Last week's Private Eye drew attention to evidence of the perversion of the Green Investment Bank's mission since it was bought out of public ownership (and not by competitive bidding, it seems) by the profoundly non-green Macquarie Bank of Australia.
It has been known for some time that wood-burning power stations are at least as polluting as coal-fired stations. The only justification for them is that they can be part of a renewable cycle, as fast-growing trees can be planted to replace locally-sourced thinnings, recovering carbon in the process. In practice, Drax and many other stations use wood-pellets, imported from North America and Scandinavia, thus adding to the carbon footprint.
The Macquarie-owned GIB has invested in two of Estover Energy's bio-mass power stations.
In spite of talk about burning "clean low-grade wood, the parts of the tree that have little or no other use", even Estover's picture on the cover of its web-site shows stacks of timber at one of its plants.
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