State servile cops and complicit courts have shielded climate-wrecker Drax from public scrutiny. So, between the 9 to 12 August, climate protesters mobilised. After a pre-emptive swathe of arrests, climate crisis protesters refused to stay silent over UK mega-polluter Drax’s climate-wrecking biomass plant.
Drax: the greenwashing giant
Bioenergy giant Drax operates the world’s largest wood pellet-burning biomass power station near Selby, Yorkshire. The UK’s single largest carbon dioxide emitter, in 2023, it belched out 11.5m tonnes of the greenhouse gas driving the climate crisis.
Drax sources from around the world, primarily the US, Canada, and the Baltic States. In many of these places, the company is responsible for razing high-risk forests, including old growth, ancient trees.
What’s more, the company has situated its wood pellet production sites predominantly in environmental justice communities. These include majority Black communities in places like Mississippi and Louisiana. There, Drax’s facilities emit large amounts of pollutants that cause respiratory and pulmonary health impacts.
The corporation has repeatedly made the bold claim that it produces renewable energy. Unsurprisingly, this does not wash. Because as it turns out, cutting down forests is not so sustainable. On top of this, burning wood pellets produces more carbon emissions than the dirtiest of fossil fuels: coal. Not so green then either.
However, because the UK government counts woody biomass ‘carbon neutral’ (it’s clearly not), it throws enormous renewable energy subsidies at Drax anyway. These amount to over £600m a year. Little wonder then that the company raked in over a billion in profits for 2023 alone.
Cops acting as Drax’s ‘private security firm’
It was in the context of all this that a group of climate protesters planned to take the major greenwashing corporation to task. Predictably however, the criminal justice instruments of the state closed ranks to shield Drax from peaceful, public scrutiny and protest.
First, the company sought an injunction against them ahead of their planned ‘climate camp’ at the site. On 25 July, the High Court granted this draconian injunction to Drax. It meant that protesters would be relegated to a small strip of land near the power station. Despite this, protest groups proceeded in preparations for their peaceful demonstration undeterred.
Then, on 8 August, North Yorkshire police, led by the Met, conducted a raid. They pre-emptively arrested 22 climate protesters purportedly for conspiracy to interfere with key national infrastructure. Of course, this was before the protesters had done anything. As the Canary’s HG reported:
A protester who has been helping to coordinate the camp told the Canary that North Yorkshire Police are essentially acting as Drax’s own private security firm. Repeatedly they said they are not opposed to peaceful protests. However, they have still taken away the kit the protesters were using to ensure the camp was both peaceful and safe. Essentially, they are being silenced for speaking out against greenwashing.
North Yorkshire Police’s response only made this complicity glaringly apparent. In a statement, its silver commander for the operation superintendent Ed Haywood-Noble said:
I would like to reassure the public that we are not complacent, a large police presence will remain in place in the area around Drax to ensure that disruption to our communities and operations at Drax Power station is kept to a minimum.
In short, cops are posting up outside a multibillion corporation’s power plant to shield it from peaceful climate protesters. Following the Thursday raid, the force also arrested three further protesters for similar so-called offences.
But the climate protesters would not be silenced.
Police ‘patronising codswallop’ over Drax protest
First, on Friday 9 August, activists from Reclaim the Power and Axe Drax carried out a defiant act of brandalism:
Drax will not silence us 🔥
Last night bus stops were redecorated by @axe_drax and Reclaim the Power activists calling out Drax’s 💩
We will not let the damage and destruction Drax cause be greenwashed 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/xuDkUg91Wl
— Reclaim The Power (@reclaimthepower) August 10, 2024
Then, they took their message to Drax’s front door. Drax may have forced protesters into a back garden-sized strip of land, but on Sunday 11 August, it was Drax that activists backed into a corner.
Hundreds of people had planned to turn out to the site, but the police had confiscated vital infrastructure to host a safe and accessible protest of this scale. This included essential items like wheelchair accessible track, toilets, and fire safety equipment.
Despite this, a small group gathered outside Drax to show they would not bow to the company’s state-abetted repression of their right to peaceful protest.
Protesters formed a line outside Drax’s gates:
To a backdrop of gargantuan gas flue stacks spewing out pollution, they brandished placards and banners calling out the company:
Placards drew attention to not only the planetary costs of Drax’s pollution, but the health impacts, especially for sidelined communities:
Reclaim the Power, who were organising for the camp added:
The miniscule size of the spot designated for protest shows the ridiculousness of Drax and the police claiming to ‘support peaceful protest’. They knew hundreds of people wanted to come to a peaceful protest, so arresting nearly 30 people and taking kit needed to make the event safe and accessible is not exactly supportive is it?
Patronising Codswallop that our concerns are ‘misguided’ is going unchallenged because Drax are too afraid that if we actually get to let more people know what is happening they won’t be funded to continue burning millions of trees, belching out huge carbon emissions and poisoning small communities in the US.
A protester travelling from the Sheffield area said:
People need to know public money is funding enormous environmental damage and decimating the health of small communities living beside their poisonous pellet production plants. If they aren’t afraid of people speaking out, let us speak out.
Climate protesters ‘will not be silenced’
And if Drax thought that was the end of it, the climate criminal had another thing coming.
On Monday 12 August, Reclaim the Power staged a blockade of Drax’s public relations machine.
As the Canary has previously detailed, through this, the biomass giant greenwashes its image. For instance, on International Day of Forests 2024, Drax released its annual report and it was chock-full of greenwashing:
Euphemistically titled Committed to the world’s energy transition, the document boasts a series of the company’s supposed environmental credentials.
Throughout, Drax has greenwashed its UK power plant operations in sections on its purported climate and nature “positive” impacts.
In a nutshell, it routinely presents its gargantuan carbon emissions, the burning of vital trees, and poisoning of local communities as ‘green energy’.
So, Reclaim the Power activists flooded the inboxes and jammed the phone lines of the climate-complicit company. In just two hours, it filled Drax’s inbox with over seven thousand emails. They continued this mass disruption action of Drax’s core communications throughout the working day.
Reclaim the Power told the Canary:
This is not an action against the Drax workers, but instead a strategic blockade of the PR machine that paints the single biggest carbon emitter in the UK as green. Drax has been working around the clock to suppress the truth and repress protest. Drax and the Police may have prevented our peaceful camp from going ahead, but we will not be silenced. We know that we are going up against a massive PR campaign propped up by billions in public subsidies but we can still make our voices heard.
Featured image and additional images via Reclaim the Power
