For Thursday 13th April 2017
On Thursday, 13th April, anti-coal and biomass campaigners will be staging simultaneous protests outside Drax Plc’s Annual General Meeting in York, and outside the offices of Drax’s two largest investors in the city of London. Local people also plan to protest at the port in Liverpool where wood pellets arrive from the United States to be burnt at Drax Power Station.
In York, campaigners will be holding a banner protest and leafletting shareholders going into and leaving the AGM.
In London, demonstrators will be visiting first Drax’s second largest investor, Schroders, before continuing to Invesco, its largest investor.
The demonstrations are being organised by a coalition including Biofuelwatch, Coal Action Network, London Mining Network, Fuel Poverty Action, members of Unite union in York and concerned local residents in Yorkshire and Liverpool.
Campaigners will highlight Drax’s involvement in dirty energy, its contribution to climate change and deforestation, and its continued reliance on government subsidies – which could instead be going to support genuinely renewable energy – to keep afloat.
Despite receiving around £1.5 million a day in ‘renewable energy’ subsidies from the government, Drax remains one of the UK’s two largest burners of coal and the world’s largest burner of biomass in the form of wood pellets, many of which are imported from biodiverse regions in the southern United States. Without these subsidies, Drax would have had to shut down already and the money could go to support energy conservation and genuinely renewable energy such as wind and solar.
Photo opportunity
London: Schroders, 31 Gresham St, EC2V 7QA, 12.30pm.
York: Outside The Grand Hotel and Spa, Station Rise York, YO1 6GD, 1pm.
Liverpool: 1pm, Port of Liverpool entrance, L21 1LA