BBC very late to the party here, drax being quite literally insane was in private eye five, maybe six years ago, and even this article doesn’t capture the full insanity.
Not only are we calling driving deforestation renewable, but:
Wood pellet power stations emit more co2 per megawatt than coal.
The co2 emitted isn’t fully re-absorbed for 40-100 years.
Wood pellets have half the energy density of coal, requiring twice as many cargo ships – all fossil powered – to transport the fuel.
For wood pellets to provide a couple more percent of global energy, deforestation would need to double. It is absolutely un-scalable.
And if you stick carbon capture on a biomass plant burning wood pellets, you might become carbon-neutral (if the carbon capture works, which isn’t certain), the system becomes an **energy sink**, not an energy source. The energy consumption of the growing, cutting, processing, transport of the biomass + the cooling, compressing, and transport of the co2 uses **more energy than the biomass power plant generates**.
The UK has been crowing about getting rid of coal, we actually did it in the laziest, easiest way possible – which, despite the accountants calling it carbon neutral, is actually *accelerating* the problem, especially in the short term.
Biomass is absolute insanity.
Drax shouldn’t be allowed to import any fuel, if it can’t get what it needs from UK waste or actually sustainable biomass it shouldn’t be operating.
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BBC very late to the party here, drax being quite literally insane was in private eye five, maybe six years ago, and even this article doesn’t capture the full insanity.
Not only are we calling driving deforestation renewable, but:
Wood pellet power stations emit more co2 per megawatt than coal.
The co2 emitted isn’t fully re-absorbed for 40-100 years.
Wood pellets have half the energy density of coal, requiring twice as many cargo ships – all fossil powered – to transport the fuel.
For wood pellets to provide a couple more percent of global energy, deforestation would need to double. It is absolutely un-scalable.
And if you stick carbon capture on a biomass plant burning wood pellets, you might become carbon-neutral (if the carbon capture works, which isn’t certain), the system becomes an **energy sink**, not an energy source. The energy consumption of the growing, cutting, processing, transport of the biomass + the cooling, compressing, and transport of the co2 uses **more energy than the biomass power plant generates**.
The UK has been crowing about getting rid of coal, we actually did it in the laziest, easiest way possible – which, despite the accountants calling it carbon neutral, is actually *accelerating* the problem, especially in the short term.
Biomass is absolute insanity.
Drax shouldn’t be allowed to import any fuel, if it can’t get what it needs from UK waste or actually sustainable biomass it shouldn’t be operating.