4 ms·

Biomass power station produced 4 times emissions of UK coal plant, says report

5 points by zeristor 2y ago

reify 2y ago
Its not just the obscene use of bio mass (wood pellets) to run power stations. The company is burning more wood than any other power station in the world. As well as receivig vast subsidies from the Government in addition to the £2.36 million a day it already receives for burning biomass. Cutting down prime forest timber to make the wood pellets and make a profit. Then there is the cost of shipping all that fine wood to Airstrip One from the other side of the atlantic. Drax has won the support of the government thanks to claims that its generation is “carbon neutral” because the trees that are felled to produce its wood pellets absorb as much carbon dioxide while they grow as they emit when they are burned in its power plant. I have read some bollocks in my time but that comes a clear first. The FTSE 100 owner of the Drax power plant made profits of £500m over the first half of this year, helped by biomass subsidies of almost £400m over this period. It handed its shareholders a windfall of £300m for the first half of the year.
- audunw 2y ago
  As someone who didn’t know anything about this power station I thought maybe it was built from the start as a biomass power station. But it seems that it’s a huge coal power plant that has been converted to biomass? This seems to me like the lesser of two evils as long as there is any coal/gas/oil left on the grid, and as long as there’s enough pressure to make sure the wood pellet production is somewhat sustainable (perfection in that area isn’t realistic though) It seems like they don’t have incinerators that are suitable for burning waste. But I suppose the long term plan should be to convert the plant to burning waste instead. Unless they plan to just shut it down when the rest of the grid is 100% renewable + nuclear. Waste burning IMO is great. Yeah, reduce, reuse, recycle first. But sooner or later everything gets so degraded that burning is the best option. Especially in the north where the waste heat can be used. It’s also the only way I can see that we can slowly extract and eliminate heavy metals, PFAS and such from the environment. If the entire humanity’s material stream t passes through an incinerator with good filtering, then humanity will act like a giant filter hopefully undoing some of the damages we done over the next centuries.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
I'm mildly supportive of biomass (and trash) burning as a part of the energy system, as a continually shrinking fraction as cheap renewables roll out. It's apparently eco enough that the Guardian needs to use some dodgy comparisons to make it look bad: > Drax produced four times more carbon dioxide than the UK’s last remaining coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, which is due to close in September. Drax also produced more emissions last year than the next four most polluting power plants in the UK combined, according to the report. These plants, biomass and coal, produce CO2 when they burn stuff. The plant that is still running is going to generate more than the one that's in the process of shutting down. Similarly, 1 big plant will generate more CO2 than 1 small plant. It will probably be more efficient and cheaper and probably cleaner than multiple small plants generating the same amount of energy though. Drax is a very big plant. This is fairly basic stuff. I think biomass does actually produce more CO2 per kWh than coal, so there's a slightly more respectable stat they could have used. But it's close enough that if you give biomass any credit for avoiding rotten wood emitting methane or capturing CO2 then it might win. They're definitely not as clean and green as renewables, and we should be tilting things towards rolling those out and phasing these out, but as noted by the article we've only just phased out coal. It's sadly one of those areas where the eco-purists at the Guardian can provide fodder for the climate denial element of HN where they can be performatively outraged by any kind of green policy that they can possibly misconstrue. Ban plastic straws because a turtle gets one stuck up it's nose and you'll never stop hearing about how this hasn't solved climate change for example. Back to biomass, the other misdirection you see is people who want to ban old growth logging (an issue on which I broadly agree) pointing to a forest cut down primarily for timber and connecting it to biomass, because timber production doesn't tap into the climate denial hysteria. Probably a smart move if all you care about is getting your logging story into a newspaper, but just as dishonest as the misleading stats quoted above.

5 points by zeristor 2y ago

Its not just the obscene use of bio mass (wood pellets) to run power stations. The company is burning more wood than any other power station in the world. As well as receivig vast subsidies from the Government in addition to the £2.36 million a day it already receives for burning biomass. Cutting down prime forest timber to make the wood pellets and make a profit. Then there is the cost of shipping all that fine wood to Airstrip One from the other side of the atlantic. Drax has won the support of the government thanks to claims that its generation is “carbon neutral” because the trees that are felled to produce its wood pellets absorb as much carbon dioxide while they grow as they emit when they are burned in its power plant. I have read some bollocks in my time but that comes a clear first. The FTSE 100 owner of the Drax power plant made profits of £500m over the first half of this year, helped by biomass subsidies of almost £400m over this period. It handed its shareholders a windfall of £300m for the first half of the year.

audunw 2y ago
As someone who didn’t know anything about this power station I thought maybe it was built from the start as a biomass power station. But it seems that it’s a huge coal power plant that has been converted to biomass? This seems to me like the lesser of two evils as long as there is any coal/gas/oil left on the grid, and as long as there’s enough pressure to make sure the wood pellet production is somewhat sustainable (perfection in that area isn’t realistic though) It seems like they don’t have incinerators that are suitable for burning waste. But I suppose the long term plan should be to convert the plant to burning waste instead. Unless they plan to just shut it down when the rest of the grid is 100% renewable + nuclear. Waste burning IMO is great. Yeah, reduce, reuse, recycle first. But sooner or later everything gets so degraded that burning is the best option. Especially in the north where the waste heat can be used. It’s also the only way I can see that we can slowly extract and eliminate heavy metals, PFAS and such from the environment. If the entire humanity’s material stream t passes through an incinerator with good filtering, then humanity will act like a giant filter hopefully undoing some of the damages we done over the next centuries.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

I'm mildly supportive of biomass (and trash) burning as a part of the energy system, as a continually shrinking fraction as cheap renewables roll out. It's apparently eco enough that the Guardian needs to use some dodgy comparisons to make it look bad: > Drax produced four times more carbon dioxide than the UK’s last remaining coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, which is due to close in September. Drax also produced more emissions last year than the next four most polluting power plants in the UK combined, according to the report. These plants, biomass and coal, produce CO2 when they burn stuff. The plant that is still running is going to generate more than the one that's in the process of shutting down. Similarly, 1 big plant will generate more CO2 than 1 small plant. It will probably be more efficient and cheaper and probably cleaner than multiple small plants generating the same amount of energy though. Drax is a very big plant. This is fairly basic stuff. I think biomass does actually produce more CO2 per kWh than coal, so there's a slightly more respectable stat they could have used. But it's close enough that if you give biomass any credit for avoiding rotten wood emitting methane or capturing CO2 then it might win. They're definitely not as clean and green as renewables, and we should be tilting things towards rolling those out and phasing these out, but as noted by the article we've only just phased out coal. It's sadly one of those areas where the eco-purists at the Guardian can provide fodder for the climate denial element of HN where they can be performatively outraged by any kind of green policy that they can possibly misconstrue. Ban plastic straws because a turtle gets one stuck up it's nose and you'll never stop hearing about how this hasn't solved climate change for example. Back to biomass, the other misdirection you see is people who want to ban old growth logging (an issue on which I broadly agree) pointing to a forest cut down primarily for timber and connecting it to biomass, because timber production doesn't tap into the climate denial hysteria. Probably a smart move if all you care about is getting your logging story into a newspaper, but just as dishonest as the misleading stats quoted above.