‘Green’ Tories pressure Coutinho to block fresh subsidies for Drax
THE Energy Secretary is facing a revolt from green Tories over plans to approve millions of pounds in subsidies for Drax, the controversial wood-burning power station.
Claire Coutinho will this week decide if Drax is allowed to retrofit carbon capture plants on to generating units responsible for burning 8m tons of wood every year. Her decision will be followed by a consultation on whether a bill payer-backed subsidy scheme that last year earned Drax £617m will continue.
Drax claims carbon storage plants would make it the world’s first carbon-negative power station – meaning it removes more CO2 from the air than it produces. It has published research commissioned from Baringa, an independent consultancy, that suggests the plant would strip 8m tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually.
Baringa’s report said: “Drax provides the only credible option for large-scale, near-term carbon removals – converting two boiler units would remove 8m tons of CO2 a year, roughly equivalent to cancelling all departing flights from Heathrow for a year.”
However, Tory MPS have criticised plans to continue subsidies for Drax. Peter Bottomley said: “The proposed technology is not proven. There must be no further subsidies for burning trees ... beyond current 2027 contracts.
“The Government should instead focus on increasing tree cover and backing wind, solar and nuclear energy.”
Schemes such as Drax’s, known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or Beccs, are highly controversial because green groups argue that cutting down forests to generate electricity ruins the environment.
Beccs is based on the idea that as trees grow they capture CO2 from the air. If they are burned then that C02 is released back into the air so there is no overall change. However, if that CO2 is captured and buried underground, as Drax proposes, then it is removed from the atmosphere permanently – potentially making Drax carbon negative.
Will Gardiner, the chief executive of Drax, said the Baringa research shows how it “offers the most cost-effective, straightforward and efficient way to help the country meet climate targets”.
He added that it “could save billions of pounds [and] remove millions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere”. Drax once used coal but now relies on wood imported mainly from US forests after the UK deemed the fossil fuel to be too environmentally damaging. Using wood also enabled Drax to claim green energy subsidies through renewable obligation certificates (ROCS) under which Drax gets around £51 per megawatt hour – significantly cheaper than most offshore wind and less than half the subsidies earmarked for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station when it starts operating towards 2030.
ROCS are, however, due to expire in 2027 – and Drax’s carbon capture units, which would be eligible for other subsidies, will not be installed until 2030.
This means the power station in North Yorkshire needs a “bridging subsidy”.
Another Tory MP, Selaine Saxby, said: “There are serious questions about whether burning wood pellets for energy is truly sustainable and whether the increase in consumers’ energy bills is justified. Until those questions can be satisfactorily answered, many conservatives will rightly ask whether agreeing to billions of pounds more in subsidies represents value for money.”
A spokesman for Drax said: “Our investment in this scheme could deliver up to 10,000 high-skilled jobs across the UK at the peak of the project’s construction, as well as safeguarding up to 7,000 direct and supply chain jobs.”