News

UK to Build World’s First Negative Emission Power Plant

Drax in North Yorkshire is a giant coal power station. Its 12 cooling towers makes it one of the largest of its kind, and one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gasses, pumping 23 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere while it produces up to one-tenth of the UK’s electrical power. Change is afoot, though, as its owners are planning on scrapping fossil fuels in favour of wood pellets, while also initiating a program to plant CO2-loving trees in the Southern US to replace each one burned, with the eventual aim of absorbing all those harmful emissions. If successful, Drax could become the world’s first negative emission power plant.

“This is a very exciting new technology,” says Dr. Jeremy Tomkinson, CEO of the National Non-Food Crops Centre, said. “It means we can actually reduce the volume of CO2 in the atmosphere.” Tomkinson’s company is helping Drax’s transition into an environmentally friendly operation.

“Since the beginning of July, half of Drax’s electricity has been generated by burning biomass, mostly from pine forests in the American Deep South,” Richard Peberdy, vice-president for sustainability with the Drax Group, said during a tour of those forests in Mississippi. The Drax Group is converting six of its power stations to biomass.

Drax hopes to complete the conversion of its Yorkshire plant by 2020.

Thank you New Scientist for providing us with this information.

Ashley Allen

Disqus Comments Loading...

Recent Posts

BenQ MOBIUZ EX2710Q 27″ QHD 165Hz 1ms, HDRi IPS Gaming Monitor

SpeakersSpeakersYesSpeaker amount and power output2x 2 WattDimensionsLength / Depth252.5 mmWidth614 mmHeight525.8 mmWeight7.4 kgStandards / SpecificationsAdaptive…

2 hours ago

Intel Core i7-12700KF 3.60GHz Socket LGA1700 Processor

Thermal SpecificationsMax. TDP125 WCPUCPU ManufacturerIntelCPU SeriesIntel Core i7CPU Socket1700CPU ArchitectureIntel Alder Lake-SCPU Cores12CPU Threads20Performance Cores8Efficiency…

2 hours ago

AOC 24B3HA2 24″ 1920×1080 VA 100Hz 1m Widescreen LED Multimedia Monitor 

AOC 24B3HA2 23.6 1920x1080 VA 100Hz 1m Widescreen LED Multimedia Monitor - Black High-performance clarity…

2 hours ago

Corsair Hydro Series iCUE Link H115i RGB Performance Liquid CPU Cooler

Fan SpecificationsFan Size140 mmColourPrimary ColourBlackSecondary ColourWhiteMaterialsMaterialsAluminium, Copper, RubberLightingLightingYesLighting ColourRGBLighting CompatibilityCorsair iCUEAdditional ContentsIncluded fans2x 140 mmTypeCPU…

2 hours ago

Philips Evnia 34″ 34M2C6500/00 3440×1440 QD-OLED 175Hz 1ms FreeSync Curved Ultrawide Gaming Monitor

This monitor is built with features that make incredible visuals. With VESA ClearMR 9000 and…

2 hours ago

Asus Radeon RX 7900 XTX TUF OC 24GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card

The AMD RDNA™ 3 Architecture elevated by buffed cooling and power delivery to effortlessly churn…

2 hours ago