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Reassessing our use of wood products for bioenergy

 

Key recommendations: 

• Rigorously enforce and strengthen the sustainability of our biomass energy imports.

• Require producers of biomass energy to demonstrate full financial transparency in order to receive subsidies after 2027.

• Commission and publish an independent review into the impact of BECCS on household energy bills, lifecycle carbon emissions, biodiversity, and land use.

• Ask the Climate Change Committee to model pathways for reaching net zero by 2050 with, with less, and without BECCS.

 

At the core of conservatism are the twin values of fiscal responsibility and environmental stewardship. Fundamentally, they are values of fairness: ensuring that future generations are not burdened with our financial and environmental debts and that taxpayers’ hard-earned money is spent wisely for the public’s benefit. A growing number of environmentalists, energy experts, and policymakers are concerned these principles have been disregarded with the government’s policy on bioenergy.  

 

Bioenergy - energy generated through the burning of wood products - has allowed the UK to reduce its reliance on coal. However, key questions remain unanswered about the environmental impact of bioenergy generators and their financial sustainability, not least given that their continued operation would be impossible without taxpayer or billpayer subsidies. Repeated concerns have been raised about the sourcing of the wood used by biomass plants. An investigation by BBC Panorama in 2022, for example, found that primary forests in North America had been cut down to supply pellets for incineration in the UK, contributing to global deforestation. 

 

Creating a more timber-secure economy that mitigates the risk of global deforestation is no easy feat. The drivers of global deforestation are multifaceted and the international dimension makes it harder for a single country to regulate. The government has taken successful strides with other products by enacting due diligence legislation for a set of forest-risk commodities as well as more stringent financial requirements. 

 

As the sustainability of biomass energy imports continues to make headlines, the government should now develop and enforce more stringent sustainability standards to ensure our remaining imports are not having adverse consequences overseas. A prudent place to start is with the lifecycle carbon emissions, ensuring that emissions that are generated from the harvesting, processing, and transportation of the biomass feedstock are correctly accounted for and subject to stricter limits. 

 

The means of calculating the carbon emissions from biomass plants potentially hides their negative impact too. At present, emissions from the burning of wood are allocated to the carbon budget of the country in which the source tree was grown, rather than the country in which it was burned. This matters given the potential scale of its emissions. A study by the think tank Ember found that Drax’s wood burning power plant was the UK’s largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions, despite being technically considered carbon neutral. These emissions should be reflected in UK policy on emissions reduction.

 

Both government and industry aim to deploy carbon capture and storage technology (CCS). Proponents argue that bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) could provide a carbon negative means of meeting our future energy demand. Indeed, the government’s independent adviser on tackling climate change, the CCC, includes BECCS in its ‘Balanced Pathway’ for meeting the legally-binding commitment to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. CCS has huge potential to aid decarbonisation in the UK, but BECCS is a different beast.

 

As UK households and industry reduce their use of fossil fuels, our demand for electricity is expected to at least double by 2050. To meet this demand and to offset residual emissions from hard to decarbonise sectors, the CCC’s estimates that the UK will need 53 megatonnes per year of BECCS by 2050 and recommends increasing the proportion of biomass feedstock that is sourced from the UK. Currently, 66% of biomass used for energy generation is sourced domestically. But our supply of land is limited.

 

There are multiple competing demands for our land domestically, from food production to housebuilding. We simply cannot continue to grow the number of trees required to meet our rising demand for biomass without reducing the land available to grow food, supply existing wood-based industries, or to meet our tree planting targets. Global demand for biomass to generate energy is also projected to increase, meaning the available supply will be squeezed, further pushing up the cost. This is particularly concerning given the significant public subsidies granted to the sector. In light of this huge financial commitment, in order to receive subsidies after the current regime ends in 2027, the government should at the very least require producers to demonstrate full financial transparency to ensure that public money is being spent wisely. 

 

The ability of BECCS to deliver negative emissions is also dependent on the carbon neutrality of burning biomass, which is by no means guaranteed. Trees must first be grown, their waste wood gathered and fed to the incinerator. Then, the carbon emissions from these chimneys must be collected and stored underground - a process which is as yet unproven at scale.  New trees must be planted and grow sufficiently to have then sequestered the equivalent amount of carbon that was collected - this process must be compatible with the UK’s carbon budgets, yet current sourcing arrangements often fail this criteria. 

 

This plan not only has many stages, but is also international in its scope, and subject to external risks like forest fires. As a result, transparency of carbon emission reporting and trust in the service providers along the entire global supply chain is absolutely critical. The increasing amount of investigations and negative news coverage of both of these points calls the trust-based system into question, let alone the trust in the unproven scale required to make BECCS work. 

 

The National Audit Office’s recent report, The Government’s Support for Biomass, was clear the government “cannot demonstrate that its current arrangements are adequate to give it confidence industry is meeting sustainability standards”. This lack of certainty in the technology, and of trust and transparency should not be rewarded with huge amounts of taxpayers’ or bill payers’ money until it can be proven at scale.

 

In light of these questions, last year the government published its Biomass Strategy and an accompanying report from its Chief Scientific Advisor. However, this left even more questions outstanding. Neither addressed the likely impact of BECCS on household energy bills, biodiversity, or land use.

 

Drax received £617 million in government subsidies in 2022. The existing subsidy agreement for the sector is due to end in 2027. Whilst significant questions remain over the environmental sustainability of BECCS and its financial viability, it cannot be right for hard-earned taxpayers’ and bill payers’ money to be spent on further subsidies without very clear strings attached, especially on sustainability and the transparency of generators’ finances. 

Before committing to spend any more public money, the government should first commission and publish an independent review into the impact of BECCS on household energy bills, lifecycle carbon emissions, biodiversity, and land use. In addition, the CCC should be asked to consider options for reaching net zero by 2050 with, with less, and without BECCS, and consider other negative emissions alternatives.