Drax disclosures

[dan_b]

Of course they should fully disclose their wood sourcing.
And of course their subsidies should be reviewed/reduced/axed.


https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ies-scheme

[Stinsy]

Of course they should fully disclose their wood sourcing.
And of course their subsidies should be reviewed/reduced/axed.


https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ies-scheme

I've said before that Drax is a S*tshow! Cutting down virgin forests thousands of miles away, processing the wood into pellets, kiln-drying it, then burning it in an old coal power station. Horrifically polluting, way worse than coal, but it pretends to be "carbon neutral".

All subsidised by the taxpayer to the tune of £1bn a year.

Absolute scandal!

How much wind/solar/hydro could've been built instead?

[dan_b]

I completely agree.

Wonder how much of Drax's utility on the grid now is the inertia it provides rather than the power it produces (which definitely isn't green)...

[Ken]

Probably a bit of dilema. The countries biggest power station on "trunk roads" of transmission and even the new interconnectors Scotland /England going there. A bit of a linch pin providing grid reserve/spinning stability. Lots of reasons to keep it going somehow perhaps.

[MikeNovack]

Cutting down virgin forests thousands of miles away, processing the wood into pellets, kiln-drying it, then burning it in an old coal power station. Horrifically polluting, way worse than coal, but it pretends to be "carbon neutral".

Bad, but it doesn't help to mis-state the issues. We don't want to give our enemies "gotchas".

a) Nowhere that I know of are "virgin forests" cut down for making wood pellets. Mind, there isn't a heck of a lot of virgin forest.

b) Actually, burning coal is much worse. You can rebind the Carbon of "biomass" in new growth but not long term stable. How stable is a matter of climate. Cold enough, but not so cold trees can't grow, can build up in the soil faster than rotting. Coal, on the other hand, is Carbon bound in a form stable in geologic time.

[dan_b]

Thing is point A is exactly what Drax is accused of - there was a BBC Panorama investigation into this back in 2022 - that the wood it was sourcing was virgin old wood forests, not plantation wood.
Also Drax has received multiple fines for the industrial processes it commissions to create the wood pellets for burning - these processes creating significantly higher levels of volatile organic compounds and other industrial pollutants.

The power station receives over £2million a day in government subsidies for its claimed "renewable" credentials. I

Cutting down virgin forests thousands of miles away, processing the wood into pellets, kiln-drying it, then burning it in an old coal power station. Horrifically polluting, way worse than coal, but it pretends to be "carbon neutral".

Bad, but it doesn't help to mis-state the issues. We don't want to give our enemies "gotchas".

a) Nowhere that I know of are "virgin forests" cut down for making wood pellets. Mind, there isn't a heck of a lot of virgin forest.

b) Actually, burning coal is much worse. You can rebind the Carbon of "biomass" in new growth but not long term stable. How stable is a matter of climate. Cold enough, but not so cold trees can't grow, can build up in the soil faster than rotting. Coal, on the other hand, is Carbon bound in a form stable in geologic time.

[Stinsy]

Cutting down virgin forests thousands of miles away, processing the wood into pellets, kiln-drying it, then burning it in an old coal power station. Horrifically polluting, way worse than coal, but it pretends to be "carbon neutral".

Bad, but it doesn't help to mis-state the issues. We don't want to give our enemies "gotchas".

a) Nowhere that I know of are "virgin forests" cut down for making wood pellets. Mind, there isn't a heck of a lot of virgin forest.

b) Actually, burning coal is much worse. You can rebind the Carbon of "biomass" in new growth but not long term stable. How stable is a matter of climate. Cold enough, but not so cold trees can't grow, can build up in the soil faster than rotting. Coal, on the other hand, is Carbon bound in a form stable in geologic time.

Sorry mate but you're incorrect. And your patronising tone makes you look a little silly too.

Drax has been repeatedly caught burning wood sourced from virgin forest:
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxnpzzjed1o
- https://www.sustainability-beat.co.uk/2 ... re-forest/
- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/busi ... 03871.html
- https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/dra ... -m2qwf9c88

DRAX has been found guilty on court and fined several times. They have also repeated falsified records and fought tooth and nail to prevent audits of their wood sourcing.

The truth is that DRAXs insatiable hunger for wood, c. 14million tonnes a year, cannot be provided sustainably.

Here is an in depth article explaining how DRAX is worse than coal: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insight ... than-coal/

Here is a newspaper article that is easier reading: https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ays-report

If you take a locally felled, naturally dried, log and burn it in your fireplace, then sure it can be carbon neutral. Especially if you use a battery chainsaw and electric splitter. However, as I said, DRAX is a s*hitshow or pollution and environmental damage dressed up as "green" to scam money from the British taxpayer.

[MikeNovack]

I have NOT been addressing the "bookkeeping" scam where a loophole in the Carbon accounting rules means that biomass harvested in one place but burned in another does not get counted properly. That's the most serious part of this (the real scam) that lets DRAX et al mis-calculate "green-ness" << not subtracting for the stored carbon in the trees being cut because cut in another place.

But let's look at mis-reading of articles:

a) Biomass worse than coal. YES, burning biomass is currently contributing more CO2 than burning coal. But that's simply because currently burning lots of biomass and very little coal. To say "biomass worse than coal" we should mean "firing any given plant using biomass worse than firing that same plant using coal" and not "firing any given plant using biomass worse than NOT firing that plant with coal (not firing it at all). The latter is of course trivially true, but not addressing biomass vs coal.

b) Where pellets come from. Yes there is production of wood pellets in western Canada, so I'll address that (the ones being made in the US not from "virgin forest"). Do you think the TRUNKS of nice old growth trees in BC are made into pellets (to sell for X per ton) or into lumber/plywood selling for Y/board foot). But when you fall trees, only so much is nice trunk. I live where trees are grown and harvested. The marketable trunks go for lumber, the "tops" get bucked for firewood (along with those trunks not marketable for lumber, bent, split, etc.). That's just economics.

NOW -- that is NOT saying that those tops shouldn't be left in the forest to rot, returning nutrients to the soil. Help the forest recover quicker. Where I live the forests are 3rd growth. I'm in a good climate for forest recovery. But they are mainly making pellets in the southern US, far less favorable for recovery, repeatedly harvesting young (re)growth just as has been done for paper making. No market size trunks in that.

PS -- immediately here the tax relief for land growing trees is really a tax deferment until the trees cut and the lumber sold. In other words, to get that tax reduction on the land you have to produce a "harvest plan". The town gets less tax every year in real estate tax but in exchange gets its cut at harvest time. That's why these 87 acres are not in "Chapter 61A" and I pay full tax on it. Nor can I shelter via the local land trusts because the only protected easement is "forever wild" (make NO use of it). They will agree to something in between "forever wild" and "any agriculture use" (which of course allows full harvest) if you make a huge endowment donation (to pay legal fees defending the special "in between" easement)

[Stinsy]

I have NOT been addressing the "bookkeeping" scam where a loophole in the Carbon accounting rules means that biomass harvested in one place but burned in another does not get counted properly. That's the most serious part of this (the real scam) that lets DRAX et al mis-calculate "green-ness" << not subtracting for the stored carbon in the trees being cut because cut in another place.

But let's look at mis-reading of articles:

a) Biomass worse than coal. YES, burning biomass is currently contributing more CO2 than burning coal. But that's simply because currently burning lots of biomass and very little coal. To say "biomass worse than coal" we should mean "firing any given plant using biomass worse than firing that same plant using coal" and not "firing any given plant using biomass worse than NOT firing that plant with coal (not firing it at all). The latter is of course trivially true, but not addressing biomass vs coal.

b) Where pellets come from. Yes there is production of wood pellets in western Canada, so I'll address that (the ones being made in the US not from "virgin forest"). Do you think the TRUNKS of nice old growth trees in BC are made into pellets (to sell for X per ton) or into lumber/plywood selling for Y/board foot). But when you fall trees, only so much is nice trunk. I live where trees are grown and harvested. The marketable trunks go for lumber, the "tops" get bucked for firewood (along with those trunks not marketable for lumber, bent, split, etc.). That's just economics.

NOW -- that is NOT saying that those tops shouldn't be left in the forest to rot, returning nutrients to the soil. Help the forest recover quicker. Where I live the forests are 3rd growth. I'm in a good climate for forest recovery. But they are mainly making pellets in the southern US, far less favorable for recovery, repeatedly harvesting young (re)growth just as has been done for paper making. No market size trunks in that.

PS -- immediately here the tax relief for land growing trees is really a tax deferment until the trees cut and the lumber sold. In other words, to get that tax reduction on the land you have to produce a "harvest plan". The town gets less tax every year in real estate tax but in exchange gets its cut at harvest time. That's why these 87 acres are not in "Chapter 61A" and I pay full tax on it. Nor can I shelter via the local land trusts because the only protected easement is "forever wild" (make NO use of it). They will agree to something in between "forever wild" and "any agriculture use" (which of course allows full harvest) if you make a huge endowment donation (to pay legal fees defending the special "in between" easement)

DRAX burns 14million tonnes of wood a year. You’re really suggesting that is all “tops”?

[AGT]

A biomass plant near me, doesn’t like to use its dry wood that they transported half way around the world as it burns too fast they like nice wetter wood from the other side of the world instead

Do love seeing the 40 tonne trucks going through that village…

Probably why their boilers on site are always breaking down….