The other side of net zero

Britain and the world are at a crossroads on climate. New global temperature records are being broken with alarming regularity. The 2015 Paris Agreement, which committed the world to limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, appears increasingly unachievable, and it is clear that decisive and sustained action from governments, the private sector and individuals will be necessary to minimize possible exceedances and limit climate change. the worst consequences. Part of this massive effort is further decarbonizing our energy grid, one of the largest sources of emissions. As a country, we have made tremendous progress in reducing our reliance on the dirtiest of fuels, coal, and transitioning to renewable energy.

The government has set a target of a low-carbon network by 2035, while Labor has planned an even faster transition for our energy sector. At Drax Power Station we supply power to up to 4 million homes and businesses. For fifty years we have played a vital role in delivering UK energy security and have been a source of highly skilled jobs in North Yorkshire. But we are making plans for the future by converting two of our production units to the carbon removal technology bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (Beccs).

This is not the first transition we have achieved. Drax Power Station started life in 1974 as Britain’s largest coal-fired power station, reflecting coal’s role at the time as the country’s main source of energy and domestic heating. Since then we have switched from coal to sustainably produced biomass. Because of the size of our location and the enormous amount of energy we produce for the grid, that switch was one of the key reasons why Britain was able to start decarbonising its energy system faster than any other European country. But to reach net zero and meet interim targets, we can do more.

The UK Climate Change Committee expects the country will still generate at least 59 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year by 2050, which will need to be offset by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere to reach net zero. We know that there is already too much CO2 in the atmosphere and that it is no longer enough to just stop emitting it. We need to start removing what is already there.

When it comes to carbon removal, we need as many solutions as possible to tackle the climate crisis. The options fall into two broad categories: nature-based solutions, such as trees and forests, which naturally remove carbon from the atmosphere; or technological or technical solutions such as Beccs and direct air capture (Dac).

With nature-based solutions, carbon storage can often be short-lived and quickly reversed in the event of a forest fire or forest degradation, and Dac, which uses large-scale infrastructure to effectively suck CO2 from the air, is energy intensive. This is because the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 0.4 percent and so a lot of air must be processed to make large removals possible.

Beccs takes the best of both options and combines them: the use of sustainably sourced materials from forests, which have absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere, and carbon capture technology to extract the absorbed CO2 and store it safely underground.

With Beccs at Drax Power Station we will capture CO2, a by-product of biomass combustion, transport it through a pipeline and store it permanently deep under the North Sea. The process creates a large negative carbon footprint and essentially helps restore the impact humans have had on the carbon cycle by burning fossil fuels.

Crucially, the Beccs technology is scalable and can make a significant contribution to the UK’s climate change goals. With this technology at the Drax Power Station, the site would become the largest carbon removal project in the world. Our Beccs plans already have planning permission, and this will enable the conversion to Beccs, allowing us to capture eight million tonnes of carbon per year – the equivalent of ceasing all departing flights from Heathrow.

Measures to reduce that level of carbon would prove to be much more costly and require massive changes in consumer behavior, or be logistically more difficult and expensive. This includes removing a further 3 million cars from the roads or requiring every household in Britain to have 1.5 meat and dairy-free days a week. Analysis by consultancy Baringa shows that delivering our Beccs project in North Yorkshire would save £15 billion in economy-wide costs by 2050, compared to the cost of cutting emissions through these other, more complex means.

Beccs is a process and a technology that requires long-term, stable support to reach its full potential. The UK government has an initial ambition to remove 5 million tonnes of greenhouse gases by 2030, growing this to 23 million tonnes by 2035. These targets, set out in the UK’s fifth and sixth carbon budgets, will be extremely difficult to achieve if this project does not go ahead. .

We’re close to the Humber, Britain’s most carbon-intensive industrial cluster, emitting more CO2 than any other part of the country. The region is home to a range of highly productive, highly skilled and well-paid, secure jobs in key sectors, not least at Drax, which itself contributes over £350 million per year to regional GDP and 2,580 jobs across Yorkshire and the Humber. But transforming these sites, and preparing them for a zero-carbon future, is essential to achieving our net zero targets.

In addition to being at a crossroads in the fight against climate change, there is another aspect in which this country faces crucial and historic decisions in the coming months and years. The pandemic, the war in Ukraine and instability in the Middle East have highlighted the need for action on energy security. Britain must not be left behind as the global and national economies reorder around net zero. Removing carbon could be central to a new model that sets us up for the next, greener century, and even beyond.

This article first appeared in a print Sustainability Spotlight report published May 10, 2024. Read it in full here.