Drax - Another Bio-mess!

     The Drax power station, vast and uncompromising power production plant of Yorkshire, coal powered, largest, cleanest and most efficient plant of it's kind, in Europe and supplying around 8% of the UK's energy requirement. Or at least this was the case, until the Green Monster reared it's head and the powers that be, determined Drax, should run more efficiently through Biomass energy.
      Around three years ago it was decided there would be a partial switch over to biomass energy production, in part due to a new government carbon-tax, which would make coal burning, seem almost totally uneconomic. 
      At the time biomass was a more or less recent innovation, seen as the brave new future of cheap energy and coupled with the government subsidy, Drax would be making more money through this subsidy than it could through burning the wood pellets.
      So at some considerable cost, said to be in the region of £700 million, Drax converted half of it's six coal-burning furnaces to burning millions of tons of specialist wood pellets, which had to be imported from America. And instrumental in this switch-over was an EU ruling which stated wood to be "carbon neutral" as any CO2 omitted, would eventually be recovered from the atmosphere, via new tree planting to replace those already cut down. All part of a dubious plan to save the planet.
      Of course serious points were raised to the effectiveness of this system and the momentous costs involved and it's only now with biomass fully working at the plant, is it realized that Drax hasn't been making any savings upon Co2 emissions whatsoever.
     There is the argument that wood can hardly be classed as carbon neutral, when it is felled and burnt and any replacement tree will take at least 300 years to reach maturity and be classed as fully grown. And that the burning of wood pellets is also a lot less energy efficient than coal. Also the processing and transportation of the pellets, about four thousand miles from North Carolina, to Yorkshire. Which come largely from some prized and wildlife rich virgin forests in the southern USA. Yet another global catastrophe just around the corner!