The UK’s biggest polluter made £731 million ($877 million) in profits last year – while also receiving £650 million ($780 million) in subsidies. Energy company Drax runs an eponymous power station in North Yorkshire, which is also the country’s largest single emitter. It used to run on coal but has now been converted to biomass – ie burning trees – and accounted for 13.2 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2020 from biomass alone.
Drax previously claimed its fuel pellets were made from sawdust and waste wood, but a 2020 investigation by the BBC showed that many were made from whole trees. In 2021, Drax acquired the pellet company Pinnacle, known for logging on Indigenous land in Canada, and admitted to sourcing wood from old-growth forests in British Colombia and Alberta – where clear-cutting is common. The company burned 16.6 million tonnes of freshly cut wood that year.
