The CEO of Drax Power Station has warned that “everyone must play their part” in cutting down their carbon footprint after commenting on a recent independent climate change report.
Earlier this week, Will Gardiner addressed the need for businesses, individuals and groups to change their behaviours when it comes to going carbon neutral and negative in the coming decades. Mr Gardiner’s comments come a week after the UK’s independent advisory panel for Climate Change Committee (IPCC) said that negative emissions from bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) will be needed to address the climate crisis.
Already, Drax Power has moved forward with innovative proposals for a state-of-the-art BECCS system, which it claims would support thousands of jobs during construction at its peak, including in construction, the supply chain and the wider economy. This is in addition to the tens of thousands of other jobs created and supported across the region as part of the decarbonisation of the UK’s largest - and most carbon-intensive - industrial cluster where 55,000 people are employed in energy, manufacturing and engineering. The energy giants have also claimed that BECCS at Drax will save the UK £13billion over the coming decade and twice that to meet net-zero.
Following the publishing of the IPCC report, Mr Gardiner said: “This report provides a stark warning about what will happen if we don’t act now to address climate change. “Negative emissions solutions are proven and ready to go, but must be deployed much faster if we are to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and cap global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. “With government support, Drax is ready to invest in scaling up bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) to deliver millions of tonnes of negative emissions as early as 2027, creating new green jobs and clean growth while tackling climate change. “Deploying BECCS at Drax will not only save the UK billions of pounds over the next decade. As the government’s own analysis shows, it will be vital if the UK is to meet the targets set out in the fifth and sixth carbon budgets. “It will also see the creation of a major new infrastructure sector in the UK which could rival the size of the UK’s water sector, creating, and protecting tens of thousands of jobs across the north, levelling up the UK and positioning us as a global leader in negative emissions technologies.”
CEO of Drax, Will Gardiner. (19-08-01 SU)
