THE award of 300 million Euros to Drax for a new green power plant is good news on many levels. For a start, the new ‘carbon capture’ power plant will support 2,000 jobs and is expected to create up to 4,000 in the wider carbon capture industry.

This announcement marks real investment in our region, therefore, and will bring with it a serious number of jobs.

But the good news continues. Because the new CCS (carbon capture and storage) plant will be as near to being green as it is possible for a coal-fired power station to be.

It is hoped that about 90 per cent of all the carbon produced by the new plant will be captured, then piped beneath the bed of the North Sea to be permanently stored there.

Sceptics might still argue that it would be better not to burn the coal in the first place. But at least this way, Drax is reducing by a huge percentage the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.

Even better, it may well be able to convert the new plant to burn biomass – renewable wood chips – rather than coal in future.

As we have reported before, Drax is already in the middle of a process of converting several of its existing coal-fired power plants to burn biomass. The first of these was officially opened by energy secretary Ed Davey in December.

The power station has sometimes in the past been referred to as the country’s largest polluter – unfairly, because when you looked at the amount of carbon generated compared to the electricity produced, it was actually one of the UK’s cleaner and more efficient power stations.

This latest announcement, which will see a new CCS plant operating alongside plants converted to burn biomass, means its green credentials on now there for all to see.