Welcome to our first newsletter of 2024 full of updates about campaigns that we – and you – have been supporting, and policy developments.
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1. Submit your consultation response
2. Call on your MP to stop new subsides
3. Stop Drax emergency demo: Tues 5th March
4. Flying on Garbage? Fulcrum Bioenergy’s Trash Talk
5. Real Zero Europe statement: ‘Don’t fuel the fire’
1. Submit your consultation response
The UK government is planning to provide massive additional subsidies from our energy bills to finance the loss of forests and climate-damaging tree burning at power plants like Lynemouth in Northumberland and Drax in Yorkshire. We have to halt these additional subsidies for the benefit of the environment. We can do it together. With disastrous effects on forests, animals, communities, and the environment, Drax, the largest tree burner in the world and the top emitter of CO2 in the UK, currently gets renewable subsidies from UK energy bills of almost £1.7 million per day.
Now that their present subsidies are set to expire in 2027, the Government has revealed plans to use our energy bills to finance even more tree burning at Drax and Lynemouth. Please help us stop tree-burning power plants getting billions more by Responding to the government’s consultation! The deadline is 29th February. If you have the time, please send a personalised response.
2. Call on your MP to stop new subsides
If you have submitted your consultation response we are also asking you to reach out to your MP first by emailing them here and then following up with a phone call or meeting. MPs have the power to stop these wood-burning subsidies and to transfer the funding to real climate solutions like home insulation and wind and solar power. This would create new green jobs and help protect forests, wildlife, communities and the climate.
We need as many MPs as possible to speak out and tell the Government to stop new subsidies before the consultation closes on the 29th of February. We have also pulled together a MP briefing which you can send to your MP directly which has more information on the subsidies and how they can directly take action.
3. Stop Drax emergency demo: Tues 5th March
It’s more important now than ever to put pressure on our government and let them know that we will not stand by whilst £billions more could be given to polluters! Join us to take action on Tuesday 5th March at 12pm outside the Department for Energy Security and Netzero to say no more. No more wasting our money on dirty tree burning. No more funding of an industry that is driving environmental injustice, wrecking ecosystems and ruining our chances at a liveable future by destroying the very forests we need to absorb carbon emissions.
4. Flying on Garbage? Fulcrum Bioenergy’s Trash Talk
Fulcrum is but one of several biofuel businesses that are emerging to make money off of the enormous amount of legislative backing and subsidies available for “decarbonising” aviation through the use of “sustainable” aviation fuels (also known as SAF). Although animal fats and vegetable oils may be used in methods to create SAF, the large-scale supply of these feedstocks is expensive and harmful to the environment due to their high land area needs. Therefore, there is a lot of interest in producing SAF from a variety of alternative feedstocks, such as fossil and biogenic sources. Recently our colleague in the USA wrote a briefing which presented our analysis of Fulcrum as just one example of how startup bioenergy companies hype their processes, make unfounded claims and are consistently rewarded generously with financial, and policy supports. This in spite of clear evidence from a history of prior experience.
5. Real Zero Europe statement: ‘Don’t fuel the fire’
The European Union (EU) backed efforts at COP28 for a global phase-out of fossil fuels. However, it has since come to light that the European Union’s own projected climate objectives for 2040 may heavily rely on risky diversionary measures, such as carbon capture and storage and speculative carbon removal technologies, which will impede the shift away from coal, gas, and oil. The hypocrisy of EU decision-makers advocating for a phase-out of fossil fuels on a global scale while actively advancing the opposite agenda at home needs to end.
In a statement released by Real Zero Europe (RZE) and more than 140 international civil society organisations including we called on the European Union to be a true climate leader by promoting real climate action and rejecting risky diversion and false solutions like carbon capture and removal technologies.