Drax Paid £450 Million In Subsidies Last Year
November 30, 2016
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
https://www.ft.com/content/e8677192-b658-11e6-961e-a1acd97f622d
The Financial Times brings the astonishing story that Drax was paid £450 million last year for its biomass operation.
Under the CfD mechanism, Drax receives a guaranteed price of £105/MWh (at 2012 prices, worth around £115 currently).
Meanwhile, Drax’s CEO explains why the carbon tax should not be scrapped. No surprise there then!!
http://www.drax.com/energy-policy/carbon-tax-scrapped-definitely-not/
But I am not quite sure why he thinks burning America’s forests is in any way clean.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
This is the madness of the mad. A few million quid would have kept Kellingley going. As the winter gets colder and the lights start to go out could we perhaps burn one or two of these morons/spivs who brought this about.
What are they going to do when Mr Trump informs our government, that American Trees are for American people?
I am amazed that the Americans ever permitted the rape of their forests for UK biomass supply.
Maybe the greenies weren’t interested in the environment 😉
The Americans convinced the world that AGW was occurring and were clever enough to sell us their trees at exorbitant prices: why would Trump change that. I’m sure that he recognises a milk-cow when he sees one.
.. Pension fund gap in BHS is £450m
Drax too steals from pensioners.
Drax £450m/yr SUBSIDIES are paid by poor grandmas in their electricity bills + energy component of everything they buy.
Recently Paul launched a quiz to compare sir phil greedy (aka sir PiG) with smart meters, but my prize has not arrived.
The comparison with Drax could be a winner: Drax is a beautiful power station in one of gods-won counties that is being abused: Sir PiG is neither beautifu nor any use even (without subsidies).
Drax was named after a Bond villain so we know what to expect: Sir PiG is not.
SirPiG filled his trough and hid it: Drax will go on filling its torugh for a generation to come.
Sir PiG was knighted for his services to BHS and Pension funds: arise sir Drax.
Nigel Farage slaying the press and picking up on the total failure of the press to talk about the downsides of renewables: (At the end of this clip…well worth a listen.)
‘But I am not quite sure why he thinks burning America’s forests is in any way clean.’
How much is he paid?
It’s not about “clean” energy. It’s all about money and to hell with the consumer and the country.
At £450 per year how many years would it take to pay for another CCGT plant?
Why are reliable and cheaper solutions spurned for expensive and impractical alternatives?
I have reached the conclusion that the British establishment wants to make electricity much more expensive so the public use less. Hence they hope to shut down all the old coal fired plants and those nuclear ones as well. The alternative explanation is that they are raving incompetents.
£450million will buy a knew CCGT.
Every year!
It’s simpler. Energy ministers and snivel servants are given well-paid jobs in renewable industries and their mates become rich on carbon taxes whilst the poor die in their millions.
This winter is guaranteed to have power cuts now half the UK-France interconnect has been broken. That means both UK and France, which has a couple of major nuke problems.
Option 2 I think. They are all completely barking.
And here we are back to taxpayer-funded virtue-signalling yet again. Is there no end to this madness? The question is,of course, rhetorical.
£450 million of free money for churning out more CO2 than the coal fired plant it used to be? No wonder Drax wants more of the same government lunacy.
The policy-makers take the mantra that wood is good / renewable to extremes. The wood burning at Drax puts far more CO2 into the atmosphere than coal would for the same power output; but by green-magic this is replaced by growing trees that could not also replace coal that was burned far more efficiently…….the economics and science of the madhouse!
There is not one sound logical reason for transporting and burning wood apart from the Animal Farm type belief that wood is good and all other carbon sources are bad
And as everyone knows vast piles of nice dry wood pellets are a bit of a fire hazard. Still with 450 million they can afford the insurance.
There’s an episode of “Mega Shippers” on the telly featuring the operation to bring these pellets across the pond:
Mega Shippers
Freight of Fire
Season 1 Episode 7
“In Louisiana, 55,000 tons of highly flammable biofuel is destined for a hungry power station over 4,500 miles across the Atlantic. Meanwhile, a $10 million ship loader dangles perilously in the sky. And a faulty radio could doom the whole operation”
UK Gov. says: ‘Since 2002 there have been at least nine fatalities in Europe caused by carbon monoxide poisoning following entry into wood pellet storage areas.’
‘Carbon monoxide can kill quickly without warning. It is a colourless, odourless and tasteless gas that is highly toxic.’
http://www.hse.gov.uk/safetybulletins/co-wood-pellets.htm
We then find wood pellets ‘are classed as a biofuel, a non-fossil heating fuel’.
So wood is ‘non-fossil’ when the government wants it to be. Bizarre.
Absolutely,
I have been involved in the unfortunate death of stevedores handling a cargo of logs who went into the hold of a ship without breathing equipment and died due to oxygen shortage/carbon monoxide poising. The carriage and handling of natural products can be very dangerous.
The stupidity of all of this is the point that Jack Broughthon makes;
If these forests in the US were not being cut down they would be acting as a carbon sink. It would be far better to burn coal and to plant some trees.
Drax has been converted to be able to burn wood pellets but can it still burn coal if needed?
I believe that a number of individual boilers have been converted, the remainder are still using coal. Unlike stockpiles of coal outside, the pellets are stored in huge enclosed domes, so I imagine the handling and conveyor systems are very different. What would have been infinitely more sensible would have been to retrofit the whole site with Ultra-Super-Critical coal technology. The Chinese are building these at a formidable rate, but the bloody Greens would never allow it here, and no subsidies would be forthcoming. I think we can guess why they chose the wood pellet route instead…
Bark-ing mad.
+10!!!