Drax Group’s purpose is to enable a zero carbon, lower cost energy future.
Its 3,400-strong employees operate across three principal areas of activity - renewable power generation, the production of sustainable biomass and the sale of renewable electricity to businesses. Drax operates a generation portfolio of sustainable biomass, hydro-electric and pumped hydro storage assets across four sites in England and Scotland. It’s multi-site, multi-technology portfolio of flexible, low-carbon and renewable UK power assets provides power and system support services to the electricity grid. Drax Power Station, based at Selby, North Yorkshire, is the UK’s largest single source of renewable electricity by output and is developing an option for carbon negative electricity using bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS). The company also operates a global bioenergy supply business with manufacturing facilities at 13 sites in the United States and Canada, producing compressed wood pellets for its own use and for customers in Europe and Asia.
Drax’s ambition is to become carbon negative by 2030 using BECCS. Drax plans to develop the UK’s -first BECCS project at the Drax Power Station by installing carbon capture technology on two of the four biomass-¬fired generating units and is targeting 2027 for first operation. BECCS will enable Drax to capture up to 95% of carbon dioxide emitted during electricity generation, permanently removing more carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere than is produced throughout the process – delivering up to 8 MtCO2 of negative emissions per year. BECCS is the next stage in Drax’s decarbonisation journey which began with the conversion of four power generating units from coal to sustainable biomass.
As an anchor member of the Zero Carbon Humber Partnership and East Coast Cluster, Drax’s BECCS project will underpin a net zero industrial cluster in the Humber region – protecting thousands of jobs, delivering clean growth and new export opportunities for the region.
