United Kingdom – Drax, a renewable energy company, has submitted plans to build the world’s largest carbon capture facility at its North Yorkshire power station.
The company intends to invest £2 billion in the development of two bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) units in the 2020s, resulting in the creation of thousands of jobs in the North and putting the UK at the forefront of a crucial new technology that will help address the global climate crisis.
Once operational, the two units will capture a minimum of 8 million tonnes of CO2 annually, making BECCS at Drax the largest carbon capture and storage project in the world. Construction on BECCS at Drax could begin as early as 2024.
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A significant project milestone has been reached with the submission of Drax’s application for a Development Consent Order (DCO) to the Planning Inspectorate. This comes after Drax held two significant public consultations to solicit feedback on its BECCS plans from key stakeholders and the general public.
The implementation of BECCS on two of Drax’s generating units will help the company achieve its goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030, which entails permanently removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than is generated across all of its operations.
Up to 80% of the goods and services required by Drax to build its BECCS project will be sourced from British companies. It recently announced a partnership with British Steel to look for ways to use those company’s Scunthorpe and Teesside steelworks as a source of steel for the construction of BECCS.
