Bernard Ginns: The companies leading the way in this green revolution

On the front page today I report on Drax's decision – some might say conversion – to explore opportunities to adopt carbon capture and storage technology at its power station in Selby.

Peter Emery, the production director and a member of the board, told a media lunch in York that the firm started feasibility studies on CCS in the fourth quarter of last year.

"It's possible that oxyfuel combustion could be applied to Drax," he told us journalists, in between mouthfuls of pasta.

Oxyfuel combustion involves the burning of coal in nearly pure oxygen rather than air. This allows CO2 to be cleaned and compressed into a more easily-transportable state.

This is a significant announcement. Drax is Britain's biggest single producer of electricity and also Britain's single biggest emitter of CO2 emissions.

Also significant though is its support for Yorkshire Forward's Humber cluster project. The regional development agency wants to create a network of single-site emitters in East Yorkshire to capture, transport and store CO2 emissions.

A cluster of power stations sit in and around a corridor running parallel to the M62 which together emit around 60m tonnes of CO2 per year – equivalent to almost half the annual emissions of UK households.

Yorkshire Forward wants to connect these emitters with a single pipeline to collect processed emissions and pump them to the North Sea, where they will be stored under the seabed.

Without the support of coal-fired Drax – the biggest player in the area – it is unlikely the scheme would be able to proceed. With its support, the scheme stands a chance. Now it just needs 2bn.

On the subject of funding, I hear from reliable sources that the government is gearing up to announce some good news for Sheffield Forgemasters.

As I have reported many times before, the heavy engineering firm wants to be able to make critical components for the next generation of nuclear power stations both in the UK and overseas.

To do this, it needs to buy a 15,000-tonne forging press. Graham Honeyman, the chief executive, and Tony Pedder, the chairman, rescued the loss-making business several years ago and are averse to loading it up with more debt. They have been negotiating a package of government loans and – as predicted here – the announcement will be made before the general election.

It will be good to see the Labour Party support nuclear power. Nuclear has to be an essential part of the UK's future energy supply.

Another big clean energy project came to light last week at Grimsby with the announcement that a company called Vireol wants to build a 200m biorefinery, which will use wheat to produce bioethanol. Assuming it goes ahead, it should create 750 jobs.

David Knibbs, the chief executive, said: "Bioethanol produced in the UK has all the credentials to be a real success story and an industry in which we can lead the way in Europe."

In January I reported on the exciting progress of Hargreaves Services subsidiary, Rocpower. This venture – at the other end of the scale to Drax – will create six small power stations, fuelled by renewable oils and selling clean electricity to the national grid.

The first was commissioned in December and is producing enough electricity to provide continuous heat for 15,000 homes.

Alkane Energy is also worth a mention. This small Aim-listed company is using methane gas from redundant coal mines to power engines which are generating electricity for sale. It has 15 licences to extract gas from sites, including in Yorkshire, and plans to treble revenues over the next three to four years

It is yet another example of Yorkshire's fast-moving and exciting clean energy sector. I hesitate to call it a green revolution, for fear of jumping on the bandwagon, but that's what it looks like if you group these examples together.

I should issue a note of caution however. This is a sector that is very heavily reliant on subsidies. Sooner or later, it will have to wash its own face.

It probably will be able to at some stage – with harvested rainwater.

For more news on companies operating in and around the environmental sphere, see Thursday's paper for our special supplement on the Yorkshire Post Environment Awards, an inspiring event held last week.