Drax the largest CO2 emitter 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, Jillian Ambrose the Guardian’s correspondence reported on 9 August.
The power station near Selby in North Yorkshire 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 think-tank Ember. The figures show that Drax – the largest UK CO2 emitter, 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 scheduled 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.
In April 2023 Drax announced that almost 50 years of power generation from coal at North Yorkshire power station had finally come to an end. It was once Western Europe’s largest coal-fired power station but was transformed into the UK’s single- largest generator of renewable electricity.
Drax has plans to fit carbon-capture technology using more subsidies, to create a “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage” (BECCS) project and become the first carbon negative power plant in the world by the end of the decade.
A spokesperson for the company dismissed the think-tank’s findings as “flawed” and accused its authors of ignoring its “widely accepted and internationally recognised approach to carbon accounting”
A government spokesperson said the report “fundamentally misrepresents” how biomass emissions are measured saying that “the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change is clear that biomass sourced in line with strict sustainability criteria can be used as a low-carbon source of energy. We will continue to monitor biomass electricity generation to ensure it meets required standards,” the spokesman said.
Meanwhile Reclaim the Power reports that in the early hours of Thursday 8 August, over 20 people were pre-emptively arrested in a mass police operation, with equipment for the Reclaim the Power camp also seized. Items seized include tents, toilets, wheelchair accessible flooring, kitchen equipment and other key logistical equipment for the camp near Drax power station (reported by the BBC).
Reclaim the Power claims that following the arrest there were house raids across the UK, multiple vehicles seized, and over 40 hours passed from first arrest to last release with arbitrary custody extensions. Not only has every bit of kit been seized, but over 20 people potentially face the torturous court and criminal system. People have lost the devices and tech they need for work, and have been given bail conditions that mean it is impossible to collect their vehicles. The North Yorkshire Police report of the incident is here.