Why Target Drax?

Drax is a wood biomass power station located near Selby, in Yorkshire. It is a former coal-power station that converted to biomass, and now entirely burns wood biomass. Drax is the UKs single largest carbon emitter and world’s biggest tree burner. Their actions have been repeatedly linked to fueling environmental racism and causing huge amounts of harm to communities, forests and biodiversity.

This is a very expensive project, and we are paying for it. Our bills subsidise Drax by nearly £2 million a day, while they made over £1 billion in profits in 2023. Drax admits they rely on subsidies to survive, and is currently trying to get them renewed, so this is a crucial time act.

Drax is neither sustainable or renewable. It burns more trees than any other power station in the world, and is the UK’s largest single source of carbon emissions. Drax and the government claim that these emissions ‘don’t count’ because the trees are grown in other countries, and because one day far in the future another tree will store that carbon. But it’s common sense that they do count, right here and right now – they are contributing to catastrophic climate breakdown today. We need a real plan for reducing emissions, not a fantasy based on false accounting.

On top of that, Drax is toxic and dangerous. Drax power station is one of the highest emitters of particulate pollution in Europe, which causes lung disease and other respiratory problems, and it has been accused of endangering the health of their workers. The production of wood pellets in North America creates dangerous dust and pollution, which is destroying the health of people in marginalised communities and is a devastating injustice.