Dogwood Alliance Targets Enviva and Drax Nominated for the 1st Annual Biomass Biomess Baddie Award
Our friends at Biofuelwatch in the UK are organizing an Alternative Biomess Awards Ceremony on April 9th in London. They’re shining a spotlight on the who’s who of companies investing in promoting biomass, a false solution to climate change, along with the biggest pellet makers in the Southern US and Canada that are sending our forests off to the UK to be burned for electricity.
Vote now to decide which biomass baddie should win this prestigious award.
The honored nominees include:
- Enviva, the largest wood pellet manufacturer in the South and one we at Dogwood Alliance have featured as being incredibly destructive to our precious bottomland hardwood wetland forests along the North Carolina and Virginia coasts.
- Drax, one of Enviva’s largest customers and a huge utility in the UK pushing for greater biomass development.
- UK Department of Energy and Climate Change: gives biomass a free pass
- UK Renewable Energy Association: promoting biomass over other true renewables
- The Wood Pellet Association of Canada: represent big pellet manufacturers in Canada
Of course, they’re all deserving of this award, but we hope you’ll consider casting your vote for Enviva and Drax, two of Dogwood Alliance’s biggest targets in our biomass Our Forests Aren’t Fuel Campaign. If you need a reminder why, check out this video featuring Enviva’s impact on our coastal forests or this recent story from the Daily Mail from the UK featuring Drax.
Additionally, on April 23rd, Biofuelwatch is planning an event outside of the Drax annual shareholder meeting where they will call for an end to big biomass and coal as well as an end to subsidies that allow operators like Drax to keep profiting from destruction. Drax power station in Yorkshire is converting three of its six units to run on biomass. Since its last shareholder meeting, it has converted and opened one unit and burned up to 5.5 million tons of green wood (mostly imported) – that’s equivalent to more than half of the UK’s annual wood production. At full capacity, this unit alone will have netted them £190 million in subsidies.