Aleksandra Tomczak, European Specialist
Last week I visited the UK’s largest coal power plant in Drax, Yorkshire. It generates 8.5% of the UK’s electricity demand and is also one of the largest plants in Europe. At the same time, Drax managed to reduce its CO2 footprint by over 15% during the last 10 years thanks to plant efficiency improvements and co-firing biomass.
The efficiency of the plant has been improved by replacing all of the old turbines with new ones, using better materials and with a more optimised design. With these changes the plant is now 40% efficient, up from 36%, which means that GHG emissions from the plant went down by 8% to 12%.
In the early 2000s the management of Drax also decided to co-fire biomass with coal. Today 10% of the fuel burnt in Drax for electricity generation is renewable biomass. As a result the plant’s carbon footprint from fossil fuels was reduced proportionally, by 10%.
Drax has also recently applied for EU funding under the NER300 scheme to build a carbon capture plant and it is planned that CO2 captured from Drax will be stored offshore in depleted gas reservoirs in the North Sea. If CCS is successfully applied to the plant its CO2 emissions will be reduced by 90%, making it a low-carbon source of electricity.
Around 1000 TWh of electricity have been generated from coal in Europe annually since 1990 – showing that even in the EU, coal continues to play an important role in electricity generation. At the same time, CO2 emissions from coal can be reduced and Drax is leading the way forward.
