As Drax Power Station invests £700 million in converting its plant to predominantly burn biomass instead of coal, the business holds a crucial role in the UK’s efforts to fight climate change. Julie Hayes talks to Dorothy Thompson, chief executive of the £1.8 billion-turnover business, to find out about the progress it has made.

There are a thousand ways to make a lightbulb shine, said project engineer Jim Price, who was drafted in from Canada to help Drax convert its coal guzzling units to biomass, but only one is the right way.

Now Drax has had its lightbulb moment after ten years of research and development, and its premises are a hive of building activity.

About 2,500 people, including contractors and 850 permanent staff, create a buzz at the 2,000-acre site outside the village of Drax, near Selby.

Contractors are laying a new railway, building a new rail hub, as well as conveyor belts, testing stations, and storage domes.

The domes were inflated from flat-packs and strengthened with polyurethane foam, steel and concrete and stand 50 metres tall. Each will hold up to 75,000 tonnes of biomass.

Off site, the company is investing in port facilities in the UK and abroad to secure its future supply.

Since agreeing a fixed support regime through to 2027 with the Government, it is all systems go to convert the power plant from using 10 million tonnes of coal a year, with a little biomass on the side, to a predominantly biomass-fuelled plant.

Drax’s size and scale make the project of strategic importance to the UK’s success in meeting its targets on climate change.

By 2030, 30 per cent of the UK’s energy must come from renewable sources. Drax will provide ten per cent of that target, said chief executive Dorothy Thompson.

She said: “We produce seven per cent of the UK’s power typically, although there are times when we are producing ten per cent.

“We are a very important strategic asset for security of supply and also we are flexible. We can change the amount of electricity as it is needed, which will be more and more important when there is more wind-generated electricity which will need power to support it.

But when Drax started trialling biomass as early as 2003, it had no idea of the scale its ambitions could run to.

Dorothy said: “It is not something that has suddenly happened. It has taken years and years. What I knew about biomass before Drax was absolutely nothing.

“At the beginning our ambitions weren’t as great as they are now. The desire was to reduce carbon emissions and every little bit counted.”

In fact, Drax in 2003 was a very different business indeed. Saddled with debt, it became a publicly-traded company at the end of 2005 as part of a restructuring programme, listing its shares on the London Stock Exchange.

Dorothy said: “Drax listed at the end of 2005 in parallel with a financial restructuring that gave a sound enough capital structure to become a sensibly operated business. In the years before that it had been in distress with too much debt.

“From that point, we had a proper capital structure and we decided the key to a sustainable future was tackling our carbon emissions.

“We were, and are the largest carbon emitter in the UK and I really believed we could contribute to a greener agenda for the UK. But when we embraced that strategy we had quite a steep mountain to climb.

“There wasn’t the policy support for it, not the biomass available and not the technical capability. It has taken years to do it.”

“When they started looking at biomass, they were not even sure it would be possible. But there was little alternative.

“It was a brave path to be on. If we had at any point come to a position where it wasn’t an option for us, it would have created a difficult future for Drax.

“But I genuinely believe now it’s a long-term solution to a facility like Drax and what is impressive is that as a company we have achieved that. We have created the experts, whether that’s in sourcing or the technical experts. We have changed the skills base of the company to achieve that.

“When we built the first co-firing facility in 2010, people thought we were doing it on a scale that wouldn’t be feasible.

“From there we built and built our technical knowledge from doing trials here and working with universities. We have gained confidence in biomass and we built the technical capability and excellence to implement it.

“All the time we were working with the Government to ensure they had a better knowledge of biomass and supported it as one of the key renewables. It has been a really long journey.”

Dorothy said that regulatory support from the Government was the catalyst for Drax to increase its ambitions and the UK’s challenge to meet climate change targets.

By 2020, the UK has a commitment to the EU that 15 per cent of our energy usage will come from renewable sources. Power stations will also be subject to legislation on acid rain, which will close down many UK power stations between 2020 and 2023.

Dorothy said they always believed Drax would be compliant with that 2020 target, but the wider industry isn’t quite as confident.

She said: “There are two coal stations in the UK which have converted to biomass – Tilbury and Ironbridge – both significantly smaller than Drax. Neither of those stations fit the latest set of acid rain regulations. Both are going to be forced to shut by 2015 if not before.

“The gap will need to be met by new technologies as Drax is already running at full throttle.”

The country will also have to work to tackle energy efficiency and reduce the demand for electricity.

“The recession saw quite a market drop in energy usage,” Dorothy said.

“In climate change terms, the real goal for the UK is if we could become a lot more energy efficient, particularly in our housing stock.”

But the impending closures have led some analysts to forecast there will be a capacity crunch for electricity.

Dorothy said: “I think the UK can meet its targets.

“Whether we will or not will depend on the profile of investment over the next few years. There are all sorts of things going on at the same time, the renewable targets agreed with the EU for 2020, and a lot of capacity being pulled off the system, some by 2015 and some for the next two to three years beyond.

“There are credible scenarios where the UK will be short of electricity at the beginning of the decade.”

She says investment is also required in new gas plants.

To meet its 2030 and 2050 targets, Dorothy says the UK would also need to achieve negative carbon – the permanent removal of the gas from the atmosphere.

With seven per cent of the country’s energy on their shoulders, Drax is naturally cautious about interfering with its existing structure.

But it is trialling new technology in a new-build carbon capture and storage pilot as part of a consortium involving Alstom and the National Grid.

The project, which will burn both coal and biomass will capture 90 per cent of all the carbon dioxide produced by the new plant and transport it for permanent storage deep beneath the North Sea sea.

Dorothy said: “When you look to the distant future, the ideal for Drax is to have CCS and biomass together.”

She said the business would continue to innovate in future energy solutions.

“We don’t feel we have come to the end of our research on biomass. Now we know we can run it very successfully, we will continue to see if we can get better output and efficiency. Our research teams on biomass are very active.

“The Drax culture is one of really strong teamwork it is the core of us or we never would have succeeded.

“There’s real enthusiasm to work for Drax. It is an incredible facility from a technical point of view. What we’re doing with biomass is truly innovative and we’re delivering a better infrastructure for the UK.”