AUGUST 2016 CONVERSION OF MOTHBALLED LYNEMOUTH POWER STATION TO BIOMASS THREATENS FORESTS AND AGGRAVATES CLIMATE CHANGE Biomass scheme another reason for banks to blacklist controversial energy corporation EPH Lynemouth Power Station in Northumberland is now owned by EPH. The company is rapidly becoming notorious for buying dirty fossil fuel and nuclear power stations, and coal mines, and extending their working lives. Lynemouth will be EPH’s first foray into biomass and one of its first projects in the UK. It is set to run on imported woodchips from clearfelled wetland forests in the southern US. Lynemouth power station. Photo Alan Murray-Rust, CC BY-SA 2.0. WHAT IS PROPOSED? Lynemouth Power Station is a and opencast coal mines across and the country already burns former coal power station which Europe. Lynemouth was created more than this amount in power was closed at the end of 2015 to power an aluminium smelter, stations. Burning wood on this because it does not comply with but since the smelter’s closure in scale relies on wood imports and EU emissions regulations. It is in 2012, it has exported power to cannot be sustainable. the process of being converted to the National Grid. burning imported wood pellets in Lynemouth is just south of order to avoid long-term closure. To run the 420 MW power station Druridge Bay, an area already Owned initially by Rio Tinto on biomass EPH will burn an under threat from a proposed Alcan and then briefly by RWE, estimated 1.5 million tonnes of open cast coal mine. The area is Lynemouth is now owned by wood pellets a year, made from also subject to various licences for Energetický a průmyslový holding 3 million tonnes of green (freshly fracking and Underground Coal (EPH), a Czech company that cut) wood. The UK’s total annual Gasification. has recently acquired many coal, wood production (across all gas and nuclear power stations industries) is 11 million tonnes, 1 LYNEMOUTH POWER STATION CONVERSION • AUGUST 2016 WHAT STAGE IS THE PROJECT AT? The conversion of Lynemouth Power Station is guaranteed £309 800,000 tonnes of pellets a year Power Station has started million for selling electricity every (and a smaller amount in 2017) and it expects to open as a year. This includes the wholesale from Enviva, a US pellet company biomass power station in 2017. price for electricity plus a subsidy responsible for well-documented It is currently closed while the of £189 million a year1. CfDs are forest-destroying activities in the conversion takes place. not paid out of general taxation, southern United States, including but by electricity companies – passing off whole trees as Lynemouth has been awarded often the same ones receiving ‘forestry residues’. See below for a Contract for Difference (CfD) the funds! Electricity suppliers more detail. by the UK government, which then pass on this cost through is a very lucrative renewable additional charges on electricity See Biofuelwatch’s page on electricity subsidy. The CfD bills, so electricity consumers coal to biomass power station guarantees EPH £105 per unwittingly fund fake renewables conversions for more information. megawatt hour generated, which simply by paying their bills. will increase with inflation (that’s more than onshore wind energy EPH has announced that from gets). This means that Lynemouth 2018 it will be purchasing WHAT IS EPH? EPH is a Czech energy company has been reported that “leaked opencast lignite (brown coal) with fingers in many pies. documents from Panama law firm mines in Lusatia from the Founded in 2009, it has rapidly Mossack Fonseca show the Czech Swedish government-owned expanded through securing buyers are linked to suspicious company Vattenfall, in 2016. massive bank loans (over €3 offshore holdings.” These mines have been the billion in 3 transactions alone subject of many protests locally from 2012 to 2014) to purchase German NGO Urgewald has and internationally. Vattenfall was energy infrastructure including described EPH as “a kind under intense public pressure – in mines and power stations. of wrong-way driver on the Sweden and Germany – to divest EPH is two-thirds owned by European energy market” due from these mines and clean up its Czech businessman Daniel to its practice of buying up act. EPH is less easily influenced Křetínský and Slovakian coal mines and power plants by this type of pressure as it has businessman Patrik Tkáč, that would otherwise be under no shareholders or government and the remaining one third pressure to close. A recent ownership, so the lignite mines is owned by investment example of this is its acquisition are likely to stay open longer company J&T, which is also of some of Germany’s dirtiest under their new owner. owned by Patrik Tkáč. It and most carbon-intensive Germany’s Ende Gelande climate change protest in 2016 focussed on the lignite mines now owned by EPH. Photo by Rikuti, CC BY-SA 4.0. 2 LYNEMOUTH POWER STATION CONVERSION • AUGUST 2016 EPH IN THE UK As well as Lynemouth Power Currently Lynemouth and because “they are at the end of Station, EPH owns the coal-fired Eggborough Power Stations are the transmission and transactional Eggborough Power Station in EPH’s only UK assets. However, value chain; they’re discrete, and Yorkshire. That plant was due the company has expressed have got some very interesting to close, but has secured a deal interest in acquiring further coal characteristics around supply, to stay open until at least March and gas fired power stations, and demand and policy.” This means 2017 by making 775 MW available is seeking contracts to build new that EPH could play a similar for back-up power for the winter gas-fired power stations. It also role in the UK as it has in other of 2016-17. The former owners plans to launch Energy Scanner, European countries, extending of Eggborough Power Station had an online marketplace for small the life span of fossil fuels with obtained planning permission to and medium-sized enterprises to no accountability to the people convert to biomass but failed to interact with electricity suppliers, affected by air pollution and secure a Contract for Difference in 2016. EPH has stated that climate change. subsidy. EPH appears to have no it has a particular interest in plans to pursue this. the Italian and UK gas markets Wetland forest, North Carolina. Photo Enviva’s pellet-making plant, North Swainson’s Warbler. Photo US Fish and Dogwood Alliance Carolina. Photo Dogwood Alliance. Wildlife Service Northeast Region. FUELLING FOREST DESTRUCTION Despite being classed by the yellow-throated warbler, as well monoculture plantations which government as renewable as economically important species have taken their place. energy, large-scale biomass such as fish and shrimp. Mature electricity is anything but green. wetland forests are also important The southern US has no effective Over half of the pellets that stopover habitats for migrating regulatory framework to protect will fuel Lynemouth will be birds. forests. provided by Enviva, the largest pellet manufacturer in the US. The vast majority of coastal A 2013 Freedom of Information There is compelling evidence wetland forests in the region request by Biofuelwatch revealed that Enviva uses whole trees have been destroyed already, that coal to biomass conversions from clearcut biodiverse coastal in the past mainly for paper rely on slow-growing trees from forests. Research by conservation production. Now the remainders the northern hemisphere that are organisations Dogwood Alliance are facing the axe, increasingly low in bark, and that residues and the Natural Resources to produce wood pellets for like straw, or short-rotation Defense Council reveals that the EU. The UK is the largest coppicing such as miscanthus, Enviva has been logging rare customer of pellets from the US, are unsuitable because of how wetland forests in North Carolina. and we already burn significantly different kinds of biomass affect Wetland forests provide critical more than we can ever produce. the boilers of converted coal habitat for many species in Drax power station in Yorkshire plants. By converting coal fired the southern US, such as the alone burns more wood a year power stations to run on biomass, black bear, various reptiles and than the UK produces in total. we are effectively locking amphibians, songbirds such This wood comes from highly ourselves in to a future of forest as the Swainson’s warbler and biodiverse forests as well as from destruction. 3 LYNEMOUTH POWER STATION CONVERSION • AUGUST 2016 CLIMATE CHANGE Per unit of energy produced, into monoculture plantations carbon lost from forests and smokestack CO2 emissions from much of that carbon will stay in forest soils as a result of logging, biomass power stations are higher the atmosphere and never be importing biomass from across than those from coal power reabsorbed. The UK government’s the world produces emissions stations. This is because burning own analysis shows that burning from transporting and processing wood for electricity is less efficient wood, especially whole trees, the fuel. Healthy forests also play than burning coal. Companies and can result in far greater carbon a major role in regulating the policy makers ignore this carbon, emissions from logging than the rainfall cycle, storm tracks and claiming that new trees will grow carbon emitted by burning coal. the nitrogen cycle, all of which back and reabsorb the carbon At a time when we know that are vital for a stable climate. emitted from cutting down and we need to be vastly reducing Finally, mature forests sequester a burning mature ones. However, our CO2 emissions, investing in large amount of carbon from the it can take decades before that energy that will do the opposite atmosphere.