09:31 Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)

In my mind, today’s debate is about changing scientific understanding as we decarbonise our energy supply. The burning of wood as a renewable energy source has been adopted by the UK and the EU as a sustainable option to replace coal. In the UK, we subsidise the use of biomass to generate energy by £1 billion. However, in recent years, scientists and industry have raised serious concerns about the actual benefit of burning wood for energy. I secured this debate so that we can have a discussion about how taxpayers’ money is being spent and whether, at this time of global energy disruption, we are investing in the best forms of energy generation for our planet and for our energy security.

Biomass became prominent when coal-fired power stations were converted into biomass power stations. That was subsidised to aid the phase-out of coal and originated at a time when biomass was cheaper than renewables such as wind and solar and had perceived additional benefits, such as providing consistent, reliable power. Now, however, Drax is the UK’s biggest single-point source of carbon dioxide emissions. Because of the technology installed, the power station must run predominantly on wood pellets and has only limited capacity for non-woody biomass such as energy crops and organic waste.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change allows such zero-rating of emissions based on the idea that every tree will be replanted and its replacement will harness the same level of carbon as its predecessor; unfortunately, that has proven not to be the case. Many studies have shown that the carbon payback times for forest biomass are decades or centuries away, depending on the type of forest cut down to produce the wood pellets.

We are entering a crunch point in our work to limit the effects of climate change, with tipping points in the melting of sea and glacial ice, sea-level rises, ocean acidification, permafrost melt and the Amazon biome. We do not have the time to wait decades or centuries for the carbon to be reabsorbed and sequestered; nor does such an approach fit in with the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.

I want to raise concerns about the industry’s efforts to store more carbon in an attempt to deliver negative emissions and remove carbon from the atmosphere. Although that is a laudable goal, and the bioenergy with carbon capture and storage—BECCS—system is included in the United Kingdom’s net zero pathway, it is important to note that it is based on the flawed accounting that calls burning biomass carbon neutral. It involves a number of risks and barriers.

Recently, global events have shown how important a reliable food supply is, and the United Kingdom must not reduce its domestic production of quality produce. There is already the challenge of finding the right balance of land for farming, living, energy production and industry, so using such a large percentage of our land for a form of expensive and unsustainable energy generation would be the wrong approach.

The Climate Change Committee has called on the Government to support domestic biomass supply to meet expected carbon-removal requirements for the industry; however, is that the answer? The United Kingdom is about to face a severe shortage of wood and is one of the least densely forested countries in Europe, at only 13% of land area. The idea that rather than using that wood in industry we should burn it flies in the face of the basics of reducing emissions. At the heart of what we are aiming to do is reducing our use of virgin products, reusing where possible and recycling where not, and looking at using such products for energy generation only once they have become waste.

When we log forests for wood products, the carbon remains sequestered for however long those products last—possibly decades or longer. I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the wood panel industry. The industry is a UK success story, with gross value added in excess of £850 million per annum and an ability to meet 65% of the UK demand for wood panel products. It supports approximately 7,500 jobs across the UK and has an average salary of £36,000, which is significantly above the UK average. The industry has made great strides in supporting our net zero by 2050 targets and has had some success with efficient and carbon-negative processes.

The Government have done great work as we transition to net zero by 2050, but further investment in biomass is clearly the wrong strategy. It not only continues to contribute carbon to our atmosphere when we can now invest in significantly cleaner energy, but takes away from flourishing British businesses and exports our problems overseas. When the biomass strategy is released, I hope that the mounting evidence will be considered and that we can continue to increase investment in more sustainable energy sources rather than pursuing this path.

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09:43 Charlotte Nichols (Labour)

Drax burns 27 million trees a year. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy plans to burn 120 million trees a year by 2050. That is far more than the amount of chicken waste that will be burned and will take much longer to replace. By comparison, the New Forest has 46 million trees; that shows the scale of the importation the process requires. It will add to the carbon cost before the wood is even burned. The wood itself is especially harmful: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that burning wood creates 18% more CO 2 than burning coal.

We increasingly recognise the damage that centuries of deforestation have done to our planet, environment and biodiversity. The Government’s net zero strategy envisages a bioenergy with carbon capture and storage technology that depends both on burned trees regrowing immediately and on the carbon released being captured from Drax’s chimneys. If both were possible, accountants could tally these as negative emissions, but the calculations do not adequately weigh the costs of deforestation and transport or the opportunity cost of other energy alternatives. It is foolish to lean on an energy source that depends on the mass importation of raw materials from thousands of miles away, especially when doing so is likely to drive up the commodity price of the wood involved.

Our energy and environmental needs are great, while our resources are limited. Rather than relying on a monopoly supplier of this polluting and expensive technology, we should promote reforestation, not just replenishment, and invest in truly green energy sources such as nuclear, hydrogen and other renewables. Will the Minister commit to ending the double bookkeeping of the carbon savings of biomass? Will he confirm that if the numbers do not add up, biomass will not be part of the green taxonomy and Drax’s contract will not be renewed?

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09:49 Barry Gardiner (Labour)

It is a pleasure to join in the debate, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for introducing it. I feel for her: about a decade ago I was in exactly the same position as a Back Bencher trying to tell my Front Bench team that they were mistaken in going down the biomass road. I think the Government are at the point where they will listen; indeed, I hope that is the case because, if they do not, it will make a mockery of all that we are doing on not only climate change but biodiversity.

The Department has been asked what the natural absorption rate of the emitted carbon would be if we replenish those lost resources—that is, if we replace those trees to absorb the emitted carbon. It gave an answer—it was, “We do not hold this information.” Well, other people have calculated it, and it is 190 years. We have seven years left until 2030, when the whole world must be on a declining pathway of emissions, and 27 years until 2050, when we have to achieve net zero. So the timescale—even accepting the principle that this is only about carbon emissions and that this is a cycle—is just too long.

The Government will no doubt talk about how CCS can be married up with BECCS. They will say that if we can capture those carbon emissions, that will make it all right. However, only 44% of emissions released at the Boundary Dam project in Canada were captured. The Government have not been prepared to say that they would hold Drax to what Ember, at least, has said should be the target—95% of emissions captured.

The trees on the entire area covered by the second Drax logging licence have now been cut down. It is simply not the case, as the company said, that the forests have been transferred to other logging licences. It said it does not hold those licences anymore. Again, that was a lie. “Panorama” checked that claim by going to the Government of British Colombia, who confirmed that Drax does still hold those licences. I understand how things progress, and I have no doubt that the company was set up to try to do good. We all thought at that stage that this was really going to be a sustainable way of tackling climate change, but Drax has got further and further into a reality that is now simply leading it to lie to the public. It is time that the Government distanced themselves from that lie.

I am sorry the Government are now considering a further proposal from Drax. I really hope—not only for climate change purposes, but because of the wider biodiversity impact—that they will think very long and very hard, take notice of what the hon. Member for North Devon and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North have said today, and just say no. We have to transition away from burning trees. It is a damaging way of using forests, and it cannot be sustained.

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09:58 Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)

In February, I published an article highlighting the problems with biomass, and I will set out the two key points from it. The first reason why we should avoid continued reliance on biomass relates to the financial and economic sustainability of biomass energy production, which Members have talked about. The current energy crisis, coupled with the climate crisis, means that we need to transition to renewable energy as quickly and cheaply as possible. In the context of rising bills, every pound of taxpayers’ money that goes into subsidising energy production must have the maximum effect. When wind and solar power technology were still prohibitively expensive, we were led to believe that biomass was the answer to all our problems—a carbon-neutral solution that was comparatively cheap. However, things have turned out rather differently: currently, we are subsiding biomass energy prices to the tune of £1 billion a year.

The second reason why we should not support and encourage biomass over other renewable energy sources is that its renewable credentials are really very weak. Burning wood pellets actually releases 18% more CO 2 than burning coal, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; we only consider it a renewable source because new, replacement trees can absorb that carbon dioxide. However, as has been said, it would take nearly 190 years for the CO 2 released by burning trees to be absorbed. At the end of this month, we will have only 27 years left to meet the Government’s target of net zero by 2050, so creating CO 2 emissions that will not be absorbed for two centuries should not count as progress towards net zero.

It is clear that there are serious problems, as well as financial concerns, with biomass as an environmentally sustainable power source. There is no doubt that biomass was useful and important as part of the energy mix in the 2010s, but it is completely wrong now. I hope the Minister will confirm that the Government’s biomass strategy limits the role of biomass to a replacement for fossil fuels, not a competitor for renewable energy transition funding. That means reducing or stopping the subsidies for biomass and putting that money into continuing to support domestic forms of renewable energy production such as offshore wind.

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10:04 Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat)

Tackling climate change is the most important issue of our time. The IPCC notes that approximately 3.3 billion to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are vulnerable to climate change. Between 1970 and 2019 the global surface temperature increased at a higher rate than in any period over the past 2,000 years. Since 1950, the global number of floods has increased by a factor of 15 and wildfires have increased by a factor of seven. This year alone, we have seen floods in Pakistan, drought and famine across east Africa and a heatwave in the UK.

There is still time to reduce the worst effects of climate change. The World Bank suggests that up to 260 million people could be forced to move within their countries by 2050, but immediate action could reduce that number by 80%. That urgency is why I cannot support the use of bioenergy. Bioenergy is not a renewable energy source. The low density of wood means that, when burned, it emits more CO 2 per unit of electricity than coal. That CO 2 can be offset only when new trees regrow, leading a large carbon debt to accrue over decades.

These timescales are much too long to meet urgent carbon budgets. We do not have the time for these emissions to be paid back. Time is not on our side when it comes to the climate disaster. The idea that bioenergy production can offset emissions is based on pure hope. If greenhouse gas removal techniques are not able to balance global carbon budgets, we risk an extra 0.7° to 1.4° of warming above our 1.5° target. That is the issue. We should not take that risk with people’s lives and the health of our planet.

Despite the clear issues presented, the Government continue to massively subsidise industrial-scale bioenergy. Drax receives more than £2 million a day in biomass subsidy, in spite of there being no obvious long-term climate benefit. Let us imagine the difference we could make if the Government put that money into true renewable energy and net zero adaptation. There are 5 GW of onshore wind currently awaiting planning approval, which could be fast-tracked to lower energy bills this winter alone. The UK could develop up to 11.5 GW of tidal stream by 2050, supporting over 14,000 jobs. Weak grid capacity is now the biggest issue holding back renewable energy development, yet the Government continue to stall plans to improve the grid.

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10:08 Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Mr Grey. Burning trees for energy generation in the UK has been somewhat disguised as a sustainable and climate-friendly practice that will help us achieve our 2050 net zero goals. I therefore congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on bringing this important matter forward for debate, because the sad reality is that the UK burns more wood in large-scale electricity production than any other country in the world, even though burning forest biomass actually emits more carbon than burning coal per unit of energy produced. Forests and ecosystems across the globe, including protected nature reserves, are being harmed by our demand for wood pellets. That is devastating for our planet and runs counter to our nature and biodiversity commitments.

The UK is Europe’s top subsidiser of biomass energy, giving over £1 billion a year to large biomass-burning power stations. Drax receives more biomass electricity subsidies from the UK than from any other country. That prompts the question: should the UK Government really be subsidising that, when we are supposed to be setting an example to the rest of the world in our fight against climate change?

Currently, the CO 2 released from biomass energy is released into the atmosphere. In future, infrastructure may be added to power stations to capture and store the CO 2 , in a process known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. However, the level of BECCS set out in the net zero strategy could cost an estimated £78 billion by 2050. That is a staggering figure for a source of energy that is harmful to our planet, even with carbon capture technologies. There are clearly far cleaner, cheaper and sustainable sources of energy, such as wind and solar, that the Government should be using that money for instead.

In the medium to long term, we need to move away from burning wood, especially for energy generation. Climate Minister Lord Goldsmith stated at COP26 that the UK has “real problems” with burning wood for electricity. Similarly, in August this year, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) was Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, he admitted that it makes no sense to import US pellets to burn, and that the Government have not fully investigated the sustainability of burning wood pellets.

We depend on forest and woodland for our survival, from the air we breathe to the wood we use. Besides providing habitats for animals and livelihoods for humans, forests offer watershed protection, prevent soil erosion and mitigate climate change. It is crucial that we protect our forests. We should not cut them down and allow them to disappear, no matter where in the world they are.

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10:13 Sammy Wilson (DUP)

I apologise for being about 30 seconds late to the debate. There are a number of reasons why I am interested in the topic. First, the cost of the renewable energy initiative in Northern Ireland was £25 million, yet it led to the collapse of the Executive, no Government for three years and a public inquiry that, in the end, did not come up with any negative recommendations. Yet here we are discussing the initiative as it applies in England—burning wood pellets at a subsidy of £1 billion per year. I ask myself why, if it led to the collapse of Government in Northern Ireland, a public inquiry and a long period of no Government, are we not jumping up and down at the cost of a £1 billion per year subsidy for an RHI scheme?

Secondly, I am keen on protecting the environment yet, as we have heard from speaker after speaker today, we have here a form of renewable energy that destroys the environment. It destroys woodland and the habitat of the animals, birds and flora that rely on that woodland. When we look back at a number of the renewable schemes that we have today, we will ask ourselves why we did not see their environmental impact. I know it is not the subject of our debate today, but if we look at the environmental damage done, for example, to provide windmills in Scotland, some 13 million trees have been torn down already to provide the sites and peatlands have been dug up and huge concrete bases and roads have been put in those upland areas, destroying many of the drainage systems there. In my own constituency, I noticed 3 metres of peat being taken off a hillside at a time when curlew and other birds will be nesting in those hillsides. Many people genuinely believe that we have to go down the road of having renewable energy, but, very often, the focus on it simply being renewable means that we ignore the environmental consequences of such energy provision.

That is another of the ironies in this debate that is being ignored. We ignore the fact that we are taking a forest from one country and bringing it over to burn it in our country, and we are paying the cost of that. I will conclude at this point, but I hope that today generates a wider debate on the whole use of renewable energy.

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10:19 Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)

The Government’s own figure put annual bioenergy emissions at 47 million tonnes of CO 2 , which is 10% of the UK’s annual greenhouse gas emissions. That is four times greater than those from coal, as the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) has just said. The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the wider debate on how we balance the needs to protect the environment and biodiversity and for energy to keep us warm and feed us. It is a really big debate that we do not have time for today but it must be had.

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10:24 Jim Shannon (DUP)

We have seen the benefits that planting trees brings to our nation. Trees help to purify the air, lower air temperature, sustain wildlife and improve soil quality. Some would argue that going to all of the bother of planting thousands of trees just to cut them down and burn them is a waste of resources, but we have made many commitments to COP26 and COP27 and it is about doing whatever we can to ensure that energy is provided in a sustainable way.

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10:28 John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)

The former Secretary of State is not the only Minister to be troubled by the burning of millions of trees in our power stations. A year ago, Lord Goldsmith conceded that there were “real problems” with ensuring the sustainability of the trees being chopped down around the world. It was for that reason that, in January, the Climate Change Committee told Parliament that the “vast majority” of trees should be home grown, not imported on diesel-belching freighters from across the Atlantic. The question is, how many of the 27 million trees burnt by the Drax power station last year were actually home grown? It was not the vast majority; it was not even a tiny fraction. It was zero. Let us be clear that the Government do not seem to agree with the Government on the burning of trees at Drax.

Last year, 500 scientists signed a letter denouncing the burning of trees for energy. Those who believe that the practice is worsening climate change rather than helping in the battle against it now range from Greta Thunberg to the financial rating agency Standard and Poor’s. We had better take heed.

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10:35 Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)

We have also had a discussion about CCS, on the back of burning wood, residual material and waste. That applies to energy from waste just as it does to biomass use. Of course, the Climate Change Committee is quite keen on BECCS. The idea is that the whole process can become net negative as far as contributions to net zero are concerned, and we are producing a net negative contribution to the overall carbon balance, providing that CCS works well and sequesters as much carbon as it is supposed to.

This underpins just how wide this debate really is and what we need to think about: for example, is CCS a reasonable way to go forward in sequestering emissions over the long period and how much is that going to cost overall in subsidies? My conclusion is that, yes, there is a role for biomass and for energy from waste, with the proper constraints and the proper circumstances under which we provide that power. It has a role, but not a large role. On the other hand, we need every source of low and lowish carbon energy that we can get at the moment, so we need it to make a contribution, but not a large one, to our overall power arrangements.

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10:47 Graham Stuart (Conservative)

Policy decisions need to be based on facts and rigorous evidence gathering, not on inaccuracies and misconceptions. The use of biomass from sustainably managed forests in well supported by evidence and experts such as the International Energy Agency, which is the global authority on energy, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which I would have thought that Members present would regard as being particularly well placed to make judgments on the balances that need to be struck in coming up with policy, yet the tenor of today’s debate is to dismiss these global experts and the different organisations that have looked at this issue extensively and come to the conclusion that the use of biomass is sustainable and right.

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10:58 Selaine Saxby

As we move through the transition to net zero, it is vital that we understand that things are going to change, that the science has changed and that we are moving forward. When people first burned coal, they did not understand the damage they were doing to the planet, and I think the same is true for wood pellets. In 1959, plastic bags were invented to stop us cutting down trees to make paper bags, and we recognise now that that probably was not the right decision.

I hope that as the Minister reviews the matter and considers the release of his biomass strategy, he will find those same advisers who persuaded the former Secretary of State that importing trees to burn is not a sustainable practice in view of our intention to get to net zero by 2050. On the current path, we are simply not going to achieve that.

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