Drax has applied for planning permission for its multi-billion-pound project to create two bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) units at its power station in North Yorkshire.
The company claimed they would constitute the largest carbon capture facility in the world, capable of capturing 8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
Drax has submitted an application for a development consent order to the Planning Inspectorate following two public consultations on the proposals. The firm said work to build the two BECCS units could begin as soon as 2024 and its plans to invest £2 billion in the project during 2020s.
Will Gardiner, chief executive of Drax Group, said: “Drax’s BECCS project provides the UK with a once in a generation opportunity to kickstart a whole new sector of the economy and lead the world in a vital green technology needed to address the climate crisis.
“Drax aims to invest billions of pounds and create thousands of jobs developing BECCS in the UK, provided that the UK government has in place policies to support the feasibility and delivery of negative emissions technologies.
“BECCS at Drax will not only permanently remove millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, but it will also generate the reliable, renewable power this country needs. No other technology can do both.”
Captured carbon dioxide would be transported to the Endurance storage site under the North Sea through a pipeline network being developed by The Northern Endurance Partnership to serve the East Coast industrial cluster – an amalgamation of the previously separate Zero Carbon Humber and Net Zero Teesside projects.
The East Coast cluster was recently selected as one of the first low-carbon industrial clusters in the UK in line to receive government funding for the construction of CCS infrastructure.
The Drax power station in North Yorkshire has six units in total – four biomass and two coal – each with a generation capacity of 660MW. At the request of the government, Drax recently agreed to delay the closure of the two coal units by six months until March 2023 to alleviate concerns over the security of electricity supplies over the winter.