.png)
The UK Government has just announced proposals to use our energy bills to give huge new subsidies to fund planet-wrecking tree burning at power stations like Drax in Yorkshire and Lynemouth in Northumberland.
Please write to your MP asking them to stop the new subsidies for burning trees in UK power stations.
The climate impacts of new subsidies for burning trees would be catastrophic. Drax is the UK’s single largest carbon emitter and the world’s biggest tree burner. In 2022 alone, Drax emitted over 12 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Much of the wood that Drax and Lynemouth burn comes from the logging of some of the world’s most biodiverse forests in the Southern USA, Canada, Estonia and Latvia, with devastating impacts on forests, wildlife and communities.
New subsidies would allow both power stations to keep burning trees and destroying forests at our expense for years to come, with no time limit for the funding mentioned in the Government consultation.
And new subsidies for burning wood won’t do anything to lower our energy bills, or help to tackle the climate emergency with scientists around the world warning that burning wood for energy increases global warming for decades to centuries.
Drax is already receiving £1.7m per day from UK bill payers to burn trees whilst making record profits. According to the consultation, the cost of new subsidies to UK bill payers could be anything up to £2.5 billion a year. This is money that will not be available to support a transition to genuinely renewable wind and solar power.
We say: no more. No more wasting our money on dirty tree burning. No more funding of an industry that is driving environmental injustice, wrecking ecosystems and ruining our chances at a liveable future by destroying the very forests we need to absorb carbon emissions.
MPs have the power to stop these wood-burning subsidies and to transfer the funding to real climate solutions like home insulation and wind and solar power. This would create new green jobs and help protect forests, wildlife, communities and the climate.
For the sake of our planet, we need as many people as possible to speak out and tell their MPs to stop new tree-burning subsidies before the consultation closes on the 29th of February.
Will you write to your MP today to call on them to say no to new subsidies for burning trees in UK power stations?
