Drax, which is the UK’s largest power station, is prepared to convert one of its coal-fired boilers to make use of biomass, as the start of a move towards something that could finally see it move completely to ‘green’ fuel.

Even though Drax has burnt biomass for seven years, it has done so only by ‘co-firing’ and mixing it with huge quantities of coal.

This would be the foremost time that any chief power station had taken up an existing coal-fired turbine and changed it to be biomass-only.

Dorothy Thompson, Chief Executive of Drax, said the potential of biomass was being unnoticed.

Biomass has been the major source of new renewable energy in the UK for a number of years, but it has become stagnant as the policy structure does not work in its best way, she stated.

If established productively, the conversion might offer a model for other coal-fired power generators to convert their boilers over to using biomass.

Burning biomass in one of Drax’s six generating units, and carrying on co-firing in the other units, may perhaps lessen the carbon dioxide from the plant by 4.4m tons a year, comparable to taking 1.2m cars away from the road.