Wednesday 22 February 2012

More Danegeld Wanted: Dorothy Seeks 'Moderate Uplift'

An occasional series on demands for Danegeld: and rather monotonous it is too. We've seen requests for increasing the subsidies on: nukes; gas storage; anaerobic digestion; solar power; gas-fired power stations; CCS ...

Now it's Drax that fancies just a leedle bit more subsidy ('moderate uplift' to be precise),
this time for burning biomass.

"the company said investing a further £450m to convert Drax to run mostly on biomass was 'dependent on appropriate support' ... Dorothy Thompson, CEO said: 'With a moderate uplift in the proposed support level we could, over time, maximise the potential for producing this low-cost renewable electricity'."

Low cost, eh ? Yes yes, Dorothy, we understand. And - love the euphemisms !
ND

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

If my memory serves me, Drax got a subdidy to install scrubbers - not the DSK kind - so they could burn more coal. Now they want money not to burn coal!

Old BE said...

Surely with carbon "cap and trade", subsidies for greening are unnecessary. If it's environmentally economical for Drax to switch to burning bamboo or hemp or whatever then the investment won't be difficult to find.

Nick Drew said...

anon, nothing should surprise us any more

BE - you are so literal ! (as well as being 100% correct, of course)

and of course if it's not economic, it's not needed !

3 GW of hemp-burning: now there's a thought

Dick the Prick said...

There was some Rd4 programme (natch) gibbering on about £4 - 10 billion squid schemes to clean up the Thames. How can't Drax fund its own investment? Someone's having a laugh.

Bill Quango MP said...

Dorothy.. We're not in Kansas anymore.

Timbo614 said...

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

seems appropriate :)

Rudyard Kipling

Anonymous said...

What was said about the denationalisation, something about private investment and everything will be fine, lower priced electricity, no subsidies, no cost to the exchequer, the same was said about the railway system and train fares, now we have high fares and massive subsidies