The government has provisionally placed biomass conversion in the same category as onshore wind and solar PV. That means biomass developers like Drax would be expected to compete against those technologies for subsidy at auction when the new regime comes in.
The generator converted one unit at its Yorkshire coal plant to run on biomass in April 2013, under existing subsidy arrangements. It is seeking support from the incoming contracts for difference (CfDs) regime to convert two more of its six units.
Dorothy Thompson, chief executive of Drax, said when the company embarked on the programme, it had been hard to find experts or even equipment suppliers. “You can almost count on one hand the number of converted units across Europe,” she said.
Drax leads the table of projects in line for the first CfDs in April 2015. Thompson said she was “quietly optimistic” that support would come through, despite recent reports the early approval process risked falling foul of European state aid rules.