The owner of the Drax wood-burning power station should be forced to disclose full details of its tree consumption, campaigners have argued, as MPs review the billions in renewables subsidies the North Yorkshire plant receives.
A delegated legislation committee will decide on Monday whether to pass the government’s plans to extend billpayer-funded subsidies to the country’s biomass power generators, of which Drax is by far the biggest.
Green campaigners said a condition of any extension should be that Drax published a key report by KPMG into its operations and sourcing. Reports by the auditor have been provided to the government and the energy regulator Ofgem but not the public.
Ofgem has said KPMG shows Drax has not breached rules on sourcing trees for burning from environmentally sustainable forests.
However, in separate incidents, Drax had been found to have supplied inaccurate data for subsidies in the past, leading to a £25m fine. Media investigations also found Drax using wood from old-growth forests in the US.
Drax is expected to receive more than £10bn in renewable energy subsidies between 2012 and 2027, the current regime period, according to the thinktank Ember.
Kingsmill Bond, an energy strategist at Ember, said: “Burning trees for electricity is extremely inefficient and expensive, and is not effective at mitigating climate change.
“The collapse in the price of solar, wind and batteries in the last five years means that burning trees for electricity is now an obsolete technology. Before we pour any more subsidy into Drax, MPs need to see the KMPG report on where the wood has been coming from.”
The government plans to halve the subsidies available for biomass power generation under a revised regime from 2027. MPs on the delegated legislation committee are expected to vote on Monday on the statutory instrument enabling this.
Almuth Ernsting, the co-director of the campaign group Biofuelwatch, said: “If those subsidies are approved, it would result in more carbon emissions, more destructive logging of wildlife-rich forests in the south-eastern US and elsewhere, and more pollution suffered by communities living next to pellet plants in that region – pollution which community activists have denounced as ‘environmental racism’.”
Mark Campanale, the founder of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, added: “At a time when renewables powered by wind, solar with back up batteries are growing exponentially around the world, it seems remarkable that the UK still needs to rely on dirty combustion like Drax to reach its climate targets. Instead of importing and burning wood, with all its associated emissions, the UK should be doubling down on natural sources of energy available to us, wind and solar.”
A spokesperson for Drax said: “In their investigation Ofgem found no evidence that our biomass failed to meet the sustainability criteria of the RO [renewable obligation] scheme, nor that the ROCs [renewable obligation certificates] we received for the renewable power we produced had been provided incorrectly.
“Their new statement on the reports we commissioned from KPMG, as well as the prior comments in a public accounts committee hearing by Ofgem’s director of audit and compliance, confirm that they reviewed these documents as part of their investigation and found no evidence within them that we were in breach of our sustainability obligations and therefore wrong to receive RO funding.”
The spokesperson added: “Drax provides secure renewable power to millions of homes and businesses when they need it, not just when the wind is blowing, or the sun is shining. The science underpinning biomass generation is supported by the world’s leading climate experts, including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK’s Climate Change Committee.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: “We are halving the amount of support for Drax, saving money on people’s energy bills and contributing to our energy security. Drax will operate for less of the time under a clean power system and will need to use 100% sustainably sourced biomass, with not a penny of subsidy paid for anything less.”
The Guardian understands there would be substantial penalties for any breach of the sustainability criteria.
