August 2016 biomass faqs This briefing is intended to provide detailed information about the effects of wood-based biomass electricity, and about the scale of and the subsidies for it in the UK. We focus primarily on biomass electricity rather than biomass heating because, in the UK, the vast majority of wood burned for energy is burned in power stations, and because most imported wood is burned for electricity. If anything is not clear or your need information on something else we haven’t discussed, please drop us an email at [email protected]. What is biomass? Does burning biomass destroy forests? How? What about burning biomass other than wood, e.g. straw or miscanthus? Isn’t it just waste wood and residues which are being burned? Isn’t biomass carbon neutral or at least low-carbon? Can biomass ever be sustainable and low carbon? Is biomass electricity renewable energy? Does biomass pollute? How does this affect people’s health? How efficient is biomass electricity? What about Combined Heat and Power biomass? Is this more efficient/green? How much Biomass is currently being burnt for electricity in the UK? How much wood could be burned for electricity in the UK in future Hasn’t the UK government introduced rules under which only sustainable and low- carbon biomass will be subsidised? Why and how is biomass subsidised in the UK? How does the UK’s support for biomass compare to that for wind and solar power? Have local campaigns against biomass power stations been successful in the UK? References and notes biomass faq • august 2016 • 1 what is biomass? Biomass refers to any organic industries including fisheries and grasses, rather than liquid fuels matter derived from organisms aquaculture, as well as the made from biomass, which are which are or recently were alive. In biodegradable fraction of called biofuels (when used for the context of energy, the EU industrial and municipal waste” transport) or bioloqiuids, nor defines biomass as “the (Renewable Energy Directive, Article biogas, which is produced through biodegradable fraction of 2(e). anaerobic digestion of biomass. products, waste and residues from Bioenergy can come from biomass, biological origin from agriculture The term ‘biomass’ is commonly biofuels/bioliquids, or biogas. (including vegetal and animal used to describe solid biomass used substances), forestry and related for energy, such as wood, straw, or DOES BURNING BIOMASS DESTROY FORESTS? HOW? On the current scale that we are the biggest pellet producer in the as well as journalists, have demanding biomass, yes – and if US. Conservation NGOs such as documented how Enviva is sourcing demand rises as expected, it would Dogwood Alliance and Natural wood for pellet plants from the destroy forests on a far a greater Resources Defense Council (NRDC), clearcutting of highly biodiverse scale than today. Excessive as well as journalists, have coastal wetland forests. demand for wood – especially in the documented how Enviva is sourcing global North - is one of the main wood for pellet plants from the Experience with the global pulp and underlying causes of deforestation clearcutting of highly biodiverse paper industry shows that and forest degradation worldwide. coastal wetland forests. clearcutting of biodiverse forests is [1] Anything that further drives up often followed by the establishment the demand for wood is going to Perhaps the strongest evidence of of monoculture tree plantations. worsen this situation. direct impacts on forests comes Rich forest ecosystems, which from the southern US, and provide habitat for thousands of Negative impacts may be direct or specifically from Drax’s main US species and play an important role indirect. Perhaps the strongest supplier, Enviva. Enviva is the in nutrient cycling and in regional evidence of direct impacts on biggest pellet producer in the US. rainfall cycles are thus lost forever. forests comes from the southern Conservation NGOs such as Industrial tree plantations on the US, and specifically from Drax’s Dogwood Alliance and Natural other hand provide habitat for very main US supplier, Enviva. Enviva is Resources Defense Council (NRDC), few species, deplete soils and freshwater, and often require aerial spraying with agro-chemicals. Clearcutting of coastal swamp forests in North Carolina, which supplies wood to an Enviva pellet mill. Dogwood Alliance Indirect impacts are, by their nature, more difficult to prove. However, a greater demand for wood will always drive up wood prices, which encourages more intensive and extensive logging, and more land conversion to tree plantations worldwide. Sawmill residues or waste wood that are burned for energy might otherwise have been used to make paper, panel board, or other products. This can force those other industries to resort to more destructive logging instead. biomass faq • august 2016 • 2 What about burning biomass other than wood, e.g. straw or miscanthus? The vast majority of biomass depletes and erodes soils and stops driver of deforestation in South burned for electricity in the UK, the them from holding enough water, America. EU and worldwide is wood. Most thus making crops more vulnerable converted coal power stations, to drought. Agricultural residues Perennial grasses and short- including Drax and in future serve other purposes, too: In parts rotation coppicing, for example of Lynemouth Power Station can only of the England, for example, pig willow and poplar, are often burn high-quality wood pellets, farmers rely heavily on purchasing promoted as a sustainable source which means wood pellets made straw from cereal farmers. There of bioenergy. However, all of them from slow-growing trees with little are serious concerns that burning rely on land and compete with bark. [2] of straw in power stations could either food production or wildlife push up straw prices so much that habitats – just as biofuel plantations Agricultural residues and ‘energy some pig farmers would go out of do already. Despite subsidies, crops’ have long been promoted as business. [3] This could harm farmers have been reluctant to bioenergy, but there are serious forests and the climate too: if small- convert land to short-rotation problems with using such sources scale pig farmers who keep free- ‘energy crops’. Less UK land is used on a large scale. Agricultural range pigs are forced out of for miscanthus or short-rotation residues are of great importance for business, they will ultimately be coppicing today than it was in 2009. maintaining soil carbon and soil replaced by industrial factory [4] There is no evidence that similar fertility and thus future crop yields. farming, which relies heavily on plantations have been successful in Removing too many of them imported soya, which is a major other countries either. ISN’T IT JUST WASTE WOOD OR residues WHICH are BEING BURNED? Whole logs used by Enviva to make pellets, many of which are burned by Drax in the Much of it will UK, Photo: Dogwood Aliance have been chemically treated. Almost 700,000 tonnes of waste wood were burned in the UK in 2014/15, out of a total of 15 million tonnes of wood. [5] Waste wood thus accounts for less than 5% of the UK’s electricity from wood. Not all power stations burning wood are Energy companies and proponents Across the EU, burning waste wood technically capable and/or of large-scale biomass burning is regulated in the same way as permitted to burn waste wood, and often claim that only waste wood burning other forms of waste. The no converted coal power station in and residues are being burned, but term refers to wood which has been the UK could burn it. evidence shows otherwise. used for another purpose in the past, for example for construction. biomass faq • august 2016 • 3 In 2012, the Government timber’. They now argue that it is pellet use as ‘residues’ but, at the department Defra published a the demand for high-quality and same time, states that 76-100% of review of research into the UK’s high-value timber by sawmills which them were made from saw logs! waste wood market. [6] It found is responsible for the clearcutting of that the UK is a net importer of forests such as southern US wetland The UK follows the European waste wood and showed that the forests. They argue that all of the Commission’s guidance which fact that a small and reduced wood used for biomass electricity defines processing residues as “a proportion of waste wood still ends effectively constituted residues, left substance that is not the end up in landfill is due to insufficient over after sawmills have taken and product(s) that a production segregated collections, not to a lack used the wood they need. [8] process directly seeks to produce. of demand for waste wood. The However, as the US conservation It is not a primary aim of the wood panel industry was the largest NGO Dogwood Alliance has production process and the consumer of waste wood until 2013, explained, what Drax calls process has not been deliberately when it was overtaken by the ‘residues’ accounts for 70% of a modified to produce it.” In relation energy companies. clearcut forest in the southern to ‘forestry residues’, it simply US. Without the demand for wood states: “forestry residues are The term ‘residues’, on the other which sawmills cannot use, there residues that are directly produced hand, is far more ambiguous and would be no incentive for forest by ... forestry; they do not include thus open to abuse. When owners to clearcut entire forests. [9] residues from related industries or conservation NGOs started And out of the 30% of wood that processing”. [11] publishing photographic evidence might go to sawmills, up to 50% that pellet mills supplying Drax were will be discarded as become a Effectively, the term ‘forestry using huge quantities of whole logs, ‘sawmill residue’ which may also residues’ is not defined at all! This [7] Drax and their supporters, be used for biomass energy.