Capturing the opportunity

Drax has an ambition to be a global leader in carbon removals and we have bold plans to eradicate 14 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere a year by 2030. The scale of this ambition reflects what I see as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a founding player in a market which will play a critical role in tackling climate change.

There is an urgent and unmet need for leadership in this space. We are seeing broad consensus amongst the global scientific community that reducing emissions is necessary but not sufficient – the planet needs to go further and faster, by removing carbon already in the atmosphere and balancing hard to abate emissions from sectors like mining and aviation.

 Leaders of the world’s largest economies have united behind this need and the important role that sustainably sourced biomass will play in the energy transition. Their support was reaffirmed at the recent G20 Summit in New Delhi, which began with the launch of the Global Biofuel Alliance and concluded with a commitment from these countries to triple the deployment of “zero and low-emission technologies, including abatement and removal technologies”.

These removals need to happen now - and at a gigaton scale. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that by 2050, up to 9.5 billion tonnes of carbon removals per year are required from bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) alone to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

This is an immense task and there’s no silver bullet – we need every solution available and to scale carbon removals at unprecedented rates around the world if we are to succeed.

At Drax, we have positioned our business to help meet this need. We are global leaders in the development of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) – the only technology that can remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it permanently underground, while also generating renewable, reliable electricity.

In addition to progressing our plans for the large-scale development of global BECCS projects we are spurring the growth of the carbon market, by supporting the drive for more robust standards, and joining communities of early actors like the World Economic Forum’s First Movers Coalition and the Coalition of Negative Emissions.

 A strong carbon market will be essential to accelerating the deployment of climate saving technologies like BECCS. Still nascent, the current market needs to scale thirty-fold by 2030 if we are going to see removals at the volume needed to limit warming to 1.5°C. 

This urgency has also created opportunity – the global carbon removals market has the potential to grow into a multi-trillion-dollar industry; a value that could exceed the market capitalisation of the oil and gas industry. It is early days but already we are seeing increasing momentum in this space and anticipate the industry passing through further significant milestones as it moves into 2024.

Businesses and organisations are now looking to us to help achieve their sustainability goals, by removing carbon emissions and permanently storing them – rebalancing their carbon footprints, for good. We have agreed deals with Respira for up to two million metric tonnes of carbon removals, and C-Zero, and we’re continuing to see commitments from emerging players across industries in this space.

These early adopters will play a critical and foundational role in developing the market and making large-scale, engineered carbon removals a reality.

As a leading provider of carbon removals technologies, we are also supporting the drive to bring robust standards to the carbon market – ensuring all carbon removed is accurately measured and independently verified. Robust standards are vital to the success of the carbon market and providing investors with confidence that they are getting high-integrity, quality credits.

On our current path, even if we stop all emissions tomorrow, historic carbon in the world’s atmosphere will still be at dangerously high levels.

But that doesn’t need to be the case - the trajectory of our future rests upon the choices we make today. We have access to the technologies we need to remove carbon from the atmosphere and by investing in them today can ensure we are ready for tomorrow.

Go further with carbon removals by Drax.

Will Gardiner

Drax CEO