At 9am on Wednesday 2 April, four people were forcibly removed after disrupting the Drax-sponsored Argus Biomass Conference. Of course, if you don’t know Drax then you should. It’s the company that burns wood but pretends it’s eco-friendly.
Drax poisons people
Disrupters, posed as conference attendees, stopped the keynote speech from Drax’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Miguel Veiga-Pestana, challenging him on Drax’s sustainability record and shouting ‘Drax Poisons People’ before being ejected by security:
The action targeted Argus Biomass Conference, which has Drax as the main ‘host’ sponsor and is ‘the largest global gathering of biomass leaders’, boasting attendance of ‘Government and regulators’:
Bioenergy giant Drax operates the world’s largest wood pellet-burning biomass power station near Selby, Yorkshire. The UK’s single largest carbon dioxide emitter, in 2023, it belched out 11.5m tonnes of the greenhouse gas driving the climate crisis.
Drax sources from around the world, primarily the US, Canada, and the Baltic States. In many of these places, the company is responsible for razing high-risk forests, including old growth, ancient trees.
What’s more, the company has situated its wood pellet production sites predominantly in environmental justice communities. These include majority Black communities in places like Mississippi and Louisiana. There, Drax’s facilities emit large amounts of pollutants that cause respiratory and pulmonary health impacts.
The corporation has repeatedly made the bold claim that it produces renewable energy. Unsurprisingly, this does not wash. Because as it turns out, cutting down forests is not so sustainable. On top of this, burning wood pellets produces more carbon emissions than the dirtiest of fossil fuels: coal. Not so green then either.
However, because the UK government counts woody biomass ‘carbon neutral’ (it’s clearly not), it throws enormous renewable energy subsidies at Drax anyway.
The madness continues
Drax has recently been awarded new subsidies from the UK government, despite repeated sourcing from old-growth and primary forests. In a recent whistleblower case, it was exposed that Drax spends millions on lobbying companies every year and admitted to a ‘revolving door’ between Drax and government.
In the Southern US, Drax has been repeatedly accused of poisoning low-income, Black and brown communities, receiving multiple multi-million dollar fines for its pellet operations, and violated environmental regulations over 11,000 times.
Rosie from Axe Drax said:
It is an absolute disgrace that this conference is happening in London, celebrating Drax and the biomass industry’s destruction of forests and deathly pollution of communities. Drax’s profits are built on the poisoning of poor, Black communities and the UK Government is making us all fund it through our energy bills. There is absolutely no future in this disastrous industry.
Sam Simons from Axe Drax said:
This conference boasts about being the industry’s number one networking event, it’s disgusting. That Drax is giving a keynote speech telling the rest of the industry how they successfully lied to the government to fund their tree-burning scam with billions of pounds of our money is a disgrace. What they should be saying is that Drax pellet plants are poisoning communities whilst destroying vital forests. There is no future for Drax or the tree burning industry.
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