From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
More from the Guardian on Drax Carbon Capture:
Drax has received permission from the government to fit carbon capture technology to its wood-burning power plant, in a project that could cost bill-payers more than £40bn.
The energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, on Tuesday approved the project to convert two of its biomass units to use the technology.
Analysts have predicted that the revamp of the North Yorkshire site could be one of the most expensive energy projects in the world.
The project could add about £1.7bn to energy bills every year if the company acts on plans to fit all four of its biomass units with carbon capture technology, or a total of more than £43bn, according to Ember, a climate thinktank.
In addition, the government is expected within days to extend a lucrative bill-payer-backed subsidy scheme that last year paid Drax more than £600m to burn trees for electricity until the end of the decade.
The decision is likely to anger environmentalists, who have campaigned against burning imported wood pellets and have opposed the multi-billion-pound subsidies paid to Drax over the past 12 years.
A report commissioned by Drax has claimed that adding carbon capture to its biomass power units could save the UK economy up to £15bn between 2030 and 2050 when compared to other, more complex carbon reduction measures using biomass.
Phil MacDonald, the chief operating officer at Ember, said the report ignored the “immediate real costs” of building the plant, which are likely to fall to taxpayers or energy users.
“Over 20 years, this could make Drax’s BECCS plans one of the most expensive energy projects in the world, funded from bill-payers’ pockets,” MacDonald said.
Just because Drax BECCS might be cheaper than other BECCS schemes is hardly a recommendation!
Ember’s costings are here. They include current subsidies and look reasonable.
Not only would Drax need to recoup the capital cost, which they have said will be billions. There will also be increased operating costs, not least because carbon capture itself is an energy intensive process. In other words, some of Drax’s generation will have to be used to power the Carbon Capture plant, instead of being sold.
When will the madness end? Mt guess is not till Keir Starmer’s prime ministership ends – a frighteningly long way away.
In a new drive to reduce carbon usage, bicycle lanes will be converted to unicycle lanes.
Shirley you can recycle the “carbon” into the frames of the bikes/unicycles?
Much easier to reverse, tougher to go uphill, all too easy to go downhill.
And where are they going to put the captured CO2? Capture is the easy part, but transporting it to a storage location involves pipelines and guaranteed public opposition. They could put it in depleted oil formations in the North Sea like the Norwegian’s have done at Sleipner, but that means hundreds of miles of pipeline at millions of pounds per mile. Good luck with that.
May I suggest a fine Lager?
Perhaps a light bubbly?
Oh Brian 😂
And the power consumption of another power station to convey the gases to storage. This is an unbelievable waste of money and totally not necessary. One can only despair that UK law makers can be made to believe anything
Cargo cult vs carbon cult, is there really a difference?
Sounds like John Kerry needs some healing crystals for his long face.
Kerry (and Sarah Jessica Parker) have always reminded me of Bruce Campbell’s
“Ash” as he’s pulling himself out of the hole that sucked him in after he removed the Book of the Dead from the alter in Army of Darkness.More money than sense – as the saying goes. Personally? I would poke two fingers up to the alarmists and convert Drax back to coal and it wouldn’t cost anything like 40 billion.
The deforestation etc required to satisfy Drax’s appetite for wood pellets barely ever gets a mention…. but beware, things are about to get a whole lot more loony….
“Davos Speaker Demands International Criminal Court Prosecute ‘Ecocide’, Punish Farmers Alongside War Criminals
Greta Thunberg ally and CEO of Stop Ecocide International Jojo Mehta demanded during a WEF Davos panel dubbed “Where Nature Meets Conflict” on Tuesday that a new international criminal category of “ecocide” to prevent the “mass damage and destruction of nature”.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/01/17/wef-climate-crazies-call-for-new-international-crime-of-ecocide/
“A company that has received billions of pounds in green energy subsidies from UK taxpayers is cutting down environmentally-important forests, a BBC Panorama investigation has found.
Drax runs Britain’s biggest power station, which burns millions of tonnes of imported wood pellets – which is classed as renewable energy. The BBC has discovered some of the wood comes from primary forests in Canada.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63089348
What a tangled web they weave.
Care in the community cases like Jojo Mehta will be first to put Drax in the dock – along with the poor – allegedly ‘ecocidal’ – farmers.
It’s still a long way to max alarmism.
If one is after the people destroying the ecosphere..
.. start with ANYONE trying to reduce atmospheric CO2.
That would put WEF , UN, EU directly in the dock.. where they belong. !!
start with ANYONE trying to reduce atmospheric CO2.
Yes, but we know that isn’t on the agenda, quite the reverse.
How many trees, for example, can be felled before ecocide is declared?
What!!! The BBC, reporting a green scam? Well slap my thighs.
But this makes perfect sense.
Thay are going to capture carbon, not CO2, so they can just burn the captured carbon in the boilers along with the wood.
Magic.
The world’s biggest BBQ!
They will take the taxpayer money to capture it…
…. then release it back into the atmosphere anyway.
That is how Drax rolls. !!
Utter lunacy.
This is life – in the Orwellian period.
The Orwellian period of the Anthropoopocine?
No, the Orwelliancine.
Story Tip..
Himalayan glaciers melting SLOWER because of WARMING.
Climate Researchers Blame Himalayan Glaciers “Melting Much More Slowly” On Warming! (notrickszone.com)
They really do open themselves up to ridicule, don’t they !!
“melting SLOWER because of WARMING”
Now, to me it’s an instant reflex action to put that kind of claim through the logicometer.
melting SLOWER because THEY HAVEN’T WARMED THAT MUCH IF AT ALL
I thought it novel when triumvirate doomster Dr John Holdren claimed cold winters were caused by global warming. But alarmists appear to be clinging on to that fallacy having nothing else in the ‘scientific’ quiver.
Recent temperatures in the UK broke a few records here and there. The media reports that as ordinary daily weather; only warmer than average temperatures get the full Climate Crisis treatment. They claim on an hourly basis – the news etc – we’re about 1.5C above where we should be…
“Why is it so cold in the UK right now – and how long will Arctic chill last?
With temperatures as low as -15C forecast, many want to know when milder weather will arrive
…
As the coldest temperatures in 14 years are predicted to hit the UK overnight…”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/17/why-is-it-so-cold-in-the-uk-right-now-and-how-long-will-arctic-chill-last
I’ve been watching the ever changing weather patterns of southern England and I can tell you this: the sixties were bloody cold, the seventies not quite so, towards the end of the eighties it got a little warmer.
I wonder what the Met Office would make of an hurricane today? Once it was rather dismissive, to say the least…
I remember that night very well.
Woke up in the ‘wee’ hours, my window was slightly open, and I could hear a roaring noise. Opened the window wide looked out and in true Blazing Saddles response uttered WTF?
If you visit there, they assert that cold air from aloft is falling down onto the mountains and glaciers – they even use the ‘katabatic’ word
If me you or anyone visits a website (such as Meteoblue or Nullschool) you’ll straight away notice that low-pressure anticyclonic systems dominate the high mountains and glaciers
IOW Theses muppets blow their own science completely apart because low pressure systems mean rising air regimes. Not = Katabatic
>>The glaciers evaporate (sublimate) and the resultant water-vapour in whatever air there is there, no matter how cold it is, that air will become buoyant and rise up into the sky.
When it gets there, it will make clouds and, ye shocke horreur, it might even make some snow.
The glaciers are thus = self-repairing
If the glaciers are disappearing it is because no new water is coming up the hill to replenish what is inevitably lost during the repair process.
Exactly as happened with Kilimanjaro when the forests on its foothills were felled.
The disappeared forest simultaneously a huge amount of water – thus – the foothills got warmer (no clouds or rain) and the high glaciers died of thirst.
sigh..
** The disappeared forest simultaneously ^disappeared^ a huge blah blah…
MGuy has a good one today.
EVs charged by buring wood!
https://youtu.be/Wox47IYvIeQ?si=Sn8rTw0gHk_HmQ9e
Yes, good one! The barking madness of the climate movement explained well.
England imports wood from the US and claims it is green energy
Is it transported to the UK on sailing ships?
Now they claim wood is not green and must spend $40 billion to fix that.
But why talk money when doing this will save the UK from slight global warming in the future from more CO2 in the global atmosphere.
Why would anyone in the UK want milder winters — the most common symptom of greenhouse gas warming?
Why would plants in the UK want more CO2?
Never mind the science — just spend the $40 billion.
Stop English vineyards, Now!
The Domesday Book records 40+ vineyards in England in 1086. They were all in the south of the country. Although other sources identify vineyards in Lancashire. Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Lincoln. There’s even a report of a vineyard in Scotland during the medieval period.
The Romans had more
Last time I looked – only a few weeks ago, it came up in conversation – the most northerly English vineyard is north of York. A similar latitude to Rigolet, in Quebec.
‘Gulf Stream’ helps!
And, yes, a degree or two warmer in winter would not go amiss.
Auto
Harvested using Gas Chain Saws
Transported to pellet mills on Diesel powered Semi
Dried in Gas Fired Kilns
Pelletized using FF generated electricity
Transported to coastal shipping port via Diesel powered Semi
Loaded onto ships with 85% FF generated electricity
Transported 3400 miles by Diesel Ship
Offloaded using 40% FF Electricity
Transported to DRAX via Diesel Semi
Whole lotta non renewable in that system. I’m sure the biosphere thanks them
nice cubist image of a nuclear power plant
Not nuclear, the image shows smoke stacks.
Indeed it does, but I think the AI added a couple of extra! Looks like,um, Drax to me…
?fit=891%2C537&ssl=1
So … they built a wood-burning power plant because they thought that CO2 from burning wood would be better than CO2 from burning coal. Now someone peeked under the covers and realized that CO2 is CO2 no matter where it comes from. And planting more trees to replace the burned trees will suck up all the CO2 but it will take decades.
Products of a Liberal Arts education.
My understanding is that DRAX was a coal plant converted to burn wood.
Have I missed something here?
Up to now DRAX has drawn state grants amounting to roughly £1billion/year because they re considered a Green energy supplier. Bio energy is considered ‘sustainable’ thus qualifies for the grants.
Well if they are already so virtuous burning wood pellets from North American forests what is driving them to embrace so called carbon capture or CO2 capture to be more accurate?
Does this latest push for state grants mean DRAX are looking to restart burning coal?
The Drax management team must measure business performance by how much grant money they bring in. Generating electricity is now just a means to that end.
Here’s hoping they enjoy where they’re going – contrary to popular opinion it is in fact: A. Very. Cold. Place.
The first inclination is to laugh, but then you start thinking about the pensioners who will be left shivering during cold winters because of this outrageous grift. Then you start to get pretty angry.
On the scale of dumbness…carbon capture is no. 1…..followed by H2 fuel…and then windmills followed by solar panels. A house built on the CO2 is bad foundation will ultimately fail…..just stop the CO2 madness.
Oh Dear God. Words fail.
the government is expected within days to extend a lucrative bill-payer-backed subsidy scheme that last year paid Drax more than £600m to burn trees for electricity until the end of the decade.
But have they got their act together all the way down their supply chain and in the forests?
Stone Age: EVs charged up by BURNING WOOD! | MGUY Australia – YouTube
That is the burning question on everyone’s lips.
They need to start worrying about warming up the winters.
We need heated homes, cars, buses, factories, office buildings, stores, etc., because it is so cold in the winter.
In most of the winter, it is so cold that a person would die of hypothermia if outside for a day with minimal clothing
£10bn here, £10bn there, and pretty soon, you’re talking real money.
( with tip of the hat to US senator Everett Dirksen or whoever originated that phrase talking about billions USD)
Once the “carbon” is captured what will they do with it? Store it forever and hope none of it leaks out like at Lake Nyos?
Nemo, as in The Matrix: “Soft drinks . . . lots of soft drinks!”
Is there anything dumber than carbon sequestration since we are more likely in an atmospheric CO2 shortage than excess ?
What really upsets me is that these Capture technologies significantly reduce the net energy production efficiency effectively robbing future generations of low cost reliable finite energy resources. It’s a morally bankrupt direction.
When are these pratts, going to learn, that we have reached the point of diminished returns?
Drax, first considered this idea, over 15 years ago. An article in the now woke New Scientist, covered their intentions. At the time, of reading I thought ‘yeah, when they realize the true cost, seeing will be believing’.
Sure enough, they abandoned the idea, ‘too expensive’. Now we’re paying for it, it’s a viable idea.
Dr Ian Plimer, did a presentation on Drax, and really took the p*ss out of it.
Again?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/01/07/coal-power-station-drax-to-win-approval-for-net-zero-carbon-capture-plan/
It is a pretty good confidence game, even before the carbon capture horse maneuver. But Drax is one of the least of UK’s problems. And, after all, all those decommissioned blades will have to be incinerated somewhere.
All in service to the worldwide consumption (aka carbon) tax.
According to Drax wood burning is carbon neutral because the trees will grow again so adding carbon capture means a carbon negative operation. A snip at £40bn to bill payers.
Story Tip….Well that was always going to happen.
China’s 2023 coal output hits record high | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT (wordpress.com)
First comment is good and give perspective
“4.66 billion metric tons in a year is more than 15 times the UK peak annual consumption since the start of the industrial revolution.”
UK’s piddling little efforts to destroy themselves are all for nought, when it comes to global CO2 emissions.
Very nice.
This is the most important:
“Just because Drax BECCS might be cheaper than other BECCS schemes is hardly a recommendation!”
These monsters can not be allowed to mislead people like this. Spending more money is not saving. I could buy a new pickup or spend less and buy a used one, either way I am still spending money I wasn’t spending before. If my current pickup suits my needs I should stick with it especially if money is an issue. The cost of energy is a huge huge issue.
“in a project that could cost bill-payers more than £40bn” This type of madness has to stop. Spending this amount of money on something that is not based on real science is insane. Only the computer models say its a problem. We need large numbers of honest scientists to stand up and be heard.
More for green idiots to ponder… no one thinks how they will safely produce back all the injected CO2 when they find out that they screwed up yet again…..,