She was speaking just before Drax signed a 100-million pound (US$195 million) deal on Thursday with Germany's Siemens to fit turbines that should cut the plant's emissions by 5 percent.

"We think we need to play our part in delivering a low carbon future in the UK," she said.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is seen as a quick fix for climate change, in which coal-fired power stations could catch the greenhouse gases they create before they reach the atmosphere, then stuff them into storage sites under the seabed.

Although the European Union last month called for all coal-fired plants to be fitted with CCS by 2020, doubts remain over who will pay for it and whether it can work on the massive scale needed to make a real difference.

"As a target, it's an interesting concept, but I think we would say its relatively ambitious, given that we don't have any installed plant at the moment," Thompson said, echoing comments by other generators about the EU's target setting.

Several companies have said they will build coal plants with CCS, but need a long-term cost framework. Currently, the European Union's carbon emissions trading scheme ends in 2012 and nobody knows what will replace it.

EMISSIONS CUT

In reblading Drax's six generation units, which together have a capacity of 4,000 megawatts, the company is being more practical, its director of production Peter Emery said.

"This is proven technology that will deliver and it will deliver now. We are also doing the same in burning biomass," he said in the interview.

"Carbon capture has got potential. Our view is that we need to look at all sorts of different ways of trying to solve this problem," he said. "Carbon capture is more hypothetical at this stage."

For every unit at the plant that is fitted with new turbines, Europe's biggest coal-fired power plant should be able to cut its CO2 emissions by nearly 167,000 tonnes a year. Once completed, the greater efficiency should cut the whole power station's emissions by one million tonnes a year, or five percent.

The company also hopes that changes in government renewable energy incentives, expected this year, will enable it to burn more biomass -- organic matter like wood chips and crops. That would cut its annual emissions by another 10 percent, or two million tonnes a year, by the end of 2009.

Emery said the plan is to finish two unit upgrades with new turbines in 2008, one each in 2009 and 2010 and two in 2011. So, assuming a typical generation year, the company should cut its carbon emissions by almost 333,000 tonnes next year, alone.

Drax had planned to start the upgrades next year but now hopes to begin during one of the statutory maintenance outages planned for the second half of 2007 as Siemens thinks it can get half of the turbines needed for one unit ready in time.

"There are economic and environmental benefits for doing it as quickly as possible," Emery said. "We are planning to fast track it."

Thompson, who runs the power station in north Yorkshire which supplies about 7 percent of all the electricity consumed in Britain, said that it would be a few more months before Drax could be sure of fitting some of the turbines in 2007.

The company will not risk prolonging annual outages, thus producing less power, just to get them in this year.

"We will only do it this year if we are absolutely confident that we can do it within our planned outage," she said.

As well as cutting emissions, the increased efficiency could cut the power station's coal consumption by about half a million tonnes a year.