Biomass power station produced four times emissions of UK coal plant, says report
Drax received £22bn in subsidies despite being UK’s largest emitter in 2023, though company rejects ‘flawed’ research
Sensationalist header as far as I can tell.
Comparing carbon emissions and only telling that it is more than another plants/industrial sites, is pretty useless. It needs to be normalized to emissions/kWh so it would be a useful comparison. That alone gives me pause as to how accurate/honest the comparison is.
For example: the plant could be the largest in the country which would mean emoting more is normal. Or it could be the smallest and have a disproportionate emission rate.
It also seems like the spokesperson of the plant claims that the wood is sourced from sustainably managed forests, and though I won't take that at face value, I see how that could further mitigate impact compared to what the sensationalist headline claims.
I don't have time right now to do much more research on this specific site. However, it is clear that the author of the article didn't do any research either and/or intentionally cherry picked a way to display the data to come up with an article that would drive traffic.
It's not just the emission of carbon that is the cause of climate change. It's the release of carbon that was sequestered as fossil fuels for millennia, causing an imbalance, which is the problem.
Biomass is essentially solar-powered, short term sequestering of carbon*. The process is only temporary though, because vegetation left alone will release its carbon back into the atmosphere when plant matter decomposes. Burning biomass that would otherwise decompose or was produced specifically as a sequestered surplus is renewable: it does not create a carbon imbalance, and it does substitute burning fossil fuels which do create a carbon imbalance.
/* There are a lot of details to argue over. But one thing is for sure, burning fossil fuels is far worse than any other alternative.
thank you for this reasonable analysis :-)
Indeed, what matters is the long-term perspective. And for that, only resources mined from underground make a lasting difference.
