From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Drax, once the UK’s dirtiest coal-fired power station, is set to stoke renewed controversy as ministers prepare to approve a multibillion-pound CO2 capture scheme it claims would make it “carbon negative”.
The scheme has infuriated greens already angered by Drax’s switch from coal to wood – burning eight million tonnes last year alone. They say Drax’s clear-cutting of forests in North America destroys the environment rather than supporting it.
Next week, however, Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho is expected to secure Drax’s future by approving a scheme to bolt two massive carbon capture plants onto Drax’s four generating units, potentially stripping out almost all their CO2 emissions.
Drax claims the scheme will allow it to remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than it produces – making it the world’s first carbon negative thermal power station. Greens claim it will destroy forests and cost consumers billions of pounds.
Ms Coutinho is also due to launch a consultation into how best to extend the subsidy system under which Drax last year received £617m from consumer bills. The scheme terminates in 2027 so Coutinho will propose extending it into at least the 2030s, keeping Drax in business for at least several years.
Schemes like Drax’s, known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or Beccs, are highly controversial – green groups argue that cutting down forests to generate electricity destroys the environment rather than protecting it.
Drax produces about 4pc of the UK’s electricity so ministers are keen to protect it on energy security grounds too.
The idea underpinning Beccs schemes is that as plants and trees grow they capture CO2 from the air via photosynthesis.
If they are burned then that CO2 is released back into the air so there is no overall loss or gain. This means wood-burning on its own can be described as “low carbon”.
However, if the CO2 from burning wood is captured and permanently buried underground, as Drax proposes, then the process actually removes CO2 from the atmosphere permanently. This would make it “carbon negative”.
Such claims infuriate environmentalists and Drax’s plans have been opposed by Friends of the Earth, Client Earth and Ember. They say that despite changing from coal to wood Drax remains the UK’s largest single source of CO2 emissions at more than 13 million tonnes a year.
Tomos Harrison, an analyst at global energy think tank Ember, said: “UK energy bill-payers have already paid billions to Drax to burn wood for electricity, a practice which is unlikely to reduce the UK’s contribution to climate change and could actually be increasing it.
“Beccs is an unproven and controversial technology that cannot be guaranteed to deliver negative emissions and will cost bill-payers even more.
“Instead of continuing support for wood-burning in the UK we should be investing in wind and solar which bring down energy bills and make a genuine positive contribution to the UK’s climate change efforts.”
I can’t describe it better then the Greens – it’s doubling down on destroying virgin forests in North America, it’s massively expensive, and it may not even work.
Drax alone are talking of investing billions, and on top of that comes the costs of piping it all away to the North Sea. We already know that Carbon Capture plants require a lot of energy to work, meaning that much of Drax’s electricity will be wasted in the process.
Simply extending the existing subsidy schemes for another 15 years, which will the very least Drax will demand, will cost £10 billion. All of this will end up being added to our energy bills.
And for what? Even if it works perfectly, carbon capture will only save 4% of the UK’s emissions, some 15 million tonnes a year or so. A mere drip in the ocean of the world’s total emissions.
