By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
British power company Drax has drawn up plans for the world’s first wood-powered cargo ship, claiming that the controversial power source can help to cut greenhouse gas emissions from sea freight.
Drax, which operates a tree-burning power station in the UK, has signed a deal with three Japanese shipping companies to develop a “bioship” fuelled by wood chips instead of marine diesel. It hopes to see the first wood-fuelled cargo ship set sail by 2029.
The vessel would itself be used to ferry woodchips harvested by Drax from North American forests to new markets in Japan.
Drax and its Japanese partners said such ships would open the way to zero-emission shipping for many other cargoes.
However, the plan will infuriate many environmental groups who argue that cutting down forests for fuel is the wrong way to reach net zero.
Drax is best-known in the UK for its giant power station in Yorkshire, which last year generated around 6pc of the country’s electricity by burning 6.4m tonnes of wood – equivalent to 27 million trees – mostly imported from North America.
For comparison, the New Forest in Hampshire has around 46 million trees.
Drax and its supporters argue that wood is a sustainable energy source as trees can be grown to replace those cut down for fuel and the plants capture carbon while they are developing.
However, critics point out that trees grow much more slowly than the time it takes to use them for fuel, raising questions as to how sustainable they really are.
The UK Government supports the use of wood as a fuel and has given Drax subsidies for producing green energy, which amounted to £617m in 2022 and £587m in 2023.
In February, Drax chief executive Will Gardiner said he wanted to build more wood pellet plants in the US, doubling production to 8m tonnes by 2030.
Green campaigners said the plan was designed to exploit loopholes in carbon accounting rather than to save the planet.
Merry Dickinson of Axe Drax, which campaigns against the company’s plans to expand wood burning, said: “Burning wood pellets emits as much carbon as coal. This latest move is nothing more than another greenwashed scam from Drax.”
Sally Clark from Biofuelwatch said: “Using wood pellets to power ships will only lead to more climate-wrecking emissions, harm to wildlife and pollution of communities. If we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate breakdown, we need to protect and restore the world’s forests, not allow big polluters like Drax to send our futures up in smoke.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/14/drax-power-ships-controversial-biomass-fuel-trees/
Drax is already burning the equivalent of half the New Forest every year. Heaven knows how many more forests will be cut down to satisfy Will Gardiner’s lust for more wood pellets.
And as we already know, burning trees adds far more CO2 into the atmosphere than any other fossil fuel, in terms of the energy produced. The theory that trees will eventually grow back to replace them is highly dubious, as many come from virgin forests which may never regrow. Even if they do, it will take decades to offset the CO2 emitted from burning, by which time billions of other trees will also have been burnt.
Burning wood was of course man’s main source of energy for millennia; now we seem to be intent to regress to those days.
As for Drax, they are in a bit of a hole, being totally reliant on government subsidies. If these are stopped, they don’t have a viable business; hence their desperation to expand operations, regardless of the environmental destruction they will wrought.
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May 15, 2024 at 03:28AM
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