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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

by 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.

by reify 2y ago

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.