The Environment Agency has granted Drax Power Limited an environmental permit variation for carbon capture at Drax Power Station near Selby. The agency’s public announcement was published on 14 August 2026, while the formal decision document accompanying the varied permit is dated 5 August 2026. In regulatory terms, the decision varies the station’s existing permit rather than issuing a separate new permit for the site. (gov.uk) According to the decision document, the variation is issued under Regulation 20 of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 and concerns an installation that sits within the Industrial Emissions Directive regime. That legal framing sets the boundaries of the determination. (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk)
In its 14 August statement, the Environment Agency said the decision followed Drax demonstrating that it had met, and would continue to meet, the mandatory conditions in the varied permit. The regulator says it issues permits or variations only where it is satisfied the operator can comply with the permit and can operate without harming the environment, human health or wildlife. (gov.uk) The same statement sets out the narrower point that often gets lost in public debate. The Environment Agency says it may refuse a permit only where one or more legal requirements are not met, including where impacts would be unacceptable; where those requirements are met, it says it is legally obliged to issue the permit. (gov.uk)
The determination was extended over several stages. The application was duly made on 18 May 2023 after staged submissions, and the first public consultation ran in 2023 with advertising on the Environment Agency website from 26 May to 29 June 2023, an advertisement in the Yorkshire Post, and extra engagement including a public surgery at Drax Village Hall on 6 June 2023 and an online event on 13 June 2023. The agency says it handled the case under its statutory Public Participation Statement and guidance used for sites of high public interest. (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk) The 2023 material did not end the process. The decision document says the original air impact assessment did not account for all potential emissions from the carbon capture process, which led to further information notices, a revised air emissions risk assessment consulted on from 4 February to 4 March 2025, a separate CO2 venting risk assessment considered with the Health and Safety Executive in late 2025, and a final consultation on the draft decision from 27 May to 24 June 2026. (gov.uk)
The varied permit covers more than a single capture unit. It adds a carbon capture activity under Schedule 1 to the 2016 Regulations, together with solvent treatment, CO2 compression and storage, a new treatment plant for quencher tower effluent, changes to flue gas handling, a quencher tower, revised ash-handling arrangements and on-site hydrogen production used in conditioning captured CO2. The same variation removes the previously proposed Ouse Renewable Energy Plant from the permit. (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk) The decision document says the scheme would place two carbon capture plants on Units 1 and 2 at Drax Power Station. The Environment Agency’s press notice adds that the captured carbon dioxide is intended to be transported for permanent storage under the North Sea, although offshore geological storage licensing sits with a different regulator. (gov.uk)
The variation does not allow immediate commissioning without further written approval. The decision document includes installation-specific pre-operational and improvement conditions, and states that the operator cannot begin commissioning the carbon capture plants until it has obtained written Environment Agency approval to required pre-operational submissions. Those submissions include methodologies for demonstrating capture efficiency, quantifying vented CO2 during certain operating conditions, and showing that containment systems prevent accidental emissions. (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk) Performance is then tested in operation rather than assumed from the application alone. The Environment Agency requires continuous monitoring and public reporting of capture rates, and its improvement condition IC54D says that if the average capture performance after the first year of operation is below the 95% design benchmark, Drax must investigate the cause and either propose remedial action or justify why that level is not reasonably achievable. (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk)
For policy readers, the decision document is also useful for what it excludes from the determination. The Environment Agency says questions about the wider sustainability of biomass sourcing, pollution associated with pellet production overseas and broader supply-chain carbon accounting fall outside the scope of this permit decision, because the application concerns the operation of the carbon capture plant and its site-based impacts. (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk) The same boundary applies to some questions about storage and system operation. The decision document says the agency is not the regulator of geological CO2 storage, and it also notes that there is no legal obligation on operators to capture CO2 at all times; if flue gas is diverted away from the capture plant, the operator must still report annual hours of operation and how the plant has functioned. (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk)
In practical terms, the permit variation gives Drax the environmental permitting basis to commission and operate the carbon capture element at Selby, subject to later approval points, monitoring and enforcement. The decision record also notes that operation of the carbon capture plant is contingent on government funding decisions, so the permit is one part of the project sequence rather than the whole programme. (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk) If Drax breaches the permit, the Environment Agency’s published background says it can use notices, suspension or revocation, fines and prosecution. The case shows how environmental permitting works in practice: the regulator tests legal compliance first, then enforces the conditions attached to that decision once the varied permit is in place. (gov.uk)