Drax Power Station aerial view. (Credit: Drax Group)
U.K. energy secretary Ed Davey has opened the country’s largest renewable electricity generator at Drax Power Station, the largest coal power plant in the UK. According to the earlier announcements made by the Drax Group, three of the station’s six units will be converted to full firing with biomass.
Drax Power Station is a large coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire, England, capable of co-firing biomass and petcoke, and its name comes from the nearby village of Drax. Its generating capacity of 3,960 megawatts is the highest of any power station in the United Kingdom and Western Europe, providing roughly 7% of the United Kingdom’s electricity supply.
At Drax Power Station, the £700 million ($1,146 million) planned conversion project will burn wood pellets (largely imported from the United States and Canada) rather than coal. Drax calculates that this will reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent compared to coal. According to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the facilities opened yesterday will provide enough low carbon power to supply the equivalent of around 1 million homes, and help to safeguard 1,200 jobs and many more in the supply chain and in local communities.
“Our coal industry has powered Britain for more than a century, and today we’re seeing a clear roadmap for its future—whether by converting existing coal plants to cleaner fuels, or building state-of-the-art power stations that mean coal is truly clean. While at the same time creating new green jobs for Yorkshire,” said Ed Davey.
According to the DECC, old and polluting coal plants are being phased out and will be replaced by 2030 with clean coal or sustainably sourced biomass that has been fitted with carbon capture storage (CCS) technology. They expect up to 12GW of CCS could be deployed by 2030, rising to 40GW by 2050. This could well be generating more electricity than total domestic electricity demand, and provide 22% of the UK’s energy by 2050.
Last week we reported on a research done at the Pennsylvania State University that suggests it is possible for some companies in the US to economically convert their operations to wood power.
