Madness

The Drax power station in Yorkshire produces 7 percent of England’s electricity. To make electricity, Drax burns 36,000 tons of coal every day, with 140 coal trains unloading at the plant every week.

But, coal is dirty. Coal is bad. Biomass is better, greener, friendlier to the climate.

New European Union and British laws favor friendly green and disdain dirty coal, so much so that users of friendly green biomass receive hundreds of millions of euros and pounds subsidy.

Drax owners discovered they, too, could receive hundreds of millions of pounds if the plant burned wood chips instead of coal.

“As from next month, Drax will embark on a £700 million switch away from burning coal for which it was designed, in order to convert its six colossal boilers to burn millions of tons a year of wood chips instead.

“Most of these chips will come from trees felled in forests covering a staggering 4,600 square miles in the USA, from where they will be shipped 3,000 miles across the Atlantic to Britain.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2290444/Madness-How-pay-billions-electricity-bills-Britains-biggest-power-station-switch-coal-wood-chips--wont-help-planet-jot.html

The story is interesting and a good example of how governments force companies into life or death choices through taxation of one product – carbon-producing materials -- and dependence on another – eco-friendly biomass. And those 4,600 square miles of tree loss in the United States … What kind of environmental harm will arise from cutting those trees?

Madness.