Vattenfall Day of Action 2023

For the second year running, environmental campaigners held protests in each of the countries where Vattenfall operates biomass plants, coinciding with the company’s Annual General Meeting.

As well as still being a big fossil fuel burner, Vattenfall burns wood in 17 heat and/or power plants, most of them in Sweden, two in Berlin and one in the Netherlands. The company wants to expand its biomass burning in Berlin five-fold as well as build the largest dedicated biomass plant in the Netherlands. Click here to find out more about Vattenfall’s biomass business and its impacts.

10 organisations that participated in the actions wrote a new open letter to Vattenfall, following up on a similar letter in April 2022.

In Solna, Sweden, activists from Fridays for Future as well as Skydda Skogen (Protect the Forest) protested both outside and inside the companies AGM.

Photos: Fridays for Future Sweden

In Berlin, Germany, nine organisations held a banner protet outside the German Vattenfall head office. As well as demanding that the company stops burning carbon-rich fuels and transitinos to climate friendly technologies such as heat pumps and geothermal energy, campaigners demannded that Vattenfall must sell its heat network and plants to the City of Berlin at a low price.

Foto: Stephan Roehl

In Diemen, Netherlands, campaigners held a banner protest outside a Vattenfall gas plant, on the site where the company wants to build a large wood-burning heat plant.

Photo: Fenna Swart

 

And in Brussels, a forest campainger working for Fern delivered the open letter directly to Vattenfall’s office.

Greta Thunberg supported the protests with a message, too: