Sustainable Energy Generation: Burning Trees

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I am glad to be here with you in the Chair, Mr Gray, and I commend the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for securing this important debate.

I do not agree with much that the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), says, but I could not have put it better than him when he stated that importing US-made wood pellets to be burned for energy is “not sustainable” and “doesn’t make sense”. Rather than talk about biomass, I would rather call it what it is: burning imported forests. It is increasingly clear that this method is expensive, causes pollution and encourages deforestation. At a time when we are waiting for the Government’s delayed consultation on the technical screening criteria that underpin which technologies will be classified as green under the UK taxonomy—and, indeed, for a biomass strategy—it is important that we state clearly that biomass is not a green option at all.

Drax power station is the single largest source of CO₂ emissions in the UK. Its entire justification is that the pollutants it releases are matched by equivalent plant and tree regrowth. Some biomass options, such as burning chicken manure, can swiftly be classed as carbon neutral because they would have swiftly decayed anyway, but replenishing burned trees and forests takes many years—even decades. The operating assumption that the trees are replaced as they are destroyed is a false accounting trick. In effect, it greenwashes a destructive and polluting process that will take us dangerously past the ecological tipping point.

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 CO₂ 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.

One of the dangers of investing in such technology is that it may spur other countries to follow suit, which will mean even more rapid deforestation. Biomass is already the most expensive renewable power source, and Drax has received £6 billion in renewable subsidies. Analysis by the climate and energy think-tank Ember found that retrofitting Drax so that it can capture and store the carbon burned would cost the UK taxpayer an estimated £32 billion—more than the cost of building the Sizewell C nuclear reactor. As an unashamed champion of the nuclear sector, and as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on nuclear energy, I would far rather see investment in nuclear, which is a greener, more reliable technology of the future.

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?