Drax is the UK’s single biggest carbon emitter and the world's largest tree burner. The International Day of Action against Big Biomass is an opportunity to stand with frontline communities, whilst letting the public know how Drax harms people and the planet for profit. It’s important to understand these issues in terms of the impact on communities abroad and as part of wider systemic injustices against marginalised communities. Building these international links strengthens our movement and can help build the power we need to justly and equitably address the climate crisis.

Drax is also an international test case for unproven technology known as BECCS (Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage). Drax claims that through BECCS they will be able to capture and store carbon from their smokestack. However, there is zero real world evidence that BECCS can capture more than 2.5 hours of emissions annually. BECCS features heavily in international carbon emission mitigation pathways endorsed by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Drax is lobbying the government for £billions of public money to fund BECCS. If legitimised by our government, many more countries could lock their economies into dirty tree burning energy for decades to come with disastrous impacts across the world, particularly for low income communities.

Conference of the Parties 28 (COP 28) will take place in November. The IDOA is a chance to put pressure on international policymakers to neglect biomass, BECCS and other false solutions in favour of cleaner energy sources.