Representation by West Yorkshire Eco Educators Network (West Yorkshire Eco Educators Network )
- Date submitted
- 5 September 2022
- Submitted by
- Non-statutory organisations
I am writing on behalf of West Yorkshire Eco Educators Network to comment on the BECCS planning application from Drax Power for a number of reasons. As educators our concern is always for the future generations who will be impacted even more by the impacts of the Climate Emergency. Today this is wreaking chaos across Pakistan and the horn of Africa, for us in West Yorkshire many of our families have very close family ties. This planning application by Drax, is made in the context of the global perspective of Climate Emergency but addresses only national energy policy and seems to bear no awareness of the global implications of actions taken here in Yorkshire. As educators we feel it necessary to comment on the outreach Drax does to schools and colleges to mis-inform young people in a biased and incomplete way about their work. The destruction of forests world-wide, and the biodiversity those forests house and protect, is not mentioned. Neither is the full picture of energy wasted in logging, transporting, drying, and manufacturing to generate the power before attempting to capture the emissions from just the burning. To the specifics of the application Sustainability of Forests from which biomass is sourced – children and their educators are convinced about the role of trees in the carbon cycle, and are planting trees around school fields and playing fields to find locations for the millions hectares of trees that need to be planted as part of a national school-based nature reserve. That Drax’s proposal will necessitate trees and whole forests being taken down across the world, no longer able to reliably sequester carbon, on the assumption that CCS will prove a reliable technology to sequester carbon. We believe that this assumption is not justified. Flooding In schools, students study flooding and rising sea levels. We look at maps of projected land loss in Yorkshire. Whilst the plans for Drax include a ‘sea wall’ against rising tides, how will the biomass reach the site with adjoining land underwater? Biodiversity net gain Government initiatives to increase Biodiversity exemplified by the Environment Act 2021 is meant to deliver increased biodiversity. As global citizens in an interconnected world we cannot destroy habitats across the World and still pretend it is delivering Biodiversity net gains. We cannot, when the increased carbon emissions, will further increase Global heating and consequent further habitat destruction. We fear for habitats in the immediate vicinity and those connected through watercourses with the potential for pollution spills that has been a feature of all industrial processes involving amines etc. Jobs and Careers. As educators we need to ensure there are future careers for our students and an economy capable of sustaining our students. The Drax application makes no promises about apprenticeships and high skilled jobs for local people. The application describes the totals of jobs in the construction phase, but there are many fewer jobs post construction. We would contend that there are many more long-term sustainable climate careers in retrofitting homes with insulation to reduce the need for energy. Retrofitting insulation often requires wood and wood fibre board both of which store carbon long-term, and are in short supply due to Drax buying timber for wood pellet production to burn. We must say something about the huge public subsidies that Drax takes. We are aware that this funding has been ongoing for many years and has so far failed to deliver a viable CCS process. In the mean-time huge swathes of forest have been consumed destroying viable tree-based carbon capture and storage. We can think of many better uses for these massive subsidies from the public purse.