do you think about the role of Drax’s PR department in perpetuating this atrocity?
[let them respond]
Other talking points to mention if you have time:
- Drax is not renewable energy – biomass emits just as much carbon dioxide as coal, locking in disastrous global heating.
- Drax creates damaging levels of air pollution next to its wood pellet factories in the Southern US..
Option 2: Talk to them to stall for time and hold the line
This one requires some acting! Things you might want to try:
- Pretending to be a news outlet looking (you can go big e.g. BBC or small e.g. Yorkshire Post)
- Concerned resident in Selby or local area around Drax (e.g. about the protestors or about air pollution from power station)
- Misdirected general enquiry about Drax (e.g. jobs vacancies, is biomass renewable, where do you get your trees from)
Be creative!!!! But here’s an example of how that might go and a few pointers:
Hello, is this [insert name here] speaking? How are you today? I’m calling form [insert your media outlet] and I’d like to ask you a few questions in light of the recent events occurring
[Start with a few softer ball question to make them comfier]
- What was the protest all about? Do you know what it was about Drax that they were protesting about?
- On the 9th of June Parliament has approved the subsidies for Drax. did you work on this?
- What do you think about Drax?
- What do you think about the environmental credentials of biomass?
[Feel free to move into some harder questions to try keep them on the line]
- Are you aware that Drax has breached environmental regulations in Canada and the US? In fact in the US they have over 11,000 environmental breaches
- I found out that some climate protestors turned up to a couple of your offices. do you know what that was about?
- I guess the climate protestors would argue that communities in Missisippi and the Southern US are facing health issues and are unable to breathe because of Drax’s pellet facilities – what would you say in response to that?
- The other angle would be time scales – I think I read that it takes 40-100 years for trees to grow to maturity and draw down a comparable amount of carbon to those cut down. So if we’re cutting down and burning whole forests now, releasing all that carbon into the atmosphere, the maths doesn’t really add up does it?
- What about the democratic element? Shouldn’t everyone have the opportunity to dissent, especially when it is their money that is ending up in Drax’s account as subsidies.
Option 3: Hang up
When they answer, hang up. This means you don’t have to speak but it still holds up the line while its ringing. You can also do this under your desk at work!