Published 29th Aug 2023, 16:45 BST

The FMC, which was launched at COP26 by U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, is made up of 85 firms including Deloitte, Microsoft and Boeing.

Led by the World Economic Forum and the U.S. Department of State, the FMC is currently focused on addressing eight hard to abate industries, which are responsible for 30 percent of global emissions. These include aviation, aluminium, chemicals and shipping.

Nancy Gillis, programme head of the First Movers Coalition at the World Economic Forum said, “We are thrilled to welcome Drax to the First Movers Coalition and look forward to working alongside the company to drive the acceleration of the global carbon removals market.

North Yorkshire power station operator Drax has joined the First Movers Coalition. Picture by Simon Hulme

“The First Movers Coalition believes that reducing emissions to net-zero by 2050 is possible if the right technologies are brought to commercial scale within the next decade, and we need companies like Drax to champion this mission to enact the change we need.”

Drax will join the Carbon Dioxide Removals group, composed of businesses with commitments to purchase “durable and scalable” carbon removals.

Carbon removal credits are used by organisations to balance their hard-to-abate carbon emissions.

Will Gardiner, Drax Group CEO, said “The commitments to carbon dioxide removals we are seeing in the market now are essential to accelerating the deployment of climate saving technologies like bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) which we will need to meet our climate goals.”

“We welcome the opportunity to join the World Economic Forum in their efforts developing early markets for innovative technologies like BECCS.”

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, as used by Drax at its Selby site, works through the burning of wood pellets to create energy, the CO2 emissions from which are then captured and stored underground.

The process has proved controversial, with a number of green groups and scientists claiming that the method of energy production leads to more, not less emissions. Drax maintains that the process is vital to achieving Net Zero.

Drax notes that with the “right government engagement”, it plans to invest billions of the coming years in global carbon removals and renewable energy projects, with the aim of capturing 14Mt a year of carbon removals by 2030 globally.

Yorkshire power station operator Drax joins US-led First Movers Coalition