Drax Power Station contributes over £350m to the Yorkshire and Humber economy

New research by leading consultancy, Oxford Economics, The Economic Impact of Drax Power Station in the UK, demonstrates the key role the power station plays in the economies of Selby and Ainsty, Yorkshire and the Humber and the UK.

The report, utilising data from 2021, shows that the North Yorkshire site, including its supply chain, contributed £735m to UK GDP. It also supported 7,130 jobs across the country and delivered a total contribution of £154m in taxes to the UK.

The research also found that in the constituency of Selby and Ainsty, 901 people were directly employed by the power station, a further 290 jobs were supported and it contributed £278m to local GDP. Across Yorkshire and the Humber, the combined impact of Drax Power Station was £358m with 2,580 jobs supported.

The power station is the largest dispatchable renewable power station in the UK and across its four biomass units it can supply enough power for the equivalent of five million homes. In March this year, almost 50 years of coal generation ended at Drax Power Station.

Between October 2021 and 2022, Drax Group generated 11 per cent of the UK’s renewable electricity. In addition, the business produced on average 19 per cent of the UK’s renewables at times of peak demand and up to 70 per cent on certain days.

Richard Gwilliam, UK BECCS programme director at Drax Group, said: “This research underscores the critical role that Drax Power Station plays regionally and nationally. In Yorkshire and the Humber, our power station has created thousands of jobs and contributed hundreds of millions of pounds to the area’s GDP while helping maintain energy security.

“We have been generating power at our North Yorkshire site for nearly 50 years and we hope to do so long into the future through the development of our bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) plans.”

James Bedford, senior economist, Oxford Economics, said: “Our research demonstrates the significant contribution that Drax Power Station makes to the UK economy and Yorkshire and the Humber.

“In 2021, it supported a £358m contribution to GDP in the region and over 2,500 jobs. Much of this was within the constituency of Selby and Ainsty, where it supported a £278 million contribution to GDP, equivalent to 12% of the local economy.”

BECCS is the only technology that can deliver reliable, secure and renewable power while permanently removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The company has the ambition to build two BECCS units at Drax Power Station by 2030 which could remove 8Mt of CO2 from the atmosphere per year.

The development of BECCS at the Selby power station could see up to 10,000 jobs created and supported at the project’s peak, help maintain energy security and meet the UK’s legally binding Net Zero targets.

By Mark Adair – Correspondent, Bdaily

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