The government has agreed a new subsidy arrangement with the controversial wood-burning Drax power station in north Yorkshire.
The power station, a converted coal plant, generates about 5% of the UK’s electricity and has received billions of pounds from the government and bill-payers because burning wood pellets – or biomass – is classed as a source of renewable energy.
Though there are plans to eventually capture the carbon emitted from Drax, its emissions are currently unabated, with critics of the power station calling it one of the UK’s leading emitters of the climate warming gas CO2.
The agreement will run from 2027 to 2031 and will see the power station be used as a back-up to cheaper renewable sources of power.
The government says that will mean that when there’s lots of wind and solar, Drax won’t run at all and predicts that this will halve the amount the plant receives in subsidies.
Michael Shanks, the Minister of Energy, said the previous subsidy arrangement had allowed Drax to make “unacceptably large profits” and that the new deal would be a “step change in value for money and sustainability”.
A “clawback mechanism” in the new arrangement is designed to stop Drax making excessive profits if electricity prices rise steeply.
In a statement, Drax said the the new mechanism would represent a “net saving” for consumers and quoted analysis which suggested it would cut electricity system costs by between £1.6bn and £3.1bn a year
The new agreement also states that 100% of the wood pellets Drax burns must be “sustainably sourced” and that “material sourced from primary and old growth forests” will not be able to receive support payments.
All the pellets Drax burns are imported, with most of them coming from the USA and Canada.
BBC Panorama and BBC News has previously reported that Drax held logging licences in British Columbia, Canada, and used wood, including whole trees, from primary and old-growth forests for its pellets.
The company says it does not own forests or sawmills, no longer bids for logging licences and has stopped sourcing wood from some sites, where the British Columbia government has asked companies to pause further logging.
Article by:Source:
