Drax Power Station To Fully Convert To Biomass by 2021

The largest power station in the United Kingdom, the Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire, is to cease using coal by 2021 and convert itself to a fully biomass burning powerplant. The move is in consonance with the United Kingdom's pledge to completely abolish the usage of coal in the country in order to reduce its carbon footprint. In recent times the country has taken a series of measures to reduce carbon emission across industries, including the imposition of norms on the Automobile industry, airline industry and oil and gas and other energy-producing industries.

The United Kingdom has been taking big steps towards reducing its carbon footprint in recent years. The country, while it was a part of the European Union, had been able to reduce its carbon emission targets much before its due dates. Other than the European Union, the country is also progressively enacting its own regulations to further its efforts to improve and enhance its environmental protection and promotion agenda. The proportion of renewable energy resources in the country’s different energy production and consumption sectors have been increasing over the years. Massive offshore and onshore wind farms have been built in the country along with photovoltaic power farms. Large energy utility companies in the country are also offering consumers the option to purchase power and gas produced from renewable energy resources along with an attractive tariff structure that is designed to bring more and more people under the renewable energy umbrella.

The United Kingdom has been one of the pioneers of the Industrial age in Europe. The country, though known more for its extensive trading lineage, had expanded to almost every nook and corner of the world in its hay days and ventured out on a massive industrial growth path post World War II. The unhindered use of energy resources during the war by most warring parties provided the impetus to continue doing the same to rebuild their countries rapidly after the war ended. The momentum of growth thus achieved continued to the turn of the century with the European continent becoming one of the most industrially developed geographies in the world. However, the ill effects of this burgeoning growth started becoming apparent towards the latter half of the previous century; air pollution, water pollution and noise pollution started to become major irritants in our day to day lives. Ozone depletion, global warming and reduction of world green cover are some of the most worrisome global phenomena of the industrial age. By the turn of the century, it was apparent that this pace and structure of growth is unsustainable and if something is not done urgently, it will become a serious threat to the life and wellbeing of human beings and other forms of life on earth on well. Thus, steps were taken not only to restrict these highly polluting activities but also to bring about further technological advancements that would aim at reducing the pollution levels of the industry as a whole.

One of the major industrial energy resources that finds extensive usage across many industrial processes is coal. The commodity traded most extensively internationally among the known forms of energy resources, after crude oil, has been at the forefront of industrial development for more than a century now. Iron & steel industry, cement industry and power production industries make use of coal extensively. Other than the above, till a few decades back coal-powered locomotives and ships were in commonplace till they were replaced by diesel and electric powered ones. Still, the commodity finds usage in many places such as in cooking, artisan metal works, pottery and such other places where heating is required. However, there are two major drawbacks with this energy resource; first, the resource is finite in supply, its stock on the planet is limited and with extensive usage, there will arrive a point in time when its supply will be exhausted. Second, the mining, transportation and burning of this commodity causes severe air and water pollution. During the initial days of industrial development, these pollution aspects were not so severe and therefore, its effects were conveniently ignored. However, as time passed emissions from its usage started to the threaten habitats surrounding the industries that used coal. Perhaps the weakest economic argument for this commodity is that while burning a very small portion of its actual energy content is converted to usable energy and the rest is lost in the form of heat and smoke when compared to other forms of energy like crude oil or electric power or nuclear power.

The United Kingdom, while launching its initiative for environmental protection, has identified coal as a major source of carbon emissions and has been making plans to completely put the commodity out of usage in the country. The country has put several enhanced tariff-based provisions on the power sector, cement sector and steel production sector, which have the ensuing effect of coal-based technologies becoming more expensive than other competing technologies. The intended objective is that more and more businesses would find it lucrative to adopt low polluting and energy-saving technologies and processes. The country has also decided to close down last of its coal mines for good and imposed enhanced customs duty on imported coal to restrict the usage of this commodity in the country.

The Drax power plant in North Yorkshire has six generating units in the plant with a total installed capacity of 3,906 megawatts of electricity. The unit supplies close to six per cent of the country’s electricity requirements, with the plant becoming fully operational by 1986. The plant progressively started to convert to biomass feedstock from coal by 2010. By 2018 four out of its six units had been converted to be fired solely by biomass, with its requirements being fulfilled through the import of feedstock from the United States of America and Canada.

This new announcement is for the conversion of one more unit by 2021, making the number of power-producing units using biomass to five. The company, however, intends to retain one unit with coal-burning apparatus to deal with emergency power crisis situations.