This Sunday we are given an exposé of the complete madness that is fuelling Drax power station in Yorkshire with wood pellets from America. Converting a coal burning power station to burn wood pellets from nearly 4000 miles away has to be contrasted with "the greenest economy in Europe" - Germany snapping up the worthwhile bits of the U.K.'s closing coal power stations to fit out dozens of new coal and lignite burning power stations over there....
The "money" quote comes from Drax’s head of environment, Nigel Burdett, ‘We develop our business plan in light of what the Government wants – not what might be nice.’
US firm Enviva, ships around two thirds of its total output to Drax. Burdett admits, Drax’s wood-fuelled furnaces actually produce three per cent more carbon dioxide (CO2) than coal – and well over twice as much as gas: 870g per megawatt hour (MW/hr) is belched out by wood, compared to just 400g for gas. - I note that they don't factor in the "carbon" emitted in cutting/processing/transporting the wood... which is actually five times more volume than the coal and produces less energy ...
So, our politicians are buying £50's worth of electricity for £105 per MW/hr at Drax – £10 more than for onshore wind energy, and £15 more than for power from the new nuclear plant to be built at Hinkley Point in Somerset
Meanwhile - the Environment Agency continues to blunder along messing up hydropower schemes and comprehensively dragging it's feet over enhanced gas extraction.
It seems clear this Green activist energy policy thing isn't going well at all for taxpayers or energy users - ..... I note our old friend Chris Huhne (yes, him) is up to his armpits in the Amercian wood chip business - just wonderful.
I now know why Barbara Windsor said she liked her Daily Male. Woodn't you have guessed it drax up some unbelievable reason to buy wood chip at a price no one else wood dream of. It just like dredging up things about flooding something that EA staff are not allowed to talk about. The word dredge ahs recently been removed from all EA dictionaries and instructions.
ReplyDeleteAnd for those among you yes I do know how to spell.
When is a lie not a lie?
ReplyDeleteNo this is not a trick question.
When a Civil / Public Servant makes a statement without checking its accuracy or truth on behalf of a government department or agency.
The person who tells the lie has not lied because they are speaking on behalf of the department or agency and they are not held to account for their actions or lies.