Welcome to our July 2025 newsletter full of updates about campaigns that we – and you – have been supporting, and policy developments.
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1.Introducing our new Biofuel Campaigner, Pax
2.Tell Your MP: Say No to Damaging Aviation Biofuels
3.Update from UK campaign
4.Sustainable Biomass Program (on which Drax relies) certifies Malaysian wood pellets linked to rainforest destruction and peat drainage as ‘sustainable’
5.Updates from USA
1.Introducing our new Biofuel Campaigner, Pax
Hello everyone, I’m Pax, and I’m the new Biofuels Campaigner for Biofuelwatch. I started my role in early May, and am focusing on oil and fat feedstocks. Some of my current projects include: monitoring the situation with the recently-closed Grangemouth oil refinery, and preparing to oppose any conversion to biofuels that is announced; networking with other NGOs working on biofuels in Europe, North America and the Global South; preparing to fight back against Brazil’s biofuel push at COP30; and opposing the spread of biofuels in aviation and shipping. My first couple of months have been busy and interesting – I’ve spoken to people from across the world, from farmers to engineers, attended a conference, lobbied an MSP and even signed up for a climate camp! (Now I just need to find a tent…)
I’m looking forward to what comes next, and can’t wait to help be part of making a difference with Biofuelwatch. I hope to meet many of you over the course of my time here!
2.Tell Your MP: Say No to Damaging Aviation Biofuels
Pax has hit the ground running, and their first campaign is already underway—taking on the government’s push for damaging aviation biofuels. The government is pushing ahead with plans to expand so-called ‘sustainable aviation fuel’ (SAF) production—but these fuels are anything but green. Most SAFs are made from harmful biofuels like vegetable oil and animal fats, which can be up to three times more polluting than kerosene once their full life-cycle emissions are counted. This dangerous greenwashing not only threatens forests, wetlands, and communities, but also risks entrenching the aviation industry’s worst climate impacts—just when we need to be flying less, not more. The push for five new biofuel refineries, potentially including at Grangemouth, would also put workers at risk and divert investment away from truly green, secure jobs. The government needs to hear loud and clear that this isn’t the climate solution we need.
3.Update from UK campaign
As you will all know, the UK team have been busy with a last ditch attempt at stopping the extended subsidies for Drax which were announced along with ‘Heads of Terms’ by Michael Shanks in February. Unfortunately, the legislation required to grant Drax these new subsidies has now made its way through both Houses of Parliament. However, our efforts did result in some pleasing cross-party unity in the House of Lords when the issue was debated there with criticism of Drax from across the House. You can watch the debate here. (Starts at 21.21.00 approx. with a Government motion to adopt the Statutory Instrument to extend Drax’s subsidies.)
We are extremely disappointed that Drax looks set to get another four years of bill payers’ money to continue burning trees. We note that the government has changed tits narrative around Drax. It is no longer trying to defend Drax as a renewable, sustainable long-term solution. Instead, it now argues that keeping the power station going for another four years is a short term necessity for energy security. However, Ministers refuse to publish the energy security model on which they claim the decision is based.
Right now, we have a new concern: the proposed ‘Clean Energy Campus’ bid by Drax, York University and others which seeks to take advantage of government announced funding for Artificial Intelligence and data centres. If the government were to grant funding to an “AI Growth Zone “ around Drax, this would fly in the face of its claimed intention of reducing how much money is given to Drax and how much wood it burns. Watch this space!
We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our supporters for your unrelenting support for the campaign over the last 18 months since the government first consulted on extending Drax’s subsidies, we have sent out countless requests for you to email your MP and other politicians and you’ve stepped up every time. We can’t thank you enough. We may not have won this battle against big bad biomass but we are in this for the long game and we’re sure we’ll win the war.
On 1 May, Stop Burning Trees – a coalition we are a member of – helped coordinate a powerful protest at Drax’s AGM in London. Activists challenged the company’s greenwashing and exposed the harm its biomass operations cause to forests and frontline communities, especially in the southern US. The protest led to Drax abandoning the meeting early, before shareholders could properly engage.
In Edinburgh, groups including Extinction Rebellion Edinburgh, Biofuelwatch, Fuel Poverty Action, Stop Burning Trees, Protest in Harmony, and Parents for Future Scotland led a vibrant ‘Love Trees, Axe Drax’ protest in Princes Street Gardens. The action featured speeches, dancing by the Scotland Tree Gees to Staying Alive, and singing led by Protest in Harmony. It was part of a wider wave of in-person and online actions in York, Liverpool, and outside Drax’s AGM in London – all calling for an end to tree-burning subsidies.
Thanks again to everyone who took part in any action related to the AGM.
4.Sustainable Biomass Program (on which Drax relies) certifies Malaysian wood pellets linked to rainforest destruction and peat drainage as ‘sustainable’
Biofuelwatch and Comite Schone Lucht in the Netherlands have jointly submitted a complaint against RWE to the Dutch Emissions Authority. RWE continues to burn large amounts of imported wood pellets in one or two of the country’s coal power stations. One of those power stations has been converted to 100% biomass. In 2024, just under 200,000 tonnes of the pellets imported by RWE came from Malaysia. RWE has consistently refused to disclose where they source their pellets. However, evidence set out in the joint complaint shows that the Malaysian pellets likely came from a producer called Rainbow Pellet in Pahang Province, and, to a smaller extent, from a subsidiary of Samling Group in Sarawak. The complaint focusses on compliance – or rather the lack of it – with the Dutch sustainability criteria for biomass. The Dutch Emissions Authority has confirmed that it will be conducting an investigation.
Regardless of the outcome of the investigation regarding RWE, the evidence presented sheds more light on what the Sustainable Biomass Program (SBP) considers to be ‘sustainable biomass. We have long known that SBP considers all of Drax’s pellet production, including pellets made from mature trees from clearcut oldgrowth and primary forests in British Columbia, to meet its standards. Now, we know that even companies linked to tropical rainforest destruction can gain an SBP certificate.
Samling Group has been the subject of NGO complaints, including to the Forest Stewardship Council, over illegal logging, violation of traditional and human rights, destruction of high conservation value forest, and forest conversion to plantations. The NGO Mighty Earth has documented rainforest clearance and peat drainage on the very concessions from which the certified pellet plant sources wood.
Rainbow Pellet, in Pahang Province, sources wood from 236 different rubber plantations. According to a study about deforestation in Pahang, oil palm and rubber plantations were the main drivers of rainforest destruction. Another study shows that the great majority of rubber plantations are not replanted once they are no longer productive – instead more rainforest gets converted.
In the UK and across the EU, this is yet more evidence why voluntary certification schemes for ‘sustainable biomass’ are not credible tools for preventing even the most egregious environmental destruction associated with wood bioenergy.
5.Updates from USA
A proposal to develop a facility in Lyndonville Vermont to produce methane using “high temperature ablative pyrolysis” (HTAP) of woody feedstocks is stalling after citizens mounted a campaign and local policy makers started asking questions. The HTAP technology proved to be… unproven, and though developers claimed it was in use elsewhere, they never provided information. To fund their experiment, the developers sought to tap into subsidies provided for renewable natural gas. The Vermont statutes direct those RNG subsidies for farm-derived methane, for example, from manure digesters. The HTAP project developers claimed they should be eligible because they would use wood procured from farm woodlots, apple orchard trimmings and Christmas tree farms. The Vermont agency didn’t fall for that ruse. Lacking the subsidies, it is questionable whether the facility will be viable. Producing methane from wood seems an unnecessarily complicated procedure for making energy!
Also in the USA, work to hold Drax expansion plans at bay has resulted in a major win in California as the proponents of the Golden State Natural Resources wood pellet export scheme have abandoned their vision to bring the global wood pellet sector to the state. Read the update Fierce Campaign Stops California Wood Pellet Export Scheme for more details.