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| 'Powering tomorrow' ? |
Well I wasn't going to write anything today but I caught some news that Drax Power Station was using primary forest trees from Canada. So our greener than green biomass power station was actually destroying the environment maybe? Than as if to underline what I was listening to, I looked out the window and there was the Drax train just above the trees. Our station is up high. The trains cross the viaduct on this side of town and on the other side the 'great wall of Todmorden' which reaches down to the canal has the station above. I have often heard the train in the night, I think it does 14 trips a day, but this time it was day time. It is immensely long, the trucks pass by interminably carrying the wood pellets to the Drax station or coming back with fly ash.
Reading Friends of the Earth, they say it is old, inefficient, damaging and expensive, and there are better ways of delivering renewable energy.
It is interesting to listen to this CEO the way he lies then wriggles out of his lies with the ease of a snake shedding his skin. Article here. (October 2022)
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| The Great Wall of Todmorden. Geograph photo |
In reality, taking all things into consideration, Drax would emit less CO2 if it were fuelled directly from the coal that it sits on. No primary forest destruction, no fuel for pelleting, no fuel for transport to Drax, and a much more effective combustion process as the energy content for a given CO2 output is higher for coal than wood.
ReplyDeleteBut the "renewables" religion says otherwise....
I cannot argue with you Will as I don't know the figures. But I will say as someone who was brought up in the 'Black Country' and suffered asthma, coal is very dirty.
DeleteThat explains the huge amount of lumber heading east of my house on the trains. Jean from Manitoba Canada
ReplyDeleteAnd to think it goes past our town of Todmorden all the way from Canada Jean.
DeleteDraxula...
ReplyDeleteMaybe Tom, they are funded by the government. And made a profit as well. Wonder how you do that?
DeleteI hear that French energy bills are quite low compared to ours.
DeleteThey went nuclear of course. Bigger country, smaller population on the land and an aggressive nature from the French people for getting what they want.
DeleteDrax is close to where I am originally from, so I have been aware of this for years. How can it be right to cut down trees and chip them in Canada (even renewable ones), transport them across the Continent, ship them across the Atlantic to Cumbria, and then carry them by train to Drax? It produces 5% of Britain's power, so presumably we still need it for now, but when it is next to millions of tons of coal under the ground, would it not have made more financial sense to keep burning that until it could be phased out? It cannot be justified without fiddling the environmental numbers
ReplyDeleteI can't really answer this question Tasker. We do not seem to have that many trees in this country, in fact see the tree planting schemes for forests. The original contract in Canada was for the debris that came off the trees when they were chopped down and not the trees themselves. All ridiculous. But I still would not like to burn coal anymore perhaps the answer is us all becoming prudent in our use of electricity before it is forced upon us ;)
DeleteBurning trees to save the environment? What a queer thing. Sustainable because new trees are planted??? £6 billion in subsidies. Unbelievable.
ReplyDeleteSometimes the solution governments come up with really don't fit the bill.
DeleteThis is ridiculous on a epic scale.
ReplyDelete