Drax has announced its intention to submit a planning application later this month to equip two of the biomass units at its power station in Selby with carbon capture and storage (CCS).
The company said the process of obtaining a development consent order (DCO) typically takes around two years. Subject to success and a supporting investment framework from government, this could potentially allow work on the two bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) units to get underway in 2024, with the first becoming operational in 2027.
Drax group chief executive Will Gardiner said: “Kickstarting the DCO process this March is a landmark moment in deploying BECCS at Drax and delivering against our ambition to be a carbon negative company by 2030.
“At Drax we are very proud of the great strides already made in transforming the business to become the UK’s largest single site renewable power generator, producing enough renewable electricity for up to four million homes and protecting thousands of jobs in the process.
“With BECCS we can go even further. We will be permanently removing millions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere and making a significant contribution to efforts to address the climate emergency, whilst creating thousands of new jobs and supporting a post-covid, economic recovery.”
The application will not cover the transportation and storage infrastructure, for which National Grid Ventures will apply for planning permission separately. Drax has already completed a small-scale trial of BECCS with Leeds-based company C-Capture and is currently holding another with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
The announcement comes shortly after the company abandoned plans to repurpose the steam turbines from the two remaining coal units at the power station in North Yorkshire, which are due to cease generation this month, to create two sets of combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) with a total capacity of 3.6GW. It had already been granted a development consent order for the work, which was twice upheld by judges following legal challenges by the environmental law firm ClientEarth.
The group also agreed in February to sell the four the CCGT plants that it purchased from Scottish Power in 2018 to a subsidiary of Dutch energy company Vitol as well as to acquire the Canadian biomass pellet producer Pinnacle Renewable Energy, more than tripling its overall production capacity.