No more subsidies for big biomass

– Note: This consultation is now closed and the alert only remains as a record, for information –

The UK Government is introducing new subsidies for energy classed as renewable, called Contracts for Difference. Their subsidy rules and proposals are a major boost for power stations that burn large amounts of mainly imported wood.

Most of the UK’s wood imports for power stations come from the southern US and British Columbia. In both regions, highly biodiverse and carbon-rich forests are being rapidly clearcut, a trend made worse by the new demand for wood pellets. Pellets sold to Drax, for example, have been directly linked to the destruction of ancient swamp-forests in North Carolina, one of the world’s most diverse freshwater habitats. Yet the Government continues to ignore all of the mounting evidence that large-scale electricity from biomass is bad for the climate, for forests and for communities.

The Government has already announced that they will give greater long-term incentives to burning millions of tonnes of wood in power stations than to onshore wind and solar PV, both of which have a fraction of the land and carbon footprint of big biomass. Now they are consulting on proposals to further advantage biomass ‘combined heat and power’ (CHP) plants (and possibly coal-to-biomass conversions) as a ‘less established technology’, whereas onshore wind and solar PV will be considered “more established”.

While most people associate biomass CHP with small-scale, efficient district heating systems, this is not what’s being promoted here. The ‘CHP’ plants which the subsidy rules favour are big, centralised power stations with just 35% efficiency (i.e. wasting almost two out of every three trees cut down entirely), which use a very minimum amount of heat, possibly even for drying their own pellets or woodchips. Three large and import-reliant power stations have already been approved as ‘CHP’ with no credible plan for delivering heat whatsoever!

Please click here to find out more background information. If you would like to read the DECC consultation document, please click here.

Please respond to the Government consultation by taking part in this alert before 12^th February. If you can, please personalise the text below. Many thanks.

To:secondarylegislationemr@decc.gsi.gov.uk

Dear Sir/Madam,

I wish to respond to the consultation on the allocation of Contracts for Difference.  I am deeply concerned about DECC’s plans to not only reward large, inefficient and import-reliant biomass power stations with long-term subsidies, but to even favour them over onshore wind and solar PV.

There is a growing scientific consensus that burning wood , especially wood from whole trees, in order to produce electricity causes very high carbon emissions which will not be re-absorbed by new trees for many decades, if not centuries.  In fact, the Government’s UK Bioenergy Strategy 2012 shows that burning wood from whole UK conifers instead of coal would increase carbon emissions by 80% over 20 years and by 49% over 40 years.  In many cases, the climate impacts will be far worse still: Evidence shows that one of the main pellet suppliers of Drax has been sourcing wood from the clearcutting of ancient wetland forests in the southern US.  Given the scale of the current and projected demand for wood for bioenergy in the UK, companies have to rely primarily on whole trees – there simply are not enough residues available (and, furthermore, residues are not suitable for coal-to-biomass conversions to burn).  I believe that large-scale biomass electricity must not be subsidised at all since it is not truly renewable, not sustainable, and not low-carbon.

Question 1 of the Consultation asks: “Do you agree with the Government’s proposed list of “established” and “less established” technologies? “  Technologies classed as ‘less established’ are to be favoured further in the allocations process.  I am shocked to see that DECC proposes to class biomass combined heat and power (CHP) – and possibly also coal-to-biomass conversions – as ‘less established’ and thus to put them at a greater advantage than onshore wind or solar PV.  DECC’s rules class any biomass power station that achieves a mere 35% efficiency (thus wasting almost 2 out of every 3 trees burned entirely) as CHP, provided that it makes use of a small amount of heat, perhaps even just for drying some of the pellets or woodchips to be burned.  Already, MGT Power’s proposed Teesside Biomass Plant has been approved for the new subsidies as a ‘CHP’ plant.  They will burn nearly 3 million tonnes of wood a year, most of it from the Americas and they have published no proposals for distributing any heat at all.

Biomass power stations with minimum heat use are very much an ‘established technology’ – it is an old, polluting, inefficient technology.  Rather than being favoured further, subsidies for such power stations – and for coal-to-biomass conversions – must be dropped.

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