THIS IS THE MADDEST NET ZERO SUBSIDY OF ALL

OF ALL the costly idiocies perpetrated in the cause of making the UK a ‘net zero carbon’ economy, nothing can match the subsidies being paid to the shareholders of the Drax power station business.

Over the past eight years, these shareholders have received almost £6 billion to finance the burning of colossal quantities of wood pellets, which are first shipped across the Atlantic from the forests of the U.S. and Canada.

This grotesque trade gains Whitehall benediction because of an accounting sleight-of-hand.

The colossal CO2 emissions from wood burning are attributed to the ‘carbon budget’ of the countries where the trees are grown, rather than here where they are incinerated.

Last week, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero put up for ‘consultation’ a proposal that these subsidies will continue beyond 2027 (when they were set to end), on the basis that at some point in the 2030s Drax will develop something called Biomass Carbon Capture and Storage.

Drax claim this future technology will allow it to bury a portion of the emissions somewhere under the North Sea. But as the Department itself admits, this technology is ‘ unproven at scale’. Obviously we, the public who would be funding the continued billions of subsidies, don’t get a proper say in this consultation, which closes at the end of next month.

But thanks to a survey of 1,000 British adults carried out last week by the pollsters Appinio — the results of which were sent to me over the weekend — I can hereby inform the Government what the public might choose, given the opportunity.

So, 74 per cent agreed — and only 7 per cent disagreed —

with the statement that ‘burning imported wood in our power stations is no way to fight climate change’.

And 67 per cent agreed (five per cent disagreed) with the statement that ‘Drax is an example of crony capitalism in which companies use close relationships with Government to get big subsidies.’

As an Insitute of Economic Affairs report ( Trees for Burning) pointed out last week, our gas-fired power stations produce far less CO2 emissions per unit of energy than wood-burning — and require no subsidies.

But those power stations are doomed under the same bizarre ‘UK Net Zero’ strategy. The word ‘madness’ does not even begin to cover it.