Drax has cash to make itself look good but don’t be fooled - Yorkshire Post Letters

It’s no surprise that Drax has cash to splash on advertorials ('Drax to invest £3bn into renewables’, The Yorkshire Post, June 8) when it receives over £2m in subsidies every day - money that comes out of our energy bills.

Burning wood is not renewable, and it never will be. It releases more carbon into the atmosphere per unit of electricity than coal, leading Drax to be the UK’snumber one carbon polluter. And the trees it burns release their stored carbon into the atmosphere and lose their ability to absorb carbon - a disaster for the climate.

While Drax claims it can capture even more carbon by installing bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), with estimates of it costing £31.7bn in public subsidies, this would be ludicrously expensive for billpayers amidst a cost-of-living crisis. BECCS also doesn’t work - the biomass supply chain is simply too dirty to be carbon neutral, let alone carbon negative.

While Drax claims to create jobs in the Humber region, economic research shows that continuing to subsidise Drax does not create money or UK jobs. By contrast, if the Government invested this public money in wind and solar projects and energy efficiency, it would generate both!

To place the UK’s net zero commitments in the hands of its top polluter is insanity that risks our planet’s health and our global reputation. Drax has a lot of cash to make itself look good - but don’t be fooled.