Drax ~ The Eco Friendly Power Station That's the Opposite
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- čas přidán 5. 09. 2024
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The Truth Behind The Greenwashing
Drax Power Station, located in North Yorkshire, England, is one of the largest power plants in the UK. It has been a subject of intense debate and scrutiny over its environmental impact and sustainability claims. Once primarily a coal-fired plant, Drax has transitioned a significant portion of its operations to biomass, specifically wood pellets, which it markets as a sustainable and carbon-neutral energy source. However, numerous environmental groups and scientists argue that this claim is misleading and an example of greenwashing.
Greenwashing is a term used to describe the practice of companies disseminating disinformation to present an environmentally responsible public image. In the case of Drax, the central point of contention is its use of biomass. The power station claims that the process is carbon-neutral because the wood pellets are made from parts of trees that would otherwise go to waste and that new trees are planted to replace those used. The theory is that the carbon dioxide released when the wood is burned is reabsorbed by the new trees, creating a closed-loop cycle.
However, critics argue this is a gross simplification of a more complex issue. They point out that burning wood releases more carbon dioxide per unit of energy generated than coal. Additionally, while trees absorb carbon as they grow, this process takes decades to centuries, whereas the emissions from burning them are immediate. This time discrepancy is critical in the context of the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change.
Moreover, the sourcing of the wood pellets has come under scrutiny. Much of the biomass used by Drax is imported from the United States, where environmentalists claim that harvesting trees to produce the pellets is contributing to deforestation and loss of biodiversity. The transportation of these pellets across the Atlantic also adds a significant carbon footprint, further undermining the plant's claims of carbon neutrality.
Drax has received substantial government subsidies for its biomass operations, justified by its purported environmental benefits. Critics argue that this misallocates public funds that could be better spent on renewable energy sources like wind or solar. The subsidies are contingent on biomass being classified as a renewable energy source, a designation that many argue is based on flawed carbon accounting.
The controversy surrounding Drax is emblematic of a broader debate about the future of energy and the role of biomass within it. Proponents of biomass argue that it is a necessary transitional fuel that can replace coal and help balance the grid. At the same time, more intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar are scaled up. However, opponents contend that not all biomass is created equal and that in cases like Drax, it can do more harm than good regarding carbon emissions and broader environmental impacts.
The Drax Power Station and its shift toward biomass is a contentious issue. While the company promotes its operations as sustainable and carbon-neutral, many experts and environmentalists accuse it of greenwashing. They argue that the environmental credentials of Drax are misleading, masking the true impact of its biomass operations on the climate and ecosystems. As the world grapples with the urgent need to transition to genuinely clean energy, the case of Drax highlights the complexities and pitfalls that can arise in this endeavour. It is a cautionary tale of the need for rigorous scrutiny and honesty in environmental claims and the dangers of greenwashing in the race to address the climate crisis.
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#greenwashing #carbonneutral #drax
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This has been a bugbear of mine for a few years. 7 years ago I worked for a transport company who would offload the boats full of pellets for drax. We had an army of 15 or so trucks bringing the pellets from the docks to an off-site shed roughly 50 miles away and then into drax on demand another 50+ miles. The pellets would also need to be sprayed heavily with pestisedes/fungisied to stop them been eaten in the sheds.
Prior to this the coal that drax used was brought from European largest coal mine, kellingley by train roughly 15 miles away and I was told that the calorific value was roughly 1 load of coal for 4 loads of 'biomass' I could see them how much of a massive scam this process was just in the amount of diesel alone that was been used in the operation, nevermind everything else.
But burning coal releases embodied carbon dioxide that’s laid captured for millions of years, once it’s released there’s nothing to recapture it.. the burning of timber is cyclical and infinitely better than fossil fuels, not perfect but better.
Unfortunately we have an entire world built on fossil fuels so transitioning away from them isn’t going to happen overnight
Follow the money.
Sounds like a lovely FF Greenwash. They have worse economics with H2. Unless it is pipelined or made & stored onsite at the point of use, transporting H2 by road is 18 : 1 vs petrol.
Bloody lunacy. Climate change my hairy arse . Drax is a shining example of the climate religious zealotry . 🤮🤮🤮🤮
Madness.
I watched a documentary a few years ago where a film crew secretly filmed from the forest to Drax. Supposedly the supplier was using scrap timber, they weren't, they were cutting down virgin forest.
I saw that too..... following every step from forest to drax.
Yet it was classed as been a conspiracy!!!!
We need energy 🤷♂
@@MRW515 yes we do......but the cleanest most effective fuel has been bypassed because it has no other benefits other than good safe clean energy......
As far as I know only India has one up and running. Thorium reactors.....look it up and history of it. It was available back in 40s....but uranium won because the spent fuel was made into nuclear weapons.
Thats true... there are videos on youtube showing the devastation drax has caused in Canada by using just the main trunk of the tree and leaving behind all the scrap timber saying its not viable to transport the scrap
If it,s such an efficient system why is drax recieving 1 million per day in subsidy?@@SamDude-cu2jb
Worked at drax during the desulfurization phase . Eu complained about acid rain and forced the reduction of high sulphur coal being mined from under drax . Drax then turned to importing Australia low sulphur coal and levels dropped with the aid of desulfurization plant which mixed gas with limestone to form gypsum . British gypsum used this in the manufacturing of plasterboard and plaster turning waste into a useful building materials saving the uk importing it from the eu
They also used the waste for burning coal to make lightweight blocks . All good stuff .no . They stated to work on cleaner burning technology to reduce emissions further and if this continued British coal could have been burnt .
But no they came up with wood burning idea . The shipping bulk tankers running from Australia then headed for Canada . Using bunker fuel the most dirty polluting fuel .
Not sure what happened to the manufacturer of gypsum at drax . The uk train that brought British coal brought limestone into drax not sure if the was British lime stone .
But probably more British jobs went .
They now bring wood pellets in from the docks at goole via rail diesel powered trains
A few more years and we could have burned coal extremely cleanly .
We can burn Canadian wood and councils can allow the building of waste to energy power plants and drax can burn as much wood as they like without any restrictions
Due to carbon credits .
The other government balace sheet con is nitrate credits .
They close down farms rewild to off set new home building on green field sites .
This is absolutely bonkers to reduce food supply slowly on a daily basis so they can build more new housing for more people .
MORE AND MORE IMPORTED PEOPLE
This conversion of Calcium Carbonate to Calcium Sulphate by using the forner in factory chimney filters to absord Sulphur Dioxide has long concerned me. Because the Calcium Suplhate - the gypsum then used to make plasterboards as you rightly say - may contain other chemicals. I used to work in British Gypsum's laboratory in its R&D department in Sweden some 35 years ago, so I've long known about this but have never seen any research on it. No doubt the aim would be to deliver pure Gypsum but as we all know corners are cut in every industry and so I wonder what is in our walls, in practice, be it trapped gasses which leech out or poisonous particulates which's dust is ingested / breathed in.
In regard to particulates being cleaned from exhaust gasses (and energy recouped/harvested from the hot gasses) the designs and efficiency have come on leaps and bounds the past years - friends of mine in Sweden work in the design and build companies that produce them - and the thing is they are dead cheap by industrial standrads as they are relatively low tech, so there is just no excuse for not using them.
Thanks for your post, it was interesting - it's so twisted what Britain just doesn't bother doing properly anymore - I suspect just because politicians want to make a quick buck for themselves and shareholders.
@@gurglejug627 The politicians are merely the fronts for what really controls our country. (Otherwise known as puppets).
Loved reading the comments from you guys! Fascinating stuff, especially about Gypsum. I do question what is in the stuff as it's downright painful to breathe it in and it makes your hair and skin, without even touching it, dry out worse than a salt bath
When all is said and done you can't con nature.
One thing thats missing from this is the impact this has on wildlife. Developers cleared some ancient woodland near my village in the late 90s that was a teeming with wildlife. "Dont worry" we will plant 3 times as many trees to replace the woodland close by (and they did).
25 years later the trees have grown but the place is completely devoid of wildlife.
Probly because the money obscured the 'unregistered' species of life. Seems convenient for profiteers to ignore anything without a bar-code. Even listed protected lands be subject to money blindness (greed).
We have a new woodland near us when you walk in it , it's totally devoid of any wildlife . No birds insect's nothing no new trees or seeds grow just the existing single species of trees .
The old woodland was chopped down in a few hours several teams of arborists remove every single old tree completely cleared the area the developer paid the fine and built the housing estate . The thing
that's missing is the microbial ecology which supported insects in the ground and the start of the food chain for insects which then feeds the food chain further up which takes hundreds of years to establish
The old woodland was full of bats and birds now I don't see them anymore
The old woodland was the food supply for the wildlife and it's inhabitants .
@@justmeEnglandUKthe only way to stop that sort of behaviour is to increase the fine to the total cost of the development and the reinstatement costs, it then becomes completely uneconomic.
Imagine how I laughed when I found out that it's not just wood pellets they burn at Drax! 😃😃😃
The wood doesn't burn hot enough so they have to increase it using coal - yes they still burn coal at Drax! 😃😃😃
It's almost like you can't trust a word that politicians say! 😲😲😲
The thumbnail shows clouds of black smoke from towers, These towers are actually cooling towers and are used as giant condensers to convert the steam used to turn turbines back into water, should you walk inside a tower take an umbrella , the water is then recycled again to generate steam, So anything shown on the top of a tower is basically water vapor and not polluting smoke.
So true. Back in the day "Merry -go-round" trains would move coal from the local pit to one of the Selby Coalfields power stations. As you say 1/5th the c02 output.
Then idiots in Whitehall shut the pits and imported Polish coal. This coal then railed from East Coast ports to the same power stations. (work out the carbon footprint there)
Now we have the pellets. This is enough evidence to show even the most uneducated fellow we are on the wrong track altogether
We have taken the lunatic diversion to cuckoo land. But in the push to own nothing and be happy, our masters won't let the Main Stream Propaganda, sorry Media tell us how f*****g stupid they all are.
If you want to find out the truth, and the most ardent climate zealots and the most ardent climate realists should give TONY HELLER a look over on you tube. He has podcasts under the name of "REAL CLIMATE SCIENCE".
Surely it is in any thinking persons mentality to research both sides of an argument/debate.
I have come to the conclusion that there is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY. Less than 150ppm of c02 in the atmosphere makes us extinct. 415 at the moment is a very very low reading and WE NEED MORE. That is why our Clever King Charles III talks to his plants. c02 is pure fertilizer to them.
Folks, don't be fooled by the Greta's of this world, the Michael Manns and Al Gore (what a f/wit)
Prove me wrong and learn.
Thank you for a very interesting podcast by the way.:-)
Thanks for pointing that out, that is a ridiculous misleading picture showing black smoke coming out of a cooling tower. It always annoyes me when people want to emphasise pollution they show cooling towers emitting only water vapour.
@@davidsoper631Steam is a greenhouse gas.
One of the biggest cons going 😂
I wonder if any members of the Conservative Party have shares in Drax 🤨
Everything ends up a con, it's the human way. Someone has a good idea on paper, shares it with others, it gets built. All the whole it's been in the public sphere where people with probably too much money already work out ways they can manipulate it for their own profit, and that's with a reasonable government. With Tories, the rich don't have to find out or think hard, their little rat helpers clue them in for cushy jobs after politics. Or at the other end of the scale, useful idiots, or ideological idiots like the SNP cause the complete opposite of what they intend, with their great wind farm con, the rosd widening alone has offset most of the purported gains! And businesses are no better, BYD in China have fields of rotting ev cars, cos the state paid them bonuses to make them to make the most polluted country on earth look like the greenest, polluting it, and the world more. My answer, more yardarms 😃😜
Carbon Capture is very dangerous.
What is to stop a blow-out creating a Lake Nyos accident?
Lake Nyos killed everything within 20 km.
R
I don't really think that there's any significant difference in ideology between the Tories and Labour anymore.
Same with all these 'Green' schemes: never mind the CO2 (0.04% of the atmosphere) you can guarantee that some b@$tard is making a big fat pile of cash out of it.
Gov: “don’t use wood for your fires that you get for free, buy our eco wood pellets instead. Just show us your digital ID first then you can pay with CBDC’s”
Me: “But I don’t have a digital ID and I don’t want one neither”
Gov: “well me boy, you will freeze your little socks off then”
I had the "pleasure" of doing insurance inspections at Drax prior to the conversion to wood pellets. At the same time I was also doing insurance inspections on the kit and equipment that was being delivered to Drax for the conversion to wood burning. There was so much with the design of it that just looked wrong from my engineering point of view. I have no idea if the stuff works as it should as I got out of the inspection business before the conversion was finished. But even back then I just thought the whole thing was a bonkers, subsidy fueled rip off.
BONKERS -the only word that describes this.
I live near Drax and hate the place . 600 million a year in subsidies and yet we don't even get cheap electricity, no its the most expensive ever in the history of all time
Us Brits being conned? Never 😅😅
Roger, you are fantastic. I agree with everything you say. Its so hard not to be mega pissed about so much government corruption. I cannot watch or listen to the news any more. Too many lies. I stopped paying my TV licence as the misinformation spread by the BBC became unbearable.
Keep up your educational videos.
Colin
Be careful of their “TV detector vans” haha
yep me too, utterly disgusted by our crappy media!
@@reecehardiman7662 Yeah, another lie to scare people!
Well if you'd watched Panorama "The Green Energy Scandal Exposed" on BBC One on 3 October 2022 you'd already learnt a lot of the issues Roger brought up with I'd argue slightly better referencing and journalism. But of course the BBC is all just misinformation and talking heads on CZcams doing "commentary" are the source of information with integrity. No offence to Roger, I enjoy his rants, but they are just rants.
@@edc1569 Imagine defending the paedo Bias Brainwashing Corporation. Don't forgot to take your 9th booster.
Just shared this on X. Been saying this for years, a dreadful business. Experts in taking subsidies and greenwashing. Worst polluter in Europe, time to stop this practise of burning trees.
Brilliant analysis. As an EV owner I can now see the same green con job by the same green crooks going on. Thanks to fantastic content like this, more and more people will begin to see it too.
Basically the UK, disregarding what is actually fuelling Drax we cannot take its generation capacity off line for years. The UK Power Network needs its capacity and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Part of the problem is that the licencing process for onshore power is tediously slow, no matter what source we use: wind, solar, nuclear, or hydro. UK power use has dropped significantly in the last 20 years, but we must keep up with projected use or we'll be obliged to buy more power from abroad.
Plenty of immigration will ensure it's all used whilst HMG promote electric cars - so power prices will go through the roof and the fat cats and politicians will rake it in. And any mistakes in application or strategy (and as some said decommissioning, too) will be picked up by the taxpayer as usual.
Why does UKPN particularly need its power, whats so special about them?
Looking at the train movements for January 4th, Drax received 9 trains of pellets. It comes into several ports including Immingham, Tyne Docks and Liverpool. 5 of the 9 trains originated from Liverpool. An example is:
Liverpool Biomass terminal dep 16.20.
Drax arr 23.40, a 7hr 20m journey from the west coast to the east coast across the Pennines. There's some irony in the fact the locomotives used are themselves a diesel burning power station as they are diesel-electric (diesel engine drives a generator that then powers the traction motors).
Liverpool berths 50 50,000 ton load biomass ships destined for Drax each year. All from southern USA. Drax own the US facilities I believe.
When I read that BP started a marketing campaign to label itself a "GREEN" energy company, I think of the Rigid tool catalogs of the 70s to get my head around how advertising works. Building taller smoke stacks does not make coal clean energy. We are so screwed.
I agree BP are obviously not “ green” lol. But not many people know about the renewable energies they’re investing in, I’ve worked at a huge solar farm in Scotland which is a part of “BP Lightsource” and I was impressed while there, and I find it interesting that these huge oil companies are investing in new renewables because they know in perhaps 30-50 years time they’ll be banned and they’d go out of business lol.
@@reecehardiman7662 A drop in the bucket! What percentage of BP's earnings/worth does their green effort comprise?
The BP logo is green though, with a splash of yellow. Did that count?
Well done Roger. Pretty clear now for a long time that we just have to “stop burning stuff!“.
It's been widely reported that they are taking the good timber, from these lots, too... to turn into wood pellets... and not only scrap wood.
That's what I've heard from the timber processers but they have so much of what we call good timber they consider it to be scrap they keep all the good stuff and we burn the crap
Apperantly this is what has driven the price of timber up is the value of "chip"
Instead of paying the subsidy money to Drax, why don't the govt give it to homeowners in the form of solar panels and a windturbine. For free.
Because they don't make money from thoes things, simple as that
It's amazing how inventive scamers can be when they smell easy money , and Kwartipants is so eager to help out. Great rant Roger and well researched .
Drax claim the wood pellets are produced from spindly, lower quality felled trees as a by product. A convenient and easy claim to make. But investigative journalists have thrown much doubt on this. Large tracks of Canadian and Southern USA virgin woodland (plus communities and wildlife) completely cleared by Drax funded operations.
Also, the felling of trees, processing to pellets and transport counts as zero CO2 for the UK. So, regardless of the foreign environmental damage, wildlife and habitat horrors and community impacts nothing impacts the U.K. government accounting.
It’s all a pathetic and sick game. Fuzzy environmental accounting that causes great harm funded by U.K. taxpayers.
Rodger is right. Once the subsidies run out and people look at this more closely it will likely close down. All that will be left will be out of pocket tax payers, a litany of environmental destruction and some very wealthy Drax directors.
Don't forget the government subsidy for decommissioning
Yes, most of the nonsense is driven by not leaving it to the market to work out what makes sense.@@SkillBuilder
The prevalence of Greenwashing is the next big issue to tackle now that at least most people actually believe in climate change.
Yes, but some people know that 9 out of 10 scientists agree with whoever is paying them.
No they dont ! In case you hadn't noticed poster girl Thumberg is a joke to the average person on the street ! they don't buy it only idi0ts buy it
Ive studied electrical engineering and wave physics and I can categorically say electromagnetic radiation of ANY wavelength does not reflect refract or transmit off of thin air ! point at thermal imaging camera long or short wave, at clear blue sky, what colour is it BLACK what does that denote the complete absence of back radiation off of homogeneous particles, ergo what they've been claiming about the process behind "anthropogenic gl0bal warming", ie back radiation off of homogeneous c 02 in our atmosphere is to put it crudely complete and utter b0ll0x !
Science isn't ambiguous ie "climate change" oh no its getting warmer, plant f00d did it, oh no in complete contradiction its getting colder, plant f00d did it ! and science is not a consensus ie "scientists had a vote", thats politics, science requires PROOF not a bunch of people sitting around saying "I reckon" Not that we had a vote, politicians just told you we did !
@@rocketmunkey1 awww mate I’m sorry I really don’t care….. you are why i said “Most people” and I’m not gonna argue with you.
Sounds more like money laundering to me
Love it! You'll never make a politician Roger ~ you're too sane, too honest, and talk too much common sense!
The argument about CO2 perfectly illustrates how poor our Education system is in the UK. CO2 is necessary for life, we really couldn't survive without it. The alternative is CO, more commonly known as carbon monoxide which is deadly and the reason why we have to have annual service of our boilers.
How poor our education system is? Go read about the carbon cycle. Water is also necessary for life, doesn't mean you want to be at the bottom of a lake. Without salts you'll die, but if you eat a kilo you also die. Since we're talking about school, how about a 5000 word essay on why experiments where co2 is added to greenhouses that show thermal warming don't apply to the globe.
I was told there was a coal mine near Port Talbot that was good coal for the steam engines and preserved heritage railways,
When I was looking at wood pellet burners a few years ago I read that the FSC had lobbied to the EU to change the wording in the legislation that then allowed old growth forest in Estonia to be used to make pellets that after drying and transport went into so called green power stations in the UK. I'd also heard of the guys installing these systems telling their prospective customers to include their entire property (draughty out building and barns as well as the house) into the spec for the install so that their energy demand was more on oaper than it really was just to fudge the RHI and claim more money back. Also turns out the RHI covered equipment is often thousands more than the rest for no apparent reason.
What a joke.
Love it - keep the straight forward talking coming Roger!
Bring back coal, cortina’s, glam rock and bullseye 🎯
Lol Roger on form here, the thought of the squirrels making the pellets made me spit my beer
Hi Rodger. At least I can say our 200 odd 40 ft high Leylandi trees we had cut down last year all went to Drax , our local tree man gets rid of all his trees he can’t sell for firewood by sending to a processing plant , which they then sell to the power station . I must have kept the lights on in Lincolnshire for at least 30 seconds . Of course we have a wood burner , and as you can imagine we have quite a lot of wood left for our selves . But we don’t tend to use Leylandi as it doesn’t produce much heat ironically . But providing the wood people use in their wood burners is well seasoned, there really isn’t a problem . Plus the new burners now available are extremely clean, and efficient . I can only hope they don’t ban them , but who knows what will happen in the future regarding anything let alone wood burners .
Yes there is a green waste recycling centre just north of Birmingham that sends all their wood waste to drax, several articulated lorries a week. Still only a tiny amount but not all that is burnt is imported.
Conifers are my favourite wood to burn. Smells lovely. Like Christmas day. They give off great heat but don't last as long as harder woods. I've never really noticed having to stack the burner much more frequently.
@@alann8117 hi there. Indeed so. As you can imagine I had quite a lot of it and way more than I could possibly store , but as you say It does burn well but quite quickly . I think it probably produces more tar in the chimney that might cause a problem if you don’t sweep regularly . This is ultimately why no one wants to buy it for wood burners , if you’re paying you want hardwood types . So being able to get rid of what might have been over 50 tons of the stuff, at no cost to me was really a win win situation . Thanks for your reply. Best wishes and kind regards 👍
The trees from Louisiana were planted for paper mills and are no longer required. Their fast growing 15 - 20 years, so apart from a Panamax ship, which can carry 120,000 tonnes of cargo per trip, Drax is relatively carbon neutral - and since we still need 24/7/365 power stations, it's more carbon neutral than coal or gas.
I do pretty much agree with you Roger and all this Greenwashing stuff is about money making. A couple of points though: You can't compare the output of Drax against a country of woodburning stoves, Drax cleans it's smoke, woodburners don't so they do pollute.
Wind power is on the increase and it's destroying the countryside, peat bogs and wildlife. The best bit is our grid is not man enough to cope with the output of a big wind turbine when the wind reaches a certain speed so they're turned off. Fossil fuel generators are then turned on and amazingly the public gets charged extra for this, seriously they do, look it up.
Dad used to be a manager at this place. Then the Americans took over. Even before this fiasco, we spent millions in the 1990s making a filter system to collect waste and turn it into gypsum for the building industry. He was so infuriated that he was never allowed to turn it on. We also used to use all the hot water in large tanks and grow eels for human consumption. They stopped that as well. Proffit, proffit, proffit. I also spent a while in Canada in the 2000s. The Canadians told me even back then that Canada, that good old socialist country that sold the idea of apatide to England, was the worst country in the world for deforestation. Nothing has changed. Wonderful people, rotten socialists, and criminally organised leaders. I still find it strange that they have to pay out millions in electricity bills each year, as even though they make it, they are not allowed to use it and have to purchase it back at a profit from the grid. how blind and ignorant we all are.
You're blaming socialists for profiteering organisations? That's inherently capitalistic
This has nothing to do with socialist or socialism 😂😂😂
Does it really matter what we do when you see china signing off a new coal power station every week and india going to be the same soon not to mention where do we buy all our stuff from well yes coal burning nations ie china .
Don't forget the efficiency, turning heat into electricity sending it miles down cables and through transformers to then turn it back into heat means 50% losses . Factor in the cost difference between log burners and electricity via the grid and you soon figure out that we are all being conned left right and centre in the UK . Brilliant Roger
Nowhere near 50% losses. "Citizens Advice suggests that about 1.7% of the electricity transferred over the transmission network is lost, and a further 5-8% is lost over the distribution networks".
Add to that a heat pump at around 300% efficiency results in a net gain.
@@robertszynal4745 I am taking 50% losses from my memory so I checked the figure in the googlenetmospere
czcams.com/video/PNh6PO3aM4s/video.htmlfeature=shared
Heat pumps are only the figure you quoted efficient if running on a day where there is plenty of heat in the air ( most cannot use ground source) at night and for large parts of the winter you are heating your very well insulated home with electricity
Here's something interesting, my first trade is arb pro. I sell logs to pay for my gas 😂 wood is carbon neutral to me. My second trade is heat engineer , soild fuels and oil in the countryside. I've also got heat pump qualifications I'm presently in a debate with heat pump scheme, they are telling people uk electricity is only 2% fossil fuel and they are cheaper to run than any other system. Its a con because its a lie . Plus what do the salesmen do ? They buy a sports car or big truck for the commute.
Absolutely clear to me the day I first heard this news. They think we’re stupid.
£1.6m a day = £584m a year. If there are 28m households that is a subsidy of £21 per household per year. Where does £500 come from if guaranteed price?
Those wood pellets are made near Me, at Invergordon. Yes they are made from forestry waste and waste recycling wood.
Burning would is carbon neutral, provided it is from fallen trees. Wood left to decay on forest floor produces the same amount of carbon as when it is burned.
It is the particulates that are the issue with woodburners.
Yep.
Never bought logs.
It keeps you warm three times .
Looking for it .
Cutting it up.
And lighting it.
🙂
Have watched your rants for several years now, keep up the good work. Drax may only provide 6% of our electricity but because we have very little spare capacity in the system now we may not be able to do without it. This situation is made worse because of the wind and solar on the grid and very little energy storage.
30 plus years ago a wood pellet pedlar tried to get the railway worked for to burn pellets in the locos. He just would not listen to my argument that the calorific value of wood was so low it would be useless. Any way he filled a tender, at his own expense and we set off. Instead of the normal 80 miles we went two miles and had to tow the test loco home. Exit stout party tail between legs.
You didn't do the test right. You were supposed to bury and compress the pellets for several million years first, then dig them up and put them in the loco
The fact that seems to be lost on most is that there is a need for these so called clean energy wood burning power stations to produce electricity at night to charge up all those so called eco friendly EV vehicles as there is no sola and very little wind produced electric at these times. Even the government has classed Drax/wood fired power stations as clean energy. The fact that all this wood is transported around the globe by oil powered ships also seems to lost in this great green washed world.
Wood burners are pretty good because they actually kick out some serious heat.
Love my wood burner, burning hedgerow trees that are pollarded and trimmed out as part of normal maintenance. Circular carbon, new saplings planted, and young trees consume more carbon than the ones in their senescence.
*Quote tree ages and reference(s) for your statement, please* Last time I looked at any papers, you were looking at 20-30 years before replanted forest becomes a carbon sink...and that varies by latitude and tree species...maybe trees have evolved since the last time I looked.
Yes they do but not quick enough, the existing ones are big old lumps of carbon that by burning it being released. Don't get me wrong, I want to fit a log burner this year but I am fully aware I am not doing anything good.
@@michaelbalfour3170 Don't worry, there's billions worldwide still heating and cooking with coal and wood that won't be stopping anytime soon... Just wait till they start taxing our expiration...at both ends...
It is very expensive to fit a log burner and there are many rules and regulations if you fit one without you can invalidate your house insurance or be dangerous also you cannot just burn anything and getting a source of wood to burn can be costly
Actually, more than 80% of Drax wood is from trees, not offcuts.
They could not find enough offcuts.
R
Love yours video 🤩 My takeaway on woodburners is a natural reactions to high energy prices. At least here in Norway 😅 but many trees that coming down to clear ground for buildings, overgrowth , get a better view from you padio etc. and trees to close to buildings in risk of damage in case of storms etc. etc. It would be a waste to not burn them for heat in my opinion. Each winter we burn 2 tons of pellets in our house downtown in Oslo, and have no guilt feeling of doing so due to mad high prices for electricity, but we do going to install a r290 (propane as a media) air to water heatpump this year. Greetings from Oslo Norway.
Ive just moved to my new gaf, ive built it with as much insulation as possible, we've now got the hang of things and 3 weeks free of the gas CH kicking in, our log burner is a god send, all sourced free from local companies and doing my bit, wood is not fossil fuel so no dead dinosaurs were ever harmed in our home, but as for drax, dont blame anyone but ourselves for the lust for energy as a species !
I have a log burner, it came with our house. We use it sporadically, but with our eyes open - don't kid yourself that you're doing no harm - burning wood creates carbon, and perhaps more importantly air pollution.
Yeah but your being lied to about the effects of emissions this is all a ploy to dismantle the west for the coming war mate
@@samnichols4361 i was getting at, burning wood is an offset which is a term our gov uses too freely, if the fuel is not dug from the ground ie coal/gas then it is ok, burning of any fuel gives off carbon monoxide just like drax, but if a log burner is in your home it is as near as dam 90% efficient unlike drax which is less than 50% by the time that energy gets to you home.
Absolutely fine in isolation and I will always have a log burner to supplement our other heating methods but the other day I drove through Banja Luka in Bosnia, and no exageration, you couldn't see beyond 100m due to the smoke produced by every house in the city using a log burner. Our eyes were stinging by the time we drove through the city. People are wearing masks and outdoor activities are banned - it is advised not to walk anywhere. I've never seen anything like it.
I have been using wood stoves for decades and currently have a wood-fired range that does my hot water, heating and cooking. I am lucky to have trees on my own land and don't have to buy firewood so I save a fortune on oil. The Drax scam is real and is far from carbon neutral.
Happy New Year Roger, hope you had a nice break.
I wanted to ask your thoughts on a idea I've had, considering your knowledge of; air source Heat Pumps, and Wood Burners.
I was wondering if the two heating systems could be combined. I have a mid 1950's semi detached house, and I'm thinking of putting a large extention on the back, a Utility room in the middle, leaving the small front room as is.
I was thinking of a wood burner in the small front room with a back boiler plumbed to a large water tank in the Utility Room. This would be that extra additional heat source for heating the whole house when the temperature is below -5 outside in the winter, which I believe is the Air Source Heat Pumps failure point.
My question is, can you think if there's a reason why these two heating systems could not be combined into a single house heating system?
A bit long winded I know, but the idea of having a wood burner as a top-up system for the winter months seems a logical step to a non plumbing person.
All the best
Robert
That is just water vapour coming from the towers.cooling towers.
You almost had me going with the bit about the squirrels!
It's not just woodpellts they use, they also burn biomass and they offer hydro pumping for energy storage....Yes, I am a shareholder.
Wood pellets are classed as biomass.
My dream enegy source is all nuclear … and with the rezidual/excess heat to heat greenhouses and animal farms …
personally, I wouldn't mind if they built nuclear power plants near my house…
You do understand about radio activity and radioactive waste right ? You do realize that there are billions of megawatts of free energy in the seas , in the air and in sunlight every single day ? But hey let's leave radioactive waste buried all over the planet and wait for an attack to kill anything that lives longer than a year or two ...
We can all die happy knowing our 60 years of nuclear energy has left a 10s of 1000s of years legacy of waste juggling for the public purse to pay for. UK spends billions every year on juggling nuclear waste. Every new station adds to that bill, forever. We need a power source that doesn't leave the Earth worse off for our descendants than it was for us.
@@trs4u a solution would be to invest in nuclear power plants that can consume the used fuel from the classic ones...
I would put solar panels and wind turbines only in areas undergoing desertification
But there is no perfect solution for our energy intense life … + Fusion is just a nice dream for now and the next decades…
At least nuclear creates the need for quite cool and high skill jobs, small footprints compared to other solutions…
@@trs4uas opposed to all of those coal miners dying an unhappy long death by diseases brought on by mining coal. As far as lives lost is concerned, nuclear energy has the lowest number.
Do you know of a dismantled nuclear powerstation? No?
That will be left for our kids and their kids . . .
Your opinion on governmemt etc is important. Not because I'm in awe, but due to common sense and research being combined with a decent sized audience of thinking, working people. Thanks.
Don’t feel guilty Roger .
Those iron phosphate batteries will be around for thousands of years unlike a bit of wood smoke
No they won't. ... and what's a 'bit'... is that something less than a thousand tons?
@@willthecat3861
You mug ,stop watching television it brainwashes idiots what to think .
Tell me what happens to the batteries and the solar panels. Give me a link to companies that recycle them , how much un green energy does it take to mine and make them and ship it around the world .
Most of my household energy comes from solar and batteries.
It’s not green it’s cheaper
I live in an area where more and more people are using wood burners. The STENCH is horrendous making your eyes water, you have to keep your windows closed even hanging washing out is a no no.
I must admit it isn't good. I don't use mine in the day and I am careful what I burn but I know some people chuck anything on them.
Fair assessment of the state of the energy market in the UK. It sucks. Lots of box ticking and little else. I think wood burners are OK PROVIDING YOU BURN WELL SEASONED Hard Wood.
Both my neighbours have wood burners,goodness only know what they are burning but it stinks!
Coal and oil is good, we should use our own resources while we build more nuclear power stations. If we can have nuclear reactors in submarines why can't my town have one?
Coppice your own wood. Barrow it to your wood stove. That is the only true carbon neutral way to heat your home.
I've been saying burning wood chips at Drax is a con-job from our government the only reason they are doing it is so they can meet carbon emission targets.
A better thing to do would be to allow the natural decomposition of the wood where it has been felled which will enrich the soil without any harmful emissions. In the power stations then opting for cleaner fuel sources like coal and gas, which produce fewer pollutants compared to burning wood, so ensures a more environmentally responsible approach. This strategy would not only reduces carbon emissions from transporting wood across long distances but also promotes soil health and minimizes our overall environmental footprint.
Well said! Such a scam, Panorama did a program about Drax sometime mid 2022 I believe - "The Green Energy Scandal Exposed"
Oh I didn't know that. I could have just watched that rather than sneaking around in the bushes for three weeks.
Yeh they showed evidence that they were chopping down prime Canadian forest to make the pellets, rather than just using "waste wood"
What a fantastic rant, great job dismantling this greenwashing, they are spinning a wheel before our eyes and if we’re not careful we get snookered.
And yes all the production and transport of fuel, also costs fuel, it is a neverending vortex of oil used to either get more oil or to get anything else.
Meanwhile the weather is becoming more and more catastrophic, which is something we should be dealing with, but everybody is too busy gluing in styrofoam insulation (more petrochemicalia) or hustling to pay their power bill.
What no one is talking about is what happens to the planet when CO2 drops below 200 -150 parts per million.
It seems odd to me that the UK sits on millions of tons of coal. But we import wood from the US and Canada which when burned is more polluting than coal.
What is extra strange is bringing biomass from North America to burn in the UK while they still burn coal in North America.
You could look at Drax as having a 'higher fossil carbon efficiency' than a gas, coal, or oil power station, a bit like a heat pump. The fossil carbon used to run plantations, process the timber into pellets, ship them across the ocean etc is much less than would be used if fed directly into an equivalently powerful generator. If Drax burns half the New Forest in a year, it is carbon-neutral-for-fuel if the plantations feeding it are 20 times larger than the New Forest, if 40 years is the cycle time of the plantations.
We could skip all of this by just recycling atmospheric CO₂ with renewable energy, combining it with hydrogen from water and injecting it into the gas main. The UK's average all-kinds power demand is something like 200GW. We have upwards of 2,000GW potential in North Sea wind, so let's synthesise net zero methane into storage with it. Net Zero methane would mean our gas-backed electricity would be net zero *for fuel*. We could export net zero methane to the rest of Europe, making their gas-fired consumption net zero too. People could even keep their gas CH and not feel bad about it. Suspect the price of net zero gas might go up. Would people prefer their gas CH a bit more expensive, or banned?
2,000GW of net zero methane (would be less after conversion and domestic take) as exports, forever (Europe will still be using it in 50 years), sustainably, would make us all rich. What are we doing with the gas main? Its power capacity is like 10× that of the electricity grid and it works great. Why not just fill it with net zero gas?
You’ve made some cool points there, things I’ve not heard about before, do you know where I could find out more? Did you get this from an article or vid?
I might be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure splitting hydrogen from water is a VERY energy intensive task and would takeaway from renewable energy sources to make an overall inefficient process. Bottom line, making hydrogen from water is very hard and not worth the cost
@@reecehardiman7662 I got it from all over - I've been excited about the prospects for fixing Climate Change since I saw "Air Fuel Synthesis" make petrol in a shed so long ago, but synthetic hydrocarbons seem to struggle for mind-space. Royal Society suggest methane as a fix for renewable-energy-for-everything, but prefer hydrogen. I like the idea of methane because we already use it.
@@TheLinkedList 'Efficiency' arguments need to deal first with the fact we're only talking about this because fossil carbon is having its 'fags moment' - we've discovered it's killing us. That's not 'efficient'. The other issue with 'efficiency' as an argument is we're comparing a global-scale industry enjoying a century+ of at-scale efficiency improvements with something that people have done so far only in sheds. There are some physical limits to the processes with no apparent limit in sight, but it must be borne in mind that the UK has colossal renewable potential in the North Sea - far, far more than we need - and it can't easily be exported as unpredictably intermittent electricity to our green-energy-thirsty friends overseas. But there are big pipes and big ships.
@@trs4u I think you've missed some important and immutable physics in this. Splitting H20 takes a lot of energy. If you're making hydrogen to use as a fuel source, it takes 5 times as much electricity to do so as it does to use it directly. No amount of scaling will change this as it's inherent in the chemistry/physics of the process. Methane is a terrible idea as it's a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 is, so moving away from it is what's needed. Combine that with combustion never being completely efficient and always creating unwanted biproducts as it's not burning in a pure O2 environment, but in air, then you're onto a loss again.
The only way to get the net zero gas you're talking about would be to have much more renewable electricity generation than is needed to drive the processes we already have (to power the conversion to chemical fuel, and take into account their inefficiencies). It makes no sense to do this once you've looked at the overall processes and the energy needed at each stage.
Nice work. Just now Biomass at flat out is about 6%. It really is greenwashing. Wind is over 16%, Gas 57%. It’s just a case of government taking the path of least resistance rather than the best route. And don’t think this is without consequences. 1. They want your gas. So forcing the homeowner to invest in expensive heat pump technology, and the people think it’s a great idea. No it’s not. Gas heating transformed life in the uk. Heat pump technology is NOT new. My dad explained it to me 50 years ago, using the fridge coils. 2. Price of uk electricity.
They should of kept drax open burning coal for when wind and solar aren't providing enough power. As it was britain's newest coal power station and provided roughly 10% of the UK's electricity needs as it was basically 2 coal stations on 1 site. It would of kept a few local coal mines going as well, so would of been good for UK jobs, rather than shipping wood half the way around the planet, absolute madness.
I disagree with regards wood burner guilt. The wood most people are burning would be felled regardless - land clearance or other purposes, dangerous trees, etc. If not burned that wood would decay. That decay process turns virtually all that wood into CO2. It'll take 3 to 5 years but virtually all of it will end up in the atmosphere. Exactly the same with the food we eat. All that CO2 we breathe out came from plants we ate or plants the cow/sheep/etc ate first. So the CO2 from the wood is in the current carbon cycle. However gas, oil and coal left the carbon cycle millions of years ago. Reintroducing them back to the current carbon cycle is the problem, not using carbon in the existing cycle.
My son has a wood burner, but he's a carpenter so has a good supply of off cut wood. I don't like the fact that virgin trees are being chopped down, back in time when the population wasn't so big then fine but we're populated to a massive extent where there's not even trees. We need cheap gas or nuclear energy, and not everyone can chop wood or even light a fire!
co2 helps vegetation, vegetation makes more oxeygen, balance
nothing to do with carbon and everything to do with COIN
Due to the export of pellets the price in Canada has just increased another 10%. As Canada has cheap electricity about 10p a kWh, it means heat pumps are more efficient that pellet stoves now. One bag of pellets is equivalent to 54kWh of electricity where I am, and I sure don't use that much to heat the house in a day, $9CDN that is. Three years ago the pellets were $6 a bag so efficient but due to increased demand it is $9 now, can only increase as Drax burns down all the Canadian forests in their furnaces.
I got rid of my Wood Burner 11 years ago and went all electric. Much of the year my house heating runs at very low cost from PV via Heat pumps, plus direct heat capture from the roof .
That said I totally agree that DRAX is a super con for shareholders profits and has NO place in a modern world.
You'll miss that wood burner if you were to have no power for a week on winter like Texas in 2021
@@bigbadtree I don't live in Texas.
@@solentbum you purposely choose to ignore my point
@@bigbadtree I would probably use the car to load facility in one of my EVs. That way I can not only heat the house, but also keep the fridges running. That said, my NOT living in Texas is relevant. I live in an urban area with a temperate climate and only four miles from the sea. Using wood to heat my house would be more expensive than mains electricity, and totally inconvenient.
I can make electricity 'on site' if needed, even if that means using a diesel generator.
The last power cut to my home, first in 30 years, was last summer when a digger driver cut the mains cable during roads repairs. We were without power for almost two hours!
The whole UK energy policy and security is a mess.
Would a secondary combustion wood stove burn off the particulates ?
A sensible post Roger. Pellet burning power stations and biomass boilers are one big con, as they produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.. As a degree level chemist, I can tell you the CO2 is likely to remain as CO2 when stored. The simple thermodynamics state that CO2 is a more stable state than CH4 (methane, natural gas). To convert CO2 back to CH4 would require more energy than it would then create, so it's not a viable option.
I wish I had got a woodburning stove instead of a gas fire. Don’t get me wrong. The gas fire is lovely and hot and I can turn this on and off at Will, but it would be good to have a woodburning stove and cutting my own wood for Free.
Not to mention the log drying kilns, burning green wood to heat them...
I fire up my wood stove to digest this 🔥
I've just looked online, and one of the biggest shareholders of Drax is American, so no wonder they favour their own companies and buy from them companies, is that against competition, as we have waste timber processor's in this country, and the cost of transportation is far less,
Cutting warmongering cuts carbon overload. What’s the carbon print of tank missile battleship and bullet impact of those activities along with the manufacturing prices of the above. ???????????
Are you aware that Drax do not have to account and report on any emissions emitted from the power station as part of the energy generation process.
You have an incredible amount of knowledge and present the subject very clearly in bite sized explanations. Do you do this all yourself or is there a team helping you. On my side, I live in rural France and have a wood stove helped out by a programmable pellet stove - all to avoid using incredibly expensive propane from a big white tank in the garden. I would like to swap out the propane gas by an Air Scource heat Pump, but since I am 65 the numbers would never work😮 out
About 30 years ago I stood inside one of the Drax towers and looked up through the chimney at the sky during an open day. Just saying for no other reason than I can ;)
Welcome to Britain 🇬🇧 .
I'd love to know what the Essential Craftsman thinks of wood burning stoves ?
His knowledge is so vast and his wisdom is earned over a lifetime of outstanding craftsmanship.
What a legend .
Get one before the bastardais ban them. They are great and burn more than wood ( bags of coal 20 kg are 15 euros here in Ireland ) Very clean burn , controllable and so much more efficient than an open fire.
Drax looks very clean and tidy.
It must be the constant greenwashing..
I've also heard that electric cars aren't as environmentally friendly as people think.
For example the batteries recycling and chemicals needed to produce them
I have heard that too. I have also heard Elvis lives and the earth is flat. The real peer reviewed science shows that EVs are much cleaner than ICE vehicles and they do not run on imported oil. Ironically they do somewhat run on Drax Biomass so you cannot have everything!
Proper straight talking, love it.
Happy New Year Roger! Thanks for all the vids 👍👍
It gets worse, Drax has won approval for a carbon dioxide capture and storage system installation at a cost of £40 billion paid for by the consumer. This will take power from the station to run it, power that would be better used feeding the grid. Hinkley Point C is cheaper than that and a lot more useful.
By all aspects Carbon dioxide captuure and storage is far too expensive, far too ineffective and poses a danger in the possible effect of a serious leakage. CO2 being heavier than air and undetectable , odourless and colourless. It displace oxygen and any one unfortunate to be in such a leak has no more than a couple of minutes of life left.
I live in Snaith a couple of miles down the road from Drax. They still burn coal as well though they claim they don’t, meant to be a big secret but all the locals know. You can tell the difference in smoke coming out off the chimneys but most people know someone who works there and they don’t hide it.
Imagine if the UK had had sensible energy policies for the past several decades. Imagine if we'd continued to invest sensibly in nuclear, against the ironically environmentally damaging protestations of 'green' campaigners. Imagine if we'd refused to pander to the, more generally right wing, pseudo-conservative, 'I'm alright', NIMBY types and gone further with wind. If we'd thrown in a better approach to solar and, perhaps, added a little more hydro. If we'd taken a long term and more pragmatic, realistic, strategic stance on fossil fuels and the UK's extraction, and storage, of them.
Imagine we'd had decent governance; some kind of rational, and ultimately more environmentally friendly, approach to energy production and storage, particularly in the period since 2010.
When they changed Global Warming to Climate change knew it was a scam..... Then when my wallet started to empty I was convinced.
What is the definition of an eco friendly power station? and who defined Drax as an eco friendly power station?
A bloke behind a desk with an '0' level in ecology.
“We’re in the middle of a climate emergency” … Really ???