Drax/Kwarteng: biomass is a bad solution to renewables challenge

The UK government cannot make up its mind about woody biomass electricity generation. Earlier this week, business minister Kwasi Kwarteng said “it doesn’t make any sense” to import US pellets to burn. On Thursday he “fully backed” biomass. Furious power companies and bureaucrats had presumably applied thumbscrews in the meanwhile.

Drax is the UK’s largest biomass generator. Its shares wobbled, as well they might.

Kwarteng’s department has backed woody biomass for some time. Drax (formerly a coal-fuelled generator) and others receive subsidies. The idea behind woody biomass is that fibre used to make fuel pellets is spare anyway.

Managed forestry involves thinning out trees and any excess would be likely burned anyway, proponents say. Combine woody biomass generation with carbon capture and storage, they add. Hey presto! Biomass offers not just low-carbon solution, but a negative one.

Lex demurs. Why encourage wood burning? Already this year about 6mn tonnes of carbon have been released from forest fires in the EU and UK, according to the European Commission. Whether trees burned at Drax will be replaced like-for-like, locking up released carbon, is questionable. And if the wood comes from plantations, it bolsters the economic value of tree farms that do nothing for biodiversity.

A good portion of the subsidies for woody biomass must end up in the pockets of lumber mill and forestry industry owners. At least half of Drax’s wood fibre comes from sawmills according to its own data. This year, 80 per cent of Drax’s biomass pellets will ship from North America.

If the biomass generators sat in a heavily forested Nordic country, not denuded Yorkshire, this fuel would make more sense. But ransacking forests in America’s south-east, as does US-listed pellet maker Enviva, to ship to Europe for burning is bonkers. Moreover, measured against other sources of renewable energy it is almost as expensive as coal and natural gas.

The combination of biomass burning and carbon capture is a complex solution to Drax’s desire to stay in business in a way that appears sustainable. The UK should focus instead on energy that is unequivocally renewable: wind and solar.

The Lex team is interested in hearing more from readers. Please tell us what you think of generation from biomass burning in the comments section below.