Drax pitches zero carbon vision for Humber industry

The partnership will see Drax working alongside National Grid Ventures and Norwegian energy company Equinor. Together, the three plan to integrate a low-carbon energy system that would see hydrogen production co-located at the existing Drax Power Plant, which currently burns a mixture of biomass and coal. This hydrogen would then be supplied to local industry to help it decarbonise.

Drax’s bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS) pilot – which is today collecting one ton of CO₂ per day -  would be scaled up massively to capture 40,000 tons of CO₂ daily from the plant’s four biomass burning units. The plans also call for the construction of a pipeline to carry captured CO₂ from Drax and local industrial plants to the Endurance and Bunter aquifer in the North Sea, where it would be permanently sequestered. According to Drax, the BECCS project could see the power plant become carbon negative by the 2020s.