More walking today, getting towards the Megawatt Valley area. We didn’t go so far this morning, wanting to make an early end because of Friday traffic and the expected heat. Drax power station is an increasingly visible presence on the horizon, and there was some construction activity along our route as people were working on an embankment section of the power station branch. According to Wikipedia, biomass goes in that way and gypsum and ash for construction come out. I’ve often seen the biomass trains in various parts of the network, with their smart new wagons. The route from Port of Liverpool to Drax seems particularly bizarre, zigzagging (to avoid heavily-used passenger lines presumably). When I lived in Huddersfield, sometimes when I walked back down from the Co-op in the mornings I could see Drax’s pyrocumulus in the sky in the distance way beyond the end of the road.
It’s a dominant feature of the landscape, just as our need for energy is a dominant feature of our lives. Drax have done many things to reduce carbon dioxide (and sulphur oxides) emissions – but there are limits to what is achievable when burning stuff. I sometimes speculate what world politics would be like without the west’s addiction to the hydrocarbons that we use to fuel domestic heating, some power stations and road transport.
Creator God,
when it comes to energy,
it can be hard to know what the right thing is,
and hard to do even what we know is right.
Guide us and strengthen us, we pray,
to do what is right for the world.
