David Turver On Drax
By Paul Homewood
This is an excellent summary of Drax biomass operations on David Turver’s Substack:
Introduction
Last month, the Government opened a consultation on providing transitional support for biomass plants to bridge the gap from when the current subsidy regime ends in 2027 to 2030 when biomass with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is expected to come online.
This article takes an in depth look at biomass and Drax in particular and the new arrangements proposed by the Government for BECCS.
Read the full story here.
David’s conclusions say it all:
Electricity generation from standalone biomass is already extremely expensive and inefficient. Adding CCS to make BECCS makes the technology a net energy sink which of course is even more expensive. The Government should drop any plans it may have for BECCS.
In an ideal world, we would also stop such large-scale biomass generation too. However, our coal-fired plants are schedule for closure later this year and most of the remaining nuclear capacity will reach the end of its life and close over the next few years. Our gas-fired generation fleet is aging, leading to the risk of blackouts. This will mean that the biomass units at Drax will be essential to keeping the lights on during dark, calm winter evenings when there is no solar power and precious little wind generation. I fear the Government will have no choice but to keep these plants running, spending billions of our cash. However, they should also entertain the heretical notion of keeping the remaining coal-fired plants running and, heaven forbid, consider converting Drax back to burning coal.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
This whole farce should renamed biomess.
Very droll
David’s solutions are far too sensible for the eco loons. And there are no subsidies — how can a business possibly survive.
West Burton was blown down last week, so a bit late to save that.
That leaves Ratcliffe due to close (and start re-development – sounds like demolition to me) in September 2024.
Even Ratcliffe is an old, tired plant, no doubt with old, tired employees who have worked under the sword of Damoclese for years. I know – not a life enhancing experience.
A sensible approach would be to plan for several new Ultra Supercritical plants whilst getting some new opencast mines up and running as soon as possible (that implies tossing existing “Planning” obstruction out of the window and using the plod and perhaps the army to pre-occupy the “protesters”.
Obviously there is plenty of scope for deep coal mining, as well. But even with a sensible Government (don’t laugh!), that is unlikely to produce British coal in less than 10 years.
Fracking is the more obvious way to go. But the “protestors” MUST be controlled.
Being mindful of the weekly Saturday antics in London and elsewhere since 7th October, who imagines that will happen?
Ratcliffe might be old and tired but she has been working bloomin hard for the last 18mths and has regularly had all her three remaining units run up to full load on occasions. Oh and with the windmills on a go slow today shes been knocking at nigh on 900MW all day. A sensible govt would at least keep the plant on standby just in case.
Absolutely.
And chain His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Zero Energy Security to a static bike with a dynamo, to help out.
No wonder Grantham funds his ‘attack dog’ Ward at LSE to smear any contrarian thoughts on ‘Thermostat Theory’. Important to protect the timber investments.
‘According to the company for which Grantham is a co-founder, Grantham, Mayo, & van Otterloo, timber has risen steadily in price for 200 years and has returned an average of 6.5 percent per year during the last century. GMO is predicting a 4.8 percent return for timber over the next few years. Compare that with the ever-changing status of stock returns over the same period, and you’ll understand why so many choose to invest in timber.’
https://www.escapeartist.com/blog/what-you-should-know-about-investing-in-timber/
Neither anybody in the main parties nor their advisers has any idea what is needed to keep the lights on and electricity prices affordable (we are led by donkeys – I hope I am not being too unkind to donkeys). The National Grid ought to sort the mess out, but they will be making too much money from building 1,000s of km of new grid lines and connecting more useless wind, solar and batteries. We are all doomed.
The ESO (being effectively nationalised late this year) keep the lights on and actually are pretty good at it which is a problem as until we get a few blackouts nobody will wake up and smell the coffee.
NG will make a few quid out of new lines but given the prevarication and delay in getting alignments agreed they wont make as much you expect anytime soon. This is good as a lack of grid infrastructure will do more to delay net zero achievement than anything else so am happy that the nimbys and plenty of environmentalists are anti pylon. Bring it on.
Turver is brilliant!
How can we get your hopeless Tories to educate your apparently sensible Prime Minister to be the first of Europe’s technically ignorant political leaders to ditch these financially ruinous “net zero” policies before the next election…bringing Turver in to advise him, of course in order to educate the electorate!?
My children and grandchildren face certain penury and endless debt repayments as a likely consequence of the conceits of today’s “ruling idiots”!
Europe and North America, between them, comprise 14% of the World’s population today. 59% of the World’s population live in Asia, where CO2 emissions have risen by 134% since 2000, dwarfing the efforts of our two, once great and powerful continents, to rule the rest of the World. Africa, South/Central America and much of Asia are mostly poor as a direct result of their access to ample, affordable energy! Quite rightly, they would like to catch up with us economically
The UK’s contribution to Global CO2 emissions is roughly 1%. Denmark’s, where I live, is 0.1%!
Yet, listening to the Just-Stop-Oil Brigade and their fellow travellers in both countries, and then reading Turver’s analysis this morning, at the age of 83, I feel I have never lived in crazier and more foolish times!
Or are we, collectively, so damned powerless?
‘Apparently sensible’
You will get a lot of people happy to debate you on that and just witness his deluded speech last week on islamic agitators and their hatred of jews. According to Sushi there is some mystery ‘far right’ involved in what is going on every Saturday in support of the Hamas terrorists and that we are a happy ‘multicultural society’ but only if you ignore all the monocultural ghettos in our cities where English is often a foreign language.
Just one issue with David Turver’s otherwise excellent piece, I thought it was well-known that Drax didn’t operate its Unit 1 power plant covered by the CFD as it effectively gamed the system.
In so doing it avoided making huge payments that would have been due when wholesale electricity prices were far higher than the strike price. This botched contract was signed under the watch of the odious cretin, Davey
Half the plant at Drax is still coal-fired because they couldn’t get taxpayers cash to convert it and they refuse to offer it for use because when you drill down into Drax you will find they support the Davos World Empire of Fascists.
Actually its 2 units the other 4 are pellet burners.
The whole thing should be converted back to coal but it wont be and it will be fudged up to keep receiving subsidies because its dispatchable generation and we don’t have enough of that
Drax had a standby contract on its coal units that expired last March. Clearly they hope these will be replaced by the first CCS units, so demolition of the old units has proceeded.
The CFD unit is back in operation now that the Baseload Market Reference Price has dropped back below the strike price.
I made a detailed comment at David Turver’s article explaining the CFD and BMRP economics.
Probably more of an insult is collecting ROCs in order to make the other units profitable when clearly gas was almost always cheaper.
and we’re sat on decades of shale gas….
I think these are AP1400 designed by Westinghouse, UK used to own Westinghouse, but Gordon Brown sold them to the Japanese (Toshiba ).
Why did we go with the crappy EDF EPR all have been years late and way over budget.
Broon’s brother was an exec at EDF
NOTHING DODGY THERE OF COURSE
nepotism rules ok.
@GeoffB To be pedantic, the Westinghouse reactors like the one that finally started as Vogtle 4 are AP1000. The Korean APR1400 are the ones in UAE – which they would like to flog to the Saudis and can’t because Westinghouse claim they contain their intellectual property. KEPCO say they don’t, honest guv.
@avoncliffnorthmill Yep, with you on the subject of fracking gas. They can do it under my house for all the evidence that it creates a problem. But RR SMRs are hardly puny – at 470MW they would produce about as much as lecky most of the AGRs! eg Hinckley Point B reactors were 480MW. The ones still running eg Torness are rated at 600MW.
Sorry, but I have to correct your response to avoncliffnorthmill:
not
nepotism rules ok, but
nepotism rules UK
I suspect the anti nuclear view of some civil servants/ politicians was a factors with the aim to sabotage nuclear as an option. I’m not says you can’t be opposed to the use of nuclear fission (although I would disagree with you) but you can’t use a public office to sabotage projects you don’t agree with because you can’t outright block them while I’m saying that I must include fracking with seismic limits design to be a defacto ban. Surely intentionally creating regulations that are impossible to comply with is misconduct or misfeasance in a public office?
I think we need a criminal investigation to see if any of the civil servants/ politicians (or close friends/family) involved in choosing the EPR have serious financial conflicts of interest which they haven’t properly disclosed and they made a choice the average person with the same information wouldn’t have especially with the UKs history with problematic nuclear designs I.e AGR see Dungeness B the clear lesson that should have being learnt with the AGR fiasco (see Dungeness B) is that a full size prototype should have being build and running for a period of time to give some time to find the bugs before committing to a fleet, with the existing builds considerably delayed & other countries who also considered the EPR at the same time the UK ruled it out like the UAE.
It would have made more sense to instead just continue with the PWR design used for Sizewell B although personally I would choose the CANDU as we don’t seem to have the heavy forging capacity for pressure vessels for PWR or BWR in the UK and we could work with the Canadians to build 50hz replica of Darlington Nuclear Generating Station but with 8 units like Bruce Nuclear Generating Station.
A bigger question that has never made sense is if the whole point of the Climate Change Act was to replace fossil fuel energy with like for like non co2 emitting alternatives (No one honestly believes parliament intended to reduce peoples living standards include making air travel & car use the preserve of the rich & connected), ignore the duties in the electricity act (“the need to secure that all reasonable demands for electricity are met”
– do we have enough generating capacity to run all those heat pumps? Are there plans to build enough to meet our equivalent instantaneous natural gas & heating oil demand for an unusually cold winter e.g 1947 or 1963 – https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news-archive/2018/gas-consumption-during-the-beast-from-the-east-how-the-local-gas-system-kept-us-warm) or endorse using public funds to rewards your mates see (Cash for Ash scandal ) why wasn’t a large scale (40GW+) replacement using nuclear fission using existing reactor designs investigated especially as new natural gas CCGTs were clearly being built at the time to replace the capacity of magnox reactors that had closed & gas would clearly end up replacing the AGR generation when they close if nothing was done. Then we have the Dutch HVDC link converter station being next to a running coal power station which seem to be ignored when it come to Co2 emissions. Saying that all the interconnect are presumed to be from so called zero carbon source when that clearly isn’t true.
The whole thing is in desperate need of an ITV drama like the one on the Post Office IT scandal.
Anyone with concern for the environment should be horrified by the blatant destruction caused by Drax. It would be better to convert it back to coal. Sadly there are influential players with vast financial interests to protect and the subsidies will continue. The American forests can kiss their ‘asses’ goodbye.
Drax was the most efficient and ‘clean’ coal fired power station on the planet, now its emissions are greater.
Which band of idiots thought this is a hood idea. Ludicrous.
’good idea’
It’s a long time since Drax was the most efficient coal plant. Modern HELE designs are capable of 45-50% efficiency.
Somewhat off topic but getting back to the fundamentals:-
” Just last week Olivier Blanchard ,former chief economist of the IMF, told the House of Lords’ economic affairs committee that transitioning to a low-carbon economy while “necessary” will be “much more expensive than people imagine” with a ” substantial fiscal cost to achieve anything close to net zero” .
Sir Dieter Helm, Oxford economics professor and another highly respected voice , meanwhile told peers it was “delusory to think” that the net zero transition would pay for itself – as many politicians, from all parties, continue to claim.
The process of spreading around the vast costs of net zero 2050 is becoming increasingly politically contentious. Any government wanting support for such targets must find a way to ensure renewables start delivering much cheaper energy bills”.
The above three paragraphs are taken from the end of Liam Halligan’s column in the S.Telegraph of the 25th February setting out why the government must slash energy bills. This both to reduce inflation as well as to recover the ability to compete in world market where, he says, that prices in Europe per kilowatt hour average Euros 29.08, in the US average domestic electricity prices from state to state were the equivalent of Euros 16.27 per KwH. while we are paying Euros 40.73 per KwH.
If you can find it the article is well worth reading and succinct — @ about 150 col cms!
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-false-promise-of-carbon-capture-as-a-climate-solution/
carbon capture will not work long term, as it leaks out in almost all strata.