14 DAY TRIAL // Recent news from the UK informs us that Drax Group Plc (i.e. a British electrical power generation company), intends to spend significant amounts of money on greening up the working agenda of the country's largest coal-fired plant.
More precisely, this facility stands to become the largest environmentally friendly energy producer in Western Europe, seeing how all of its units will gradually switch from burning coal to burning wood.
Rumor has it that, until the following June, one of the plant's units will already be busy burning wood pellets, and that from that moment on the remaining five will be quick in following in its footsteps.
Commenting on this project, Dorothy Thompson, presently employed as chief executive officer of Drax, made a case of how, “It [the project] will take Drax from being the largest carbon emitter by site in the UK to being, probably, one of the largest renewable plants in the world.”
Furthermore, “A lot of infrastructure and capital is already there. The beauty of it is that you're taking something that exists already. You're modifying very efficient coal-fired power stations.”
Oil Price informs us that, within the following 5 years, Drax has plans to invest as much as ₤700 million (roughly €880 million / $1.13 billion) on greening up the working agenda of the boilers it runs in England.
In order to achieve these goals, the company will need to import significant amounts of biomass from around the world.
Apparently, some of this biomass could come from North America, where the company might be looking into the possibility of building new plants whose sole purpose would be that of producing biomass.
Truth be told, the legislation concerning air quality in Europe tends to get ever stricter, which is why it must not come as a surprise that the UK intends to gradually close 50% of its coal-fired plants by the year 2016, and that nuclear plants will quit being part of the state's energy industry relatively soon after this happens.