Members of the Rolls Royce and Bentley Enthusiasts Club have visited Drax Power Station to see first-hand how renewable electricity is generated by Britain’s biggest power station.
The group of 40 classic car enthusiasts were taken on a full tour of the site, which included seeing Drax’s bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) pilot project. BECCS is a vital negative emissions technology which Drax plans to use to permanently remove millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, whilst also generating the reliable, renewable electricity the country needs.
Plant Director Bruce Heppenstall said: “We welcome thousands of visitors to our site every year. These tours give people the opportunity to see some of the cutting-edge green technologies we’re pioneering, such as BECCS which could play a vital role in addressing the climate crisis as well as delivering jobs and clean growth here in the North.
“It was great to have the Rolls Royce and Bentley Enthusiasts Club here and to see all the fantastic cars together. I hope they enjoyed their tour and will visit again in the future.”
During the tour, the group were shown how renewable electricity is generated and discovered how sustainable, wood pellets have enabled Drax to reduce its carbon emissions by 95% in a decade, making it Europe’s biggest decarbonisation project.
They saw the 427-metre turbine hall that houses the huge turbines which power the generators to produce electricity, as well as the wood pellet storage domes – each large enough to fit The Royal Albert Hall inside, and the 115m high cooling towers, which are taller than the Statue of Liberty.
The group, which travelled from all over the North to come together at Drax, said that they thoroughly enjoyed the visit and particularly enjoyed seeing the huge infrastructure up close and learning about the innovative green technologies being developed at Drax.
Ken Cowdell from the Rolls Royce and Bentley Enthusiasts Club, who organised the visit, said: “Engineering excellence is the core interest of our club which is why I arranged the trip to Drax. It was fantastic to see the scale of the operations and fascinating to hear about their plans for carbon capture going forward. The tour guides were first class and feedback from members of the club was excellent, on the whole it was an absolutely brilliant trip and very worthwhile.”
Groups interested in organising a tour, should contact [email protected]
ENDS
Photo caption: The Rolls Royce and Bentley Enthusiasts Club in front of Drax’s cooling towers, taken from the Drax Social Club field
Media contacts:
Megan Hopgood
Communications Officer
E: [email protected]
T: 07936 350 175
About Drax
Drax Group’s purpose is to enable a zero carbon, lower cost energy future and in 2019 announced a world-leading ambition to be carbon negative by 2030, using Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) technology.
Drax’s around 3,000 employees operate across three principal areas of activity – electricity generation, electricity sales to business customers and compressed wood pellet production and supply to third parties. For more information visit www.drax.com
Power generation:
Drax owns and operates a portfolio of renewable electricity generation assets in England and Scotland. The assets include the UK’s largest power station, based at Selby, North Yorkshire, which supplies five percent of the country’s electricity needs.
Having converted Drax Power Station to use sustainable biomass instead of coal it has become the UK’s biggest renewable power generator and the largest decarbonisation project in Europe. It is also where Drax is piloting the groundbreaking negative emissions technology BECCS within its CCUS (Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage) Incubation Area.
Its pumped storage, hydro and energy from waste assets in Scotland include Cruachan Power Station – a flexible pumped storage facility within the hollowed-out mountain Ben Cruachan.
The Group also aims to build on its BECCS innovation at Drax Power Station with a target to deliver 4Mt of negative CO2 emissions each year from new-build BECCS outside of the UK by 2030 and is currently developing models for North American and European markets.
Pellet production and supply:
The Group has 17 operational pellet plants and developments with nameplate capacity of 4.6Mt, which will increase to c.5Mt once developments are complete.
Drax is targeting 8Mt of production capacity by 2030, which will require the development of over 3Mt of new biomass pellet production capacity. The pellets are produced using materials sourced from sustainably managed working forests and are supplied to third party customers in Europe and Asia for the generation of renewable power.
Drax’s pellet mills supply around 30% of the biomass used at its own power station in North Yorkshire, England to generate flexible, renewable power for the UK’s homes and businesses.
Customers:
Drax is the largest supplier of renewable electricity to UK businesses, supplying 100% renewable electricity as standard to more than 370,000 sites through Drax and Opus Energy.
It offers a range of energy-related services including energy optimisation, as well as electric vehicle strategy and management.
To find out more go to the website www.energy.drax.com
