The owner of a wood-burning power station tried to “silence” a senior employee in a cover-up to prevent her concerns about its environmental credentials from becoming public, a tribunal heard.
Rowaa Ahmar accused Drax, which has received billions of pounds in government subsidies to create energy by burning biomass pellets, of trying to “deliberately conceal” damaging information about its operations.
The former civil servant claims that she was unfairly dismissed by the energy company months after setting out concerns to executives around its claimed use of sustainable wood. Environmentalists have long branded Drax a “green-energy scam”, arguing that the energy it creates from burning wood should not qualify as renewable.
JEZ COULSON FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
Ahmar joined Drax as its head lobbyist in 2022 shortly before a BBC documentary alleged that the company was cutting down old-growth forests in Canada to produce biomass pellets. She said the claims caused “chaos” at the firm, which produces about 5 per cent of the country’s electricity at its converted coal power station near Selby in North Yorkshire.
The output qualifies as renewable on the basis that trees absorb carbon as they grow, offsetting the carbon emitted when they are burnt.
After the documentary, Ahmar approached senior executives with concerns that the company could not prove it was using sustainable wood to make its biomass pellets. She had concluded that the FTSE 250 company was “unable to prove that it...
KINGSTON, Jamaica – Minister of Education Dana Morris Dixon has chided the parliamentary Opposition for what she describes as “baseless attacks” and “false allegations” against the Government’s Ru...