Regional power giant Drax has welcomed a key report from the Climate Change Committee calling for greater pace from government to deliver on Net Zero targets.
Progress in Reducing UK Emissions - 2023, has called for specific policy to support the development of carbon removals projects. Drax is the western anchor for the huge plan to link heavy industry across the Humber with pipelines to transport to storage the captured harmful emissions, while providing hydrogen to enable clean fuel switching. But it was not backed in the first round of cluster sequencing this spring, despite strong calls to start in the heaviest polluting region.
It aims to invest billions either side of the Atlantic, as it presses on with the end of coal-firing at the huge plant, where biomass has become the feedstock over the past decade. Major US plans were outlined last month. The company has also confirmed coal will not be available this winter as decommissioning work continues.
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Drax Group chief executive, Will Gardiner, said: “The CCC’s report is welcome as it is a holistic view of the scale of the challenge facing us all in reaching Net Zero, as well as acknowledging the vital role that carbon removals technologies like bioenergy with carbon capture and storage will play in getting us there. We support its recommendation that faster progress is needed to reach the UK’s ambitious carbon removals targets.
“With the right support from the UK Government, we plan to invest billions into delivering BECCS at our power station in Yorkshire. Our formal discussions with the UK Government on BECCS deployment and parallel discussions about a ‘bridging mechanism’ to support the transition to BECCS have been productive and we are looking forward to continuing these in the coming months.
“We also await the publication of the UK Government’s biomass strategy, which we hope will reinforce the critical role that BECCS will play in energy security and decarbonisation, as well as timelines for the deployment of initial BECCS projects in the UK.”
The coal announcement covering the remaining two units follows a recent request by National Grid ESO to explore the possibility of extending fossil fuel generation at Drax. It said a combination of technical, maintenance and staffing reasons, meant the extension of coal over this winter was not possible.
The company first announced in April that after almost 50 years of coal power generation at Drax Power Station, its coal units would close, having been given a stay of execution due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine putting a squeeze on imported gas.
