WORK has begun at Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire to upgrade one of the firm's turbines and complete a major £40 million investment.

Over the next four months, more than 1,000 contractors will work around the clock to enhance the performance of one of the station’s four biomass units and improve its efficiency.

The work will include installing a new high-pressure turbine barrel, new pipework and surveying the station’s boilers as part of Drax’s plans to reduce the cost of its biomass power generation by around a third by 2027.

Mike Maudsley, Drax Group’s UK portfolio generation director, said: “These turbine upgrades will improve the plant’s efficiency, ensuring Drax can continue to generate the reliable, renewable electricity millions of homes and businesses across the UK rely on, beyond 2027.

“It’s also a huge boost to the region’s economy, with more than a thousand contractors working on site during the project – that’s in addition to the 6,600 jobs supported throughout Drax’s supply chains in the North.”

The upgrade is the third and final development as part of a £40 million investment programme in the station’s turbines - which started in 2019.

The power station has been transformed in recent years from using coal, to generating renewable power with sustainable biomass – cutting carbon emissions by more than 90 per cent since 2012, making Drax one of the lowest carbon intensity generators in Europe.

Drax plans to go even further by becoming carbon negative by 2030 by using bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).

Earlier this year Drax progressed its plans – selecting Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) as its technology partner and kick-starting the planning process to develop BECCS at Drax this decade.

Subject to the right Government support, work to build BECCS could get underway as soon as 2024 with the creation of thousands of jobs. The first BECCS unit at Drax Power Station would then be operational in 2027 with a second in 2030, permanently removing at least eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.

Drax owns and operates a portfolio of renewable electricity generation assets in England and Scotland. The assets include the UK’s largest power station at Selby which supplies five percent of the country’s electricity needs.

Through its two B2B energy supply brands, Haven Power and Opus Energy, Drax supplies energy to 250,000 businesses across Britain.