{"id":533552,"date":"2026-04-16T05:29:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T05:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/533552\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T05:29:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T05:29:14","slug":"1bn-but-falling-record-subsidy-for-uk-biomass-burning-enters-final-year-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/533552\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00a31bn but falling Record subsidy for UK biomass burning enters final year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ember analysis of Drax\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.drax.com\/financial-news\/full-year-results-for-the-twelve-months-ended-31-december-2025\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2025 financial reporting<\/a> shows that public subsidies reached \u00a3999 million in 2025. This marks a record level for payments to Drax, attributable to high-emitting power generation at the Drax biomass power station.<\/p>\n<p>Drax power station is the <a href=\"https:\/\/ember-energy.org\/latest-insights\/drax-is-still-the-uks-largest-emitter\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UK\u2019s largest emitter<\/a>. However, because it burns woody biomass, Drax\u2019s emissions are \u2018zero-rated\u2019 in carbon accounting, making the company eligible for public payments. Subsidies are distributed through two schemes: the Renewables Obligation (RO), which covers three of the four generating units at Drax power station (\u00a3728 million in 2025), and Contracts for Difference (CfD) payments for the remaining units (\u00a3271 million).<\/p>\n<p>Public subsidies in 2025 were \u00a3130 million higher compared with 2024 (+15%). This was partly due to a 2% increase in generation, but largely due to the rising value of payments under the Renewables Obligation subsidy scheme, which have increased by 10% for two consecutive years.<\/p>\n<p>Building on this upward trend, the daily value of Drax\u2019s subsidy payments climbed in 2025 to \u00a32.7 million per day \u2013 costing every British household over \u00a313 per year. This value is set to fall by around half as some subsidies are planned to be phased out, but will still cost households around \u00a36 per year from early 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ember analysis of Drax\u2019s 2025 financial reporting shows that public subsidies reached \u00a3999 million in 2025. This marks&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-533552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}