Professional Engineering

Drax power station is co-firing only half of the biomass it has capacity for because of a lack of government support for the technology, it has said.

Drax, which owns and runs the UK’s largest coal power station in North Yorkshire, has plans for three biomass projects: a co-firing project, where biomass such as straw and wood chips are burnt with coal; a project to convert a coal-firing unit to run completely off biomass, and a £1.9bn project to develop three 300MW biomass power plants, separate to Drax, with Siemens as the engineering supplier and part owner.

Drax announced earlier this month that its first half profits have quadrupled to £134 million compared to last year, helped by increased sales brought about by the severe winter.  However, it is co-firing only about a 16th of its capacity with biomass, when up to an eighth could be co-fired.

“The economics aren’t good enough and favour coal at the moment,” said Drax.

“We expect that facility to come into the money from 2013.”

Drax Power has also shelved the plans to build three biomass power plants in Yorkshire until the government guarantees subsidies.

It said that a government review of subsidies for green power sources meant that when the power stations are commissioned in 2014 they might not receive enough fiscal support.

The company said: “We don’t know what the level of support will be when they are commissioned in 2014 but we hope to be able to make a decision next year to start building.”

The company added it would go ahead with the biomass conversion project, which would be the first of its kind in Europe, under the current regime of subsidies.