Another Black Hole In The Making?

[ToraToraTora]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4301n3771o

Funnt how £22bn seems to be labour's favourite number!

[New Judge]

Strangely, Drax power station, which burns 7m tons of mainly freshly felled timber each and every year, has been "working on" a Carbon Capture project for some time.

It is called "BECCS" which stands for "Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage". The plant has been working on it for at least seven years, and bar a couple of small pilot projects, has failed to deliver any workable large scale facility to capture carbon. 

Between 2012 and when its current subsidy arrangements end in 2027, Drax will have received more than £10bn in direct subsidies from the taxpayer. That is getting on for £2m per day. As well as  that, unlike other large thermal generators, biomass power plants do not pay for their carbon emissions. This is because biomass (i.e. burning freshly felled trees) is assumed to be inherently "carbon neutral."

The entire "decarbonisation" and "net zero" industry is a huge racket, gobbling enormous sums of taxpayers' money persuing an impossible goal.

"Sir Keir Starmer, due to visit the North West on Friday with Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to confirm the projects, said the move would "reignite our industrial heartlands" and "kickstart growth"."

Proper growth is producing stuff that people need or want. It may possibly create a few jobs, although much of the kit being purchased for these hare-brained schemes is bought from abroad as there is no manufacturing capacity in this country and no steel producion to speak of because we won't burn coal. But you could do the same by employing people to flatten the mountain ranges in Scotland and Wales. But it will make politcians like Starmer and "Mad" Ed Miliband feel good.

I note the goverment's Carbon Capture proposals have quite a long timescale (25 years). When they ultimately fail to deliver (as the scheme at Drax has) the idiots who sanctioned them  will have long sailed off into the sunset. So will those at Drax who fooled the government into parting with £10bn of taxpayers' hard-earned when they could have burned piles of £5 notes much more easily.