Drax Power Station Begins Energy Efficiency Plan

Whilst you can not support a company which emits in excess of 20m tonnes of CO2 annually, you can commend them for actions they take to reduce their impact and improve efficiency. Drax Power Station, Selby, North Yorkshire is the largest coal-fired power plant in Europe with a maximum capacity of 3,945 MW, providing 7% of the UK's power, and burning up to 36 000 tonnes daily.

Drax has made an early start in its £100m plan to upgrade turbines, and installing its first high pressure turbine this month. Once complete, these upgrades will reduce the plant CO2 emissions by 1m tonnes of CO2 annually, the equivalent to removing 360 000 cars from UK roads. Drax also plans to produce 10% of its electricity from burning biomass, and recently surpassed 4% from burning olive and sunflower waste. This will further reduce the CO2 emissions from the plant by 2m tonnes per annum.

Whilst this wont appease the protesters who attended the plant in August 2006, it is a small step towards reducing the emissions generated by UK population through electricity production, and until renewable energy or other forms of zero emission energy is utilised to make coal-fired plants redundant its unfortunate that Drax will continue to emit emissions.