UK Environment Minister Under Pressure To Dump Subsidies For "Green" Wood Pellet Imports For Power Generation
More than 40 green groups have called on Ed Miliband to scrap plans to pay billions in subsidies to the Drax power plant in North Yorkshire for it to keep burning wood pellets imported from overseas forests.
In an open letter to the energy secretary, 41 groups from across Europe and the US say they are “deeply concerned” about the UK government’s plans to foot the cost of extending the subsidy scheme, which supports the UK’s most polluting power plant from 2027 until the end of the decade. The subsidy scheme, which has paid the FTSE 250 owners of Drax more than £7bn since 2012, also supports the Lynemouth biomass plant in Northumberland, which is owned by the billionaire investor Daniel Křetínský.
“These power stations are burning trees from some of the world’s most biodiverse forests in the southern USA, Canada and Europe, with devastating impacts on communities, wildlife and the climate. This puts at risk forests and wildlife in many of our countries,” the letter says.
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The company plans to fit carbon-capture technology at the site – using more subsidies – to create a “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage” (Beccs) project that it claims would be the first “carbon-negative” power plant in the world by the end of the decade. The claims have been disputed by experts. More than 500 scientists signed a letter in 2021 warning that burning wood pellets would create a “carbon debt” that would not be paid off by the growth of new trees for decades. “Regrowing trees and displacement of fossil fuels may eventually pay off this carbon debt, but regrowth takes time the world does not have to solve climate change. As numerous studies have shown, this burning of wood will increase warming for decades to centuries. That is true even when the wood replaces coal, oil or natural gas,” the letter said.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/27/subsidies-biomass-wood-burning-drax-power-station-uk