Drax has confirmed it will cut more than half of its global carbon capture and storage (CCS) division, eliminating around 100 roles across its core business and its CCS-focused subsidiary, Elimini, in the UK and the United States.
Only three years ago, Drax was positioning itself as a future global leader in bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). In 2022, the company suggested its CCS strategy could support “tens of thousands” of jobs by the mid-2020s. Today, that narrative has shifted markedly. Investment in carbon capture was cut to £1 million in the first half of this year, roughly half the level previously planned, while senior figures closely associated with the technology have exited the business.
The retrenchment comes amid intensifying scrutiny of BECCS, the model underpinning Drax’s claim that its North Yorkshire power station could become “carbon negative.” The logic rests on burning biomass, primarily imported wood pellets, capturing the resulting CO₂, and storing it permanently underground. Because forest biomass is classified as renewable under UK and EU accounting rules, the captured emissions are counted as removals rather than reductions.
That framework has been financially powerful. Since converting from coal to biomass in the 2010s, Drax has secured up to £1 billion a year in taxpayer-funded green subsidies. Those payments have been central to the company’s business model and to the UK’s power-sector decarbonization strategy, particularly during periods of low wind output.
Yet the economics of adding carbon capture to biomass generation remain deeply contested. Critics question whether CCS can be deployed at the scale and cost required to deliver meaningful net removals. Environmental think tank Ember has estimated that achieving the level of carbon removal implied by Drax’s targets could require subsidies of around £30 billion, arguing that comparable emissions reductions could be delivered more cheaply through electrification, grid upgrades, and renewables such as wind and solar. Drax disputes that analysis, but the scale of the numbers highlights why investor and political patience is thinning.
The company’s internal reset also reflects broader uncertainty around CCS policy. While the UK government continues to view BECCS as a pillar of its net-zero strategy, particularly for offsetting residual emissions from hard-to-abate sectors, long-term revenue mechanisms remain complex and politically sensitive. Guaranteed support at the level implied by negative-emissions targets would lock in substantial public spending for decades, at a time when energy affordability is rising up the political agenda.
Operational challenges compound the policy risk. Capturing CO₂ from biomass plants requires additional energy, reducing net efficiency and increasing fuel demand. That, in turn, sharpens scrutiny of biomass supply chains, land-use impacts, and the assumption that forest regrowth fully offsets emissions on climate-relevant timescales. These debates have not derailed BECCS policy support, but they have slowed momentum and raised the bar for proof.
Against that backdrop, Drax’s decision to scale back its CCS workforce looks less like an isolated corporate move and more like a signal of market recalibration. The company maintains that without BECCS, the UK will struggle to meet its climate targets. At the same time, the downsizing suggests recognition that carbon capture, particularly when paired with biomass, is unlikely to scale on rhetoric alone.
