UK and US campaign groups are urging the government to scrap subsidies for biomass in next week's budget.
The coalition of NGOs, including Biofuelwatch, Fern, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Southern Environmental Law Center, said biomass received over £800m in subsidies under the Renewable Obligation Certificate scheme in 2015.
They said burning biomass to generate electricity was increasing carbon emissions rather than reducing them, highlighting recent reports from think tank Chatham House and consultancy Vivid Economics.
The Chatham House report, written by Duncan Brack, former special adviser to Chris Huhne when he was energy secretary, stated that the assumption biomass was carbon neutral was wrong. Brack pointed out that utilities are not required to fully account for the carbon emissions associated with burning biomass for electricity, as the carbon emitted at the power plant was assumed to be reabsorbed by future plant growth.
The theory ignored what happens to the wood after it is harvested, and the carbon sequestration that would have occurred if the trees were not chopped down, the report stated. It also claimed the efficiency of dedicated biomass plants can be lower than those running on fossil-fuels, depending on their age and size.
Meanwhile, the report from Vivid Economics made the same point about the theory of carbon neutrality. It also said that by 2020 onshore wind and solar would be cheaper than biomass. It also found that public subsidies for biomass were responsible for three-quarters of Drax Power’s gross profits in 2014. Since 2013, the Yorkshire-based utility has converted three of its coal boilers to burn biomass, and is now responsible for 38% of the UK’s total generation from biomass.
In a letter to chancellor Philip Hammond, the NGOs praised the UK’s leadership in being the first country to announce a commitment to phasing out coal, but said its targets to reduce greenhouse gases could be undermined by continuing subsidies for biomass.
The letter asks the chancellor to:
- stop future subsidies for converting coal to biomass when the category covering it under the contracts for difference subsidy scheme ends in 2017, and not allow biomass to be eligible under the subsidy for established technologies; and
- stop future subsidies for electricity generation from biomass.
Subsidies should be available only for plants where at least 85% of primary energy is converted to final energy output, in both electricity and thermal energy production, since this agrees with guidelines under the renewable energy directive, the NGOs say.
The Renewable Energy Association said that claims that biomass emits more carbon than fossil fuels were false. Dr Nina Skorupska, chief executive of the trade body, said: ‘[The Chatham House] report hangs on the fallacy that it takes decades for a forest to recapture carbon. That isn’t true. A well-managed forest is continually growing and it locks in carbon at an optimal rate.’
The biomass supply chain is monitored in detail to ensure greenhouse gases are cut by at least 60% compared to fossil fuels, although in reality reductions are often closer to 80%, she added.
For more on Drax and biomass, see the forthcoming March issue of the environmentalist.
