[Diggers350] 'Net Zero' Crime Mocks UK Green Movement: privatised Drax takes Carolina's ancient trees and burns them in Corby

Tony Gosling tony at cultureshop.org.uk
Wed May 21 11:39:07 BST 2025 

‘Environmental’ farce shames Britain: Drax takes 
ancient trees from Carolina and burns them 4,000 miles away

https://tlio.org.uk/environmental-farce-shames-britain-drax-takes-ancient-trees-from-carolina-and-burns-them-4000-miles-away/

Drax takes ancient trees from near my Carolina 
home and burns them 4,000 miles away. This 
greenwashing scandal utterly shames Britain

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-14665613/Drax-takes-ancient-trees-near-Carolina-home-burns-4-000-miles-away-greenwashing-scandal-utterly-shames-Britain.html

Drax takes ancient trees from near my Carolina 
home and burns them 4,000 miles away. This 
greenwashing scandal utterly shames Britain

Emacs!

Since the changeover from coal, Drax has burned 
the equivalent of 300million trees at its Yorkshire plant

There will be plenty of backslapping among the 
highly paid executives of Drax, Britain’s biggest 
power station, at today’s AGM held in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Some of the biggest fund managers in the City 
will also be there, celebrating how Drax’s record 
£1.1billion profits have benefited them.

You might expect me, a fellow fund manager, to 
toast the occasion. But I will not be joining in. 
For the vast Drax power plant in Yorkshire is at 
the heart of the most egregious environmental 
scandal, the Big Lie of British energy policy.

Why? Drax used to be a coal power station. But it 
switched from burning coal to burning wood 
pellets – the most dirty and primitive source of energy.

Supposedly, this produces renewable electricity 
and eliminates carbon emissions even though the 
carbon footprint here is up to twice that of 
coal, according to scientists, when 
transportation and production of pellets is taken into account.

A grotesque sham because, incredibly, none of 
Drax’s increased carbon emissions are included in 
Britain’s accounts. They are deemed to be emitted 
in North America – even though the wood is burnt in Yorkshire.

On top of that accounting sleight of hand, there 
is the pretence that trees chopped down instantly 
regrow and are therefore renewable. In truth, 
this takes decades – decades our climate cannot 
wait. It is hideously expensive, and one reason 
why, as Tony Blair put it on Tuesday, current UK 
energy policy is ‘doomed to fail’.

Since the changeover from coal, Drax has burned 
the equivalent of 300million trees at its 
Yorkshire power station. We are all furious about 
the destruction of the Sycamore Gap tree. So what 
should you feel about 300million trees, many of 
them from primeval forests? And, remember, you 
have been forced to pay Drax £6billion in ‘green’ subsidies for this travesty.

Even more absurd is that every single tree is 
imported, in diesel-powered freighters. Mostly all the way from North America.

Where is the energy security in that? Such 
security is on all of our minds after the 
blackouts in Spain this week – and a month ago at 
Heathrow. Drax makes a mockery of the 
Government’s slogan of ‘homegrown, clean energy’.

The company is by far the UK’s largest emitter of 
CO2. Not that you’ll hear that at the AGM today. 
The outfit boasts of ‘enabling a zero- carbon’ 
future and ‘constant, tireless action to benefit climate, nature and people’.

This is nonsense: Drax is the greatest greenwashing scandal in Britain.

I have been fighting its destruction for years, 
not least because many of the trees come from 
near my home on the Cape Fear River in Carolina. 
I watch the cargo ships plying the wood, 
commencing a 4,000-mile trip to Yorkshire. It is beyond madness.
Drax claims to care about the environment, but 
its real motivation is money. Its CEO, Will 
Gardiner, paid himself £5million a year while his 
company has destroyed large swathes of forest. 
His company is a rapist of nature.

The fund managers glad-handing him today need to 
realise how bad this looks. The true scale of 
this outrage became apparent three years ago, 
when BBC Panorama revealed that virgin forests in 
Canada were being cut down by Drax.

They got away with it for so many years because 
of the appalling failures of regulator Ofgem. It 
signed off Drax’s claims that its wood was from 
‘sustainable’ forests, allowing your green subsidies to keep rolling in.

This so-called ‘watchdog’ even failed to get its 
act together after the Panorama revelations.

It was only after seeing whistleblower evidence 
about what was going on that Ofgem fined Drax. 
The fine was just £25million – paltry given the 
billions it gets from the public for this charade.

 From my experience in the financial world, if 
any bank or fund was doing anything remotely 
close to Drax’s ‘capture’ of its regulator, its 
bald-faced lying to investors about 
sustainability and double-dealing, that firm would have been prosecuted.

In charging vast sums for destroying 
irreplaceable primary forests (which Drax denies 
doing), the firm has sucked cash away from genuine renewables.

As for Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, he was the 
architect of this disastrous policy back in 2008 
when he headed the climate change department. He 
decided to ‘ramp up’ the burning of wood at Drax, 
promising that the trees would be ‘sustainable’.

But in February, an energy minister admitted in 
the Commons that Drax had been allowed to burn 
‘unsustainable biomass year after year’ with 
officials ‘letting Drax do whatever it wanted’.

Miliband risks being remembered as the ‘Burn, 
Baby, Burn’ energy secretary who left gaping 
wounds in some of the world’s great forests. He 
is trying to persuade Parliament that Drax should 
be allowed to burn trees for another four years – 
and have a 13 per cent hike in its subsidies.

Many brave employees within Drax have helped 
expose the scandal. Principal among them is the 
top whistleblower Rowaa Ahmar, in charge of the 
company’s relationship with Government until she was sacked.

I have been proud to support Rowaa’s legal case. 
During her employment tribunal, she claimed Drax 
was telling officials that its wood was 
sustainable while its lawyers were admitting in 
internal emails that it was not.

One prize that eluded Rowaa was a KPMG report 
revealing where Drax’s trees come from. A judge 
decided to allow Drax to continue to squelch that report.

But last week the Commons’ all-powerful Public 
Accounts Committee came out with its own 
devastating report into the scandal, saying that 
it has no confidence in government plans to 
extend the subsidies Drax gets for another four years.

It found the biomass companies had been ‘marking 
their own homework’ in terms of compliance, that 
no regulatory body knew whether the wood was 
actually sustainable and that Drax was not value for money.

In addition, the committee said Parliament must 
see that secret KPMG report. The cover-up must 
end – the public have a right to know what is 
happening to billions of their money.

It is time for Parliament to question Mr Gardiner 
about his rapacious company and for Ofgem to 
salvage what’s left of its reputation by 
reopening its investigation into Drax. Ed 
Miliband has no good reason not to pause his 
plans to extend the duplicitous subsidies.

The Big Lie that Drax’s wood-burning is 
‘sustainable’, ‘green’ and ‘carbon neutral’ has 
been exposed. It is a lie that shames the British 
Government and creates disbelief about their 
claims to be global leaders in tackling climate change.

Louis Bacon is an environmental philanthropist 
who won America’s most prestigious conservation 
award by the Audubon Society. He runs Moore Capital Management.  
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