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Then there is Drax a vast coal plant now burning wood chips cut from foreign forests, dried and shipped across the ocean in bunker oil fueled cargo ships. That
by gandalfian 2y ago
Then there is Drax a vast coal plant now burning wood chips cut from foreign forests, dried and shipped across the ocean in bunker oil fueled cargo ships. That counts as renewables. 7% of our electricity today, more than solar. I am actually very optimistic about the future in ten years of so. I think we oversell the present a bit though.
- mhandley 2y agoI'm not a fan of Drax (is anyone?), but I guess the alternative is worse, at least for now. In the short term, the marginal alternative is LNG, also shipped in oil-fueled cargo ships. So as we continue to build out wind and solar and reduce the amount of natural gas we burn, it's probably good to keep Drax on biomass. But it shouldn't be a long term solution.
- newpavlov 2y ago>the marginal alternative is LNG, also shipped in oil-fueled cargo ships LNG ships are usually fueled by natural gas evaporated from its liquefied payload, which is much cleaner than burning diesel.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoThe energy used to chill the LNG and methane leaks are the big question marks as to whether LNG is better or worse than coal. So it's far from a slam dunk that it'll be better than biomass.
- blitzar 2y agoLooking around at how much garbage people dump in the streets I am sure we could chuck some of that in Drax and close the loop a bit.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoDrax is less than 4% of electricity now, it's been steadily dropping: https://ember-climate.org/insights/in-brief/the-largest-emitters-in-the-uk-annual-review/ https://ember-climate.org/insights/in-brief/the-largest-emit... So lower than solar now (which has been growing).