Drax subsidies

[dan_b]

Subsidies to Drax to pay for the obvious swindle that is burning North American wood to generate power and claim its renewable to be cut - but they'll still be getting them for the foreseeable.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ower-plant

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyplj7dkw2o

[Fintray]

It wouldn't be so bad if it was just burning commercial forestry wood, brash and other wood waste but definitely not old growth forest

[Mart]

It wouldn't be so bad if it was just burning commercial forestry wood, brash and other wood waste but definitely not old growth forest

That's what bugs me too, since bio-mass does at least allow for energy storage, and demand following. But with long supply chains, the CO2(e) savings may be minimal, or worse. And whilst a 20(ish) yr carbon cycle is better than FF's, I would love to see something more in the 1yr or even 0.5yr range.

I did watch a recent vid that I thought was interesting

How This Giant Grass Could Save 15 Billion Trees A Year

This is purely as an example, and there are loads of hemp vids too, which might provide valueable materials (incl wood products) as well as bio-mass.

Just for fun, I did ask the Hexas team for info on the potential for growth in the UK and got these replies to my questions:

Query:-

Hi. Sorry to trouble you, as I'm just a RE enthusiast, not a customer.
But I watched the recent Youtube video - How this giant grass could save 15bn trees a year, and had a thought.

I'm in the UK, and we currently have a large bio-mass site called Drax, where most of our bio-mass electricity generation comes from. Most of the material is imported from the US and is wood (tree) based. It's very controversial. So I was wondering if Hexas was a viable bio-mass product for the UK climate to grow and supply Drax from more locally produced material, and of course bio-mass with a much shorter carbon cycle.

The UK Government is currently reviewing the subsidy scheme for Drax, due to the high cost, high CO2(e) emissions, and 20yr+ carbon payback.

I have read your website, but I seem to be looking from a slightly different angle. I'd be interested to know if this is something that your product (or others) might be suitable for, but I also appreciate that as an individual, you may not have the time to reply, and that's fine.

Thanks, Mart.

Response(s)

Hi Martyn,

Thank you for your inquiry, we do grow in the UK and have had success. We appreciate your contacting us.

Sorry here is a better answer. Our business model is to contract with a customer to supply XanoFiber™ (we sell XanoFiber which is the fiber that results from growing and harvesting XanoGrass™) and then we contract with farmers to produce XanoGrass to service the supply agreement. We find this works best as we believe deeply in being able to always pay farmers for production. In some cases, we will lease land and grow XanoGrass but feel it is a better way to contribute to rural economies by working with farmers. After contracting with farmers, Hexas supplies farmers with the XanoGrass clones (it is a sterile plant) and the technical knowledge and technological support needed to produce the volume of XanoFiber for which they have contracted to produce. We manage the logistics of harvesting and delivering the XanoFiber.

Again, just to be clear, I don't know the viability of such products for the UK, but it seems the ability to grow more of the bio-mass ourselves, save some transportation emissions, and cut the carbon cycle down to a year or less, seems interesting. But it stands to reason (probably) that the current UK bio-mass growth is already tailored suitably, so maybe it's just the scale that isn't viable.

[Thebeeman]

A neighbour of mine used to be CEO of the supplier of wood to Drax and a similar one in Scotland, he never managed to convince me about it's Green credentials. In Scotland they were busy buying forests to feed the plant.

[Moxi]

Way back in the late 90's early noughties' the plan was for Drax to burn coppiced willow combined with coal as part of a fuel transition over to biomass as the willow coppiced industry grew they were going to reduce the coal contribution. Not sure when the coppiced willow element was scrapped but if they had stuck to the plan then there would be a thriving coppicing industry across the Yorkshire counties and beyond.

Moxi

[Tinbum]

A friend of mine had a haulage business and they used to transport into Drax. He would transport all sorts, dependant upon prices, inc. wheat and I think elephant grass. Up until a couple + years ago I used to see fields of very tall crops here. He said they stopped it because it was to hard on the machinery.

[AE-NMidlands]

I was told that (when I was doing an exposure research visit to a big battery chicken house) that the mountains of guano went by a fleet of HGVs to a thermal power station burning "biomass."

I was astonished at the blatant waste of so much high-nitrate fertiliser - and wondered whether the place had any kind of NOx capture on its chimneys.