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Yeah, read that this morning. Sneaky underhand bastards.
However will there be any sanctions? Will there ****.
the theory of using wood pellets is good as it's sequested carbon -i.e. it's not new, but it doesn't work if you're ripping it from mature forests buggering up bio-diversity, if it's set aside land using a fast growing crop it works well. The probelms lie in the regulations around this, being that are not fit for purpose as tey are ill thought out and rushed through. As an example you can take a bio-mass, put it into a power station [then charge your EV] and claim lots of lovely credits for it. Take the same bio-mass and put it striaght into an ICE and you get penalised, yet the effects are broadly the same.
That's the point. DRAX are destroying forests that are not intended for this purpose.
Literally Drax the Destroyer then.
Good work by Panorama.
Private Eye magazine have been shouting about this for years without it being picked up in many other places, in a similar way to the Post Office /Horizon thing.
It really is essential reading and one of the few media outfits that tries to hold companies and governments to account.
Up next (on Panorama in another year or so).... Ben Houchen and the Teesside Freeport scandal.
Not on the same scale but the amount of biomass boilers lying idle is a scandal too, either they were installed for the green points never intended to be used, caused issues with emissions so stopped being used, or found the maintenance required was onerous or too difficult for fuel delivery or ash removal. The money & carbon spent on installing commercial biomass boiler systems that lie idle must be pretty large.
Wonder how much marine oil is used shipping the green fuel over from Canada?
Oh, I thought this was going to be a James Bond thread.
Wonder how much marine oil is used shipping the green fuel over from Canada?
Bulk shipping is crazily efficient. Depending on the ship/cargo it'll be 1000-4000 miles per gallon per ton (which look s less good when you're moving 200,000 tonnes and you end up with a fuel consumption of about 50ft/gallon).
This is happening to a lesser extent here too, great swathes of Exmoor plantation and hardwood are disappearing only to be chipped for burning or turned into loo roll. Most of the reasons for doing it is that the land owner (National Trust, or ENP) can clain huge grants for rewilding etc.
sounds like a front company for a Bond villain as well.
Odd that the State News Broadcaster has decided that now is the time for this to be deemed newsworthy.
There was a doc on TV about this years ago, not new News at all.
Drax biomass has never been anything other than an environmental con; lapped up by successive governments who deliberately ignored all the scientific evidence against the scheme.
Another example of the private sector conning the government.
It stinks.
As pk13 says, this has been covered by Private Eye in detail for many years - without gaining a higher profile until now.
I guess after this perhaps we can go back to hunting whales for blubber to save the planet and help the government meet it's carbon targets.
It's a ****ing nightmare tbh, absolute perfect fodder for the green deniers too.
IPad?
Given the heat from my phone I suspect just running the adds on this site are a chunk of DRAX's output 😂
This has reminded me to point to DRAX next time someone on here says "but I'm on an renewable tariff".
Can they not grow domestic hemp for bio fuel pellets or whatever, given how fast it grows?
There's loads a barren moor land on yorkshire for example...might help soak up some of the flood waters too, as water just runs off the hills as theres no drainage. win/win.
It seems a bit silly to ship bio-pellets around the world?
Some consultant tried to explain how environmentally friendly it was to ship wood pellets from Canada to the UK and then burn it 10 or so years ago - I thought it was B*ll**ks then and it still the same. I'm just more cross about it now because it was clear then it was nonsense.
It would be interesting to see the analysis of the environmental impact of coal extraction, shipping to UK and coal-fired vs. conversion, timber felling, shipping and burning that. Maybe it was a step in the right direction rather than scrapping the Drax assets.
Can they not grow domestic hemp for bio fuel pellets or whatever, given how fast it grows?
There were acres and acres of willow grown for Drax around Yorkshire, maybe further afield too, but I think there just wasn't enough. Or perhaps the subsidies for growing it weren't competitive?
Willow seems a strange choice for mass production of bio-fuel, but I'm not an expert on these matters.
Not on the same scale but the amount of biomass boilers lying idle is a scandal too, either they were installed for the green points never intended to be used,
In kirkcudbright we have/had a small cottage hospital attached to the health centre with 4/5 beds, 7 years ago the health board spent £360,000 fitting it with a biomass boiler, 3 years later the hospital was shut due to cutbacks.
Burning wood for fuel only works if it's local. The transport costs are just so high. It's also not something that scales up very well. I'd rather take the risk of a nuclear plant.
Carbon offsetting is too open for corruption in the same way. It doesn't encourage any change in behaviour to more sustainable practices.
Willow because it's so fast growing and a coppice crop that gets better in terms of biomass produced the older the root stock is I believe . An ex colleague, arborist, actually did his thesis on the best types of willow for biomass.
Willow because it’s so fast growing. An ex colleague, arborist, actually did his thesis on the best types of willow for biomass.
I won't argue with that as I'm not an expert, but compared to Hemp? It would be an interesting comparison.
Either way the hills of yorkshire are barren waste lands... I'd sooner see 'something' planted if only to soak up the rain fall and prevent flooding in the valleys.
I've no idea compared to hemp, but I know there we're massive plantations of willow for DRAX as I went to them back in the middle 2000s.
Where exactly? that's a good excuse for me to dust off the hard tail and do some cross country mtb!
😂 now you're asking! 🤣
All I can remember is it was somewhere vaguely near Borough Bridge or Wetherby. We went there to get trailer loads of willow wands for wattle and daub wall on a round house we were building near Grewelthorpe.
There was a big plantation of willow near me for Drax , all grubbed up now and back into crops again. I did hear that wood burning was simply not hot enough alone at Drax and the rumour was that they were adding coal to help increase the temperature to pressurise the system, only hearsay do not quote me , although there's no smoke without fire . Pun intended.
Will Hemp grow on the 'barren' moors of Yorkshire at 1000 feet elevation above the tree line and is the infrastructure there to do so ? Asking for a friend.
It, reportedly,takes 2 tonnes of wood to produce 1 tonne of wood pellets.
So, Drax using c7 million tonnes of wood pellets pa means the logging of 14 million tonnes of timber.
The scale is truckin mind boggling - as is the scale of lying and misrepresenration by and on behalf of Drax.
The problems lie in the regulations around this, being that are not fit for purpose as they are ill thought out and rushed through.
Difficult to imagine that from our government! Oh, wait… 🤨
*cough*Dangerous dogs act*cough*
I read about this a few years ago and the part that stuck in my mind was, carbon gets counted only once, so in this case, when its chopped down in another country, the shipping and burning aren't included so its green..
Why Private Eye stuff doesn't gain more traction is a mystery, apart from the format its written in. I did'nt realise there was a podcast, I'll check that out. I was a bit miffed on their behalf that they didn't appear to get a mention in The Post Office v Mr Bates.
It’s a shame we destroyed our coal industry and could be using local high quality coal rather than the rubbish we import from round the world
There were acres and acres of willow grown for Drax around Yorkshire, maybe further afield too, but I think there just wasn’t enough. Or perhaps the subsidies for growing it weren’t competitive?
IIRC the local growing of willow was intended to power Drax - but it was cheaper to get wood from Canada from clear felling of old forest than to use the biomass willow grown for the purpose so the local growers got shafted and stopped growing the willow
Why Private Eye stuff doesn’t gain more traction is a mystery, apart from the format its written in.
I think the issue is, it needs to be an "issue".
Post office, Hillsborough etc all show that the public at large will follow whatever the official narrative is as long as it's plausible. We're just not collectively as clever as we think we are, few people (outside Teesside perhaps) go to the pub and discuss it until it's been an ITV drama or the story changes/escalates and becomes "news" again.
At the other end of the news cycle take sewage, it's still as bit a problem as it was last month, but it's not worse so it's not news.
The trouble with Private Eye stories is they're very slow burning, they'll still be reporting on the goings on with the post office, Teesside, sewage, etc months or years before and after it briefly bubbles to the surface in the mainstream news outlets.
Either way the hills of yorkshire are barren waste lands… I’d sooner see ‘something’ planted if only to soak up the rain fall and prevent flooding in the valleys.
All 11,903 km2 of it…..😀