"Sustinable" Biomass Plant Produces 4X CO2 Of UK's Last Coal Plant, More Than Next 4 Most Polluting Plants Combined

[hatrack]

The Drax power station was responsible for four times more carbon emissions than the UK’s last remaining coal-fired plant last year, despite taking more than £0.5bn in clean-energy subsidies in 2023, according to a report. The North Yorkshire power plant, which burns wood pellets imported from North America to generate electricity, was revealed as Britain’s single largest carbon emitter in 2023 by a report from the climate thinktank Ember.

The figures show that Drax, which has received billions in subsidies since it began switching from coal to biomass in 2012, was responsible for 11.5m tonnes of CO2 last year, or nearly 3% of the UK’s total carbon emissions. 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.

Frankie Mayo, an analyst at Ember, said: “Burning wood pellets can be as bad for the environment as coal; supporting biomass with subsidies is a costly mistake.”

The company has claimed almost £7bn from British energy bills to support its biomass generation since 2012, even though burning wood pellets for power generation releases more emissions for each unit of electricity generated than burning gas or coal, according to Ember and many scientists. In 2023, the period covered by the Ember report, it received £539m.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/09/biomass-power-station-produced-four-times-emissions-of-uk-coal-plant-says-report

[Blues Heron]

1. The coal-based CO2 is carbon from millions of years ago so its an addition to the current carbon budget

whereas biomass simply returns carbon taken up by the biomass relatively recently so not affecting the overall carbon budget.Its misleading to just compare the amount of CO2 without talking about the source of the actual carbon and what it does to the earths carbon cycle.

[NNadir]

2. One of the obvious things overlooked by apologists for this sort of thing is kinetics.

Kinetics is a science about rates. Apologists for these kinds of things simply don't understand what this science implies.

The Drax plant, which relies on strip mining North American forests which took centuries to grow, which are going to burn anyway because reactionary fantasies about so called "renewable energy" has done nothing other than to make extreme global heating accelerate, relies on wood hauled across the ocean on diesel and bunker oil powered ships. That's hardly the half of it.

It is just another in a long list of crimes against the future of humanity being glibly and dishonestly presented as "sustainable." It is no such thing.

[hatrack]

3. Oh, but they only process downed and diseased timber for pellets!!!

[NNadir]

4. If one cannot lie, one cannot really be involved in marketing. The most abused word in energy marketing is "green."

It's how Drax is being sold, as "green," and obviously there are lots of people who buy it.

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. There's another aspect here

In the natural course of events, when a tree dies, it falls to the forest floor, where, over time, it is broken down by armies of bacteria, fungi, worms, beetles, even fire, and the nutrients it drew from the soil are returned to the soil. When a tree is cut down and taken from the forest, those nutrients are “lost” to the forest.