A plan to save the planet

There was once an idea among militant environmentalists that the men who controlled the world's gigantic, carbon-belching power stations must be like those megalomaniac Bond villains, hell-bent on destroying the planet.

Nothing more resembled a movie location for this storyline than the trio of coal-fired stations in Yorkshire's so-called Megawatt Valley – Ferrybridge, Eggborough and Drax.

The word Drax is of Saxon origin and is taken from the nearby village of that name. But it came to be suggestive of diabolical work going on behind the high perimeter fences. James Bond's creator, Ian Fleming, even named the villain in his novel Moonraker – you've guessed it – Drax.

For years, it almost seemed that Drax (the power station) was keeping to a Bond script. As the largest coal-fired power station in western Europe it was a major source of the acid rain which sterilised hundreds of Scandinavian lakes, leaving them devoid of all fish and plant life. It was said to pump more pollution into the atmosphere than some entire countries.

Enter the miltant eco groups, some clad in white plastic uniforms, as if sent by central casting. In 2006 more than 600 protesters gathered outside to set up a Camp for Climate Action. Some 3,000 police moved into action , and 39 people were arrested for trying to get into the power station. In the last episode, in June 2008, campaigners hijacked a coal train heading for Drax and shovelled tons of coal onto the railway line. None of this excitement affected the station's output.

Desulphurisation technology at Drax has now addressed the acid rain problem. However, its single chimney – more than 300ft higher than Blackpool Tower and once in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's tallest – is still the biggest contributor to the UK's carbon footprint.

But times are changing at Drax. While continuing to generate seven per cent of the nation's electricity and be an important customer for the coal mined at Yorkshire's remaining deep mine pits like Kellingley, Hatfield and Maltby, the power station has been transformed into a permanent building site as it installs green technologies.

In the shadow of Drax's cooling towers and colossal turbine hall are rising gleaming new facilities for the burning of carbon-neutral biomass fuels. Around them, stacks of timber and bales of vegetable matter seem to be stockpiled everywhere. It's as if the place has been taken over by Friends of the Earth.

The feeling of a vast 007 film set is still here, however, especially in the station's nerve centre with its arrays of computer screens. This impression is heightened by a tall, attractive blonde called Melanie Wedgbury. She is Drax's head of external affairs, who greets me and happens to say in passing that her job is "as close as I'll ever get to achieving my ambition of being a Bond girl".

We wait for the chief executive of Drax Power, Dorothy Thompson, to arrive. It's tempting to think Ian Fleming might have fictionalised her with a fearsome name like Madam Megawatt. But when she makes her entrance, Ms Thompson, 49, is disarmingly friendly. In a cut-glass accent she is soon talking about her plans to construct three new "green" power stations in the region.

Ms Thompson spends three days a week at Drax and the rest of the time in London where her husband and two children live. She earns green brownie points by cycling from their Islington home to the Drax Group's offices in the City rather than use the chauffeured limo that comes with heading a FTSE 100 company.

She also glows with pride when she adds she has recently installed domestic ground source heating to tap into natural thermal energy, so further reducing her family's carbon footprint.

"But I honestly don't see myself as a standard-bearer for green living. I'm not militant about it. I just think that everyone can be sensible and do something that makes a difference."

She believes that climate change is a serious challenge, then adds hastily, as though sensing the disapproving frowns of old-school Drax boardroom suits, that this is not necessarily the official Drax view.

"But however you look at it, the world is scarce in resources. Therefore, I think it's important that we conserve those resources. By having very high carbon emissions, what we have been doing is effectively depleting very limited resources. It is in all our long-term interests, in terms of sustainability, to try and tackle the carbon problem."

And so Drax has drawn up a long-term strategy for becoming a green

business. Part of this involves what is termed "co-firing". That means

burning petroleum coke at the same time as biomass fuels such as peanut husks, straw from grain crops and a giant grass, actually a rhizome, called miscanthus.

By doing this, next year Drax hopes to reduce its annual carbon emissions by 3.5m tonnes. The impact will be like removing a million cars from our roads. But isn't Drax's investment in biomass technology principally because it will ultimately be good for profits?

"Conceptually, I completely agree. Making Drax into a green business ought to make us more profitable in the future. And it will be a more robust, sustainable enterprise, more viable than fossil fuel businesses."

Which is why Drax plans to build three new biomass power stations. One will be at Immingham on the Humber, which is well placed for importing biomass fuels such as peanut husks from places like Georgia in the US. Another is envisaged on the north side of the present Drax power station. The third location has yet to be disclosed.

From a company that had once been a byword for pollution and was targeted by climate campers, this is revolutionary stuff. But it left the Labour government, to misquote Bond, neither shaken nor stirred. Its official policy was to give far more financial aid to offshore wind farms than to biomass burners.

All renewable, non-fossil energy in the UK gets now gets financial support, paid for by a small addition to everyone's electricity bill known as "the renewables obligation". At present, wind power gets fourtimes the amount of support that Drax receives for replacing coal with biomass.

"But electricity from biomass is more expensive than coal or gas," Ms Thompson says, "so we need some recognition of the benefit that

you deliver by reducing carbon emissions. We do need a higher level

of support."

After all, she adds, the wind doesn't blow every day. In the low-carbon future, biomass will be an important way of ensuring the National Grid has enough electricity, in the way that Drax is already called on to fill the so-called TV Pickup – those mass power surges caused by the British getting off their couches to switch on kettles after Coronation Street.

Yorkshire is mentioned a lot in her plans. Drax was originally built to take advantage of the Selby coalfield right on its doorstep.

But that came and went in the space of 30 years. Now, she says, it's once again strategically placed to make use of energy supplies.

More than 100 farmers are providing biomass fuels like willow, miscanthus and straw, and hundreds more are expected to join them to fuel the planned new power stations. For this purpose the world's largest plant for converting straw into high-energy pellets has been built at Goole.

Drax won't discuss how much they pay growers except to say that biomass is a very worthwhile crop for many farmers.

It's quite a twist to the story, I say, that a region which owes its past prosperity to coal now faces a future built – well partly – on straw.

She smiles. "But we feel very fortunate to be right in the middle of one of the UK's prime agricultural areas. Farmers are no longer allowed to burn straw and they also have marginal land where we think energy crops should be grown. This whole belt of Yorkshire has always been about energy and its use."

There seems some doubt now about whether there will be any more James Bond films at the famous Pinewood studios. But if the producers are interested, how about Drax The Movie: One woman's fight to save the planet.

YP MAG 1/5/10