Drax a green washing 'con'?

[richyrich]

‘Green’ Tories attempt to block funding for Drax carbon capture project

WWW.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

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Three MPs criticise plans to continue subsidising a wood-burning plant

 

[Steven P]

I couldn't read the full article, but knowing The Telegraph that unless your Jacob Rees Mogg you're views won't be the same as theirs. Guessing the article is suggesting anything 'green' is bad, ("Green Tories" being the enemy of the piece?)

[Pete Mctree]

There was a Panorama program about it and even the BBC conceded that it was an unmitigated disaster. If I remember correctly, it is so inefficient that the emissions and associated carbon produced would be reduced if it was reverted to coal. 
 

It is a typical greenwashing exercise ☹️

[NJA]

Whoever thought burning wood on that scale was an efficient way to create power?  We'll never run out of British coal what's wrong with burning that?

[GarethM]

Or atleast use the rail network to move woodchip instead of wood pellets from the USA & Canada.

[sime42]

I read this article recently, and felt glad that some people are seeing sense on the whole biomass and carbon capture thing.

 

I could never see the sense in cutting down trees, to then transport them half way around the world, to then burn them so as to bury the resulting carbon underground. All in the name of "reducing" emissions. Only governments could buy into such nonsense.

 

The EU and UK are backing the wrong horse in the race to net zero

WWW.EURONEWS.COM

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There’s nothing about taking the decades-old carbon stored in a tree and parking it belowground that will deliver “negative...

 

[MattyF]

I don’t even know where to start … but how can importing millions of tonnes of timber from the other side of the world with heavy oil burning ships .. cutting down our own forests and others to supply the demand for biomass at a rate that’s not sustainable and driving up the price of timber to the point saw mills shut… whilst at the same time not replanting with soft woods and focusing on rewilding with hard woods .. it’s a disaster, absolute shambles.

when they planned the biomass at cramlington they asked the FC if keilder would be able to meet the demand for it , I know the the harvesting manager at the time and he said there was absolutely no way … they went ahead any way. 
Green incentives to be payed to kill off the last of the forestry industry so we have to import all our timber ?  

[openspaceman]

 

 

12 hours ago, MattyF said:

but how can importing millions of tonnes of timber from the other side of the world with heavy oil burning ships ..

This is a lesser worry for me as shipping is so efficient per tonne mile and I don't think UK could supply the demand, let alone manufactur the pellets. Drax is a coal fired design and pellets can be crushed and blown in in much the same way coal was, so it re uses the power station which otherwise would be demolished. Radcliff is the only other coal fired power station, running flat out atm but that will be gone next year. The thing is the 3GW Drax produces becomes insignificant (although currently essentail) in the face of 20GW of wind and 6GW of solar PV for most of the year. It is the current hungry gap that is the problem where we are dependent on 25GW of gas.

 

Quote

… whilst at the same time not replanting with soft woods and focusing on rewilding with hard woods .. it’s a disaster, absolute shambles
Green incentives to be payed to kill off the last of the forestry industry so we have to import all our timber ?  

We have imported the vast bulk of our wood since before Nelson's time which was fine when we could rip off our colonies and therein lies the problem of why our leaders' business culture has never managed to adapt to the competitive world we live in.

 

Re wilding is becoming a worry, it all seems to be grant dependent, and it detracts from food as well as timber production.

 

It looks like the latest problems with pesticides for break crops will lead to farmers accepting public money to not plant 30% of arable which would previously been down to wheat the next year. We already import over 50% of our food and a lot of that is wheat. With the war in Ukraine, a big wheat producer, disrupting exports we will be buying it from the global market and affecting the supply to poorer countries.

[Muddy42]

As was seen by last year's Ukraine war gas shock, the UK no longer has a joined up energy strategy.  I support renewables as an experiment, but there has been insufficient thought for when its not sunny/wet/windy.

 

I can see the sense of burning low value grades of timber, even importing it but the problem is that things can go too far.  Pretty much the only commercially viable timber of scale is Sitka Spruce which leaves the understory looking like this.  No biodiversity, no amenity value, acidifies watercourses, cuts up peat layers etc.

 

 

Carbon policy has exacerbated planting because one of the easiest ways to get carbon credits is converting pasture (where no carbon sequestration is recognized as yet) to woodland. Some of the recent prices paid for upland land that might be planted has been insane. 

 

Edited January 17 by Muddy42

[openspaceman]

2 hours ago, Muddy42 said:

I support renewables as an experiment, but there has been insufficient thought for when its not sunny/wet/windy.

Which is a problem about 10 days a year around now, as I said we are burning coal and gas today as well as the Drax pellets. Drax burns 7.5 million tonnes of dry pellets a year, I think our total harvest of wood is only 13 million tonnes of green wood.

 

We lost production from 3 nuclear power stations since Xmas which exacerbated the problem.

 

A lot more foreign owned wind turbines are coming online this year to add to the french government owned nuclear power stations. I wonder how French prices for electricity compare with ours?

 

Yes storage is a bottleneck to more renewables as are new electricity grid lines