Biomass Power Generation

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve again under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I am delighted to have secured this topical and important debate. I fear that other distractions in the House might limit the number of participants, but I am pleased that hon. Members have taken the time to attend. It is particularly important as we debate the Energy Bill, which will shape our country’s energy profile for decades to come, as well as the emerging biomass industry and the entire UK renewable sector.

My constituency is home to two of the country’s largest coal-fired power stations, Drax and Eggborough; I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Between them, they supply 11% to 12% of the UK’s electricity supply or, to put it in terms that most people would understand, enough power for 9 million homes. They are essential national assets, with the flexibility to provide dispatchable electricity—electricity when it is needed—which is critical to the nation’s security of supply. Both stations have well-developed plans to convert some or all of their generating units to burn sustainable biomass over the next few years.

It is crucial to appreciate the difference between biomass and biofuels, which one or two journalists who have written articles recently do not seem to understand. Arguments laying concerns about the destruction of rain forests at the feet of the biomass energy industry are simply inappropriate and wrong and have no part in the biomass industry either now or in future. Those arguments relate to liquid biofuels, which should not be confused with solid state biomass, which has robust sustainability criteria. To imply that protected rain forest wood can be used for power generation is simply wrong. Woody biomass, which is made into the more energy-dense and transport-efficient pelleted form used as fuel by stations such as Drax and Eggborough, is sourced mainly from residues, thinnings and less marketable wood, which is not of sufficient quality to be used for other, higher-value applications.

Bioenergy is a relatively new market, and the demand is welcomed by those in the hard-pressed global forest products industry, particularly where more traditional markets are in decline, as it provides the additional income that they need to continue investing in sustainable forestry management. Growing and harvesting trees provides family-supporting jobs for millions of men and women. Aside from the economic and social aspects, work in forests brings environmental benefits.

I will focus on the role of biomass in UK energy security. I know that energy security is a subject close to everybody’s heart, including that of the Energy Minister. The regulator Ofgem’s recent warning of a capacity crunch—we could have a capacity margin of only 4% as early as 2015—should set alarm bells ringing. It could have disastrous impacts on the cost and reliability of electricity for consumers, particularly the fuel-poor and businesses that are already struggling to remain competitive. Due to other regulations, approximately 12 GW of existing coal and oil-fired plant will be retired. One third of our coal-fired generation will close by 2016, and potentially more in the second half of this decade as further legislation and taxes start to bite.

In readiness for the impact of the closures, there is an urgent need to bridge the capacity gap. Even given the welcome announcement yesterday concerning Hinkley Point, new nuclear projects will not start generating until the 2020s, nor will offshore wind on any scale. Consequently, the low-cost solution of converting our existing coal-fired grid-connected plants to renewable, sustainable biomass can and should play an important role in keeping the lights on in the short to medium term.

In the next few weeks, Drax will convert its first unit to burn sustainable biomass rather than coal, and within the next few years, three of Drax’s six units will have been converted to burn sustainable biomass. I welcome the recent announcement in the Budget that £500 million will be invested in carbon capture and storage at Drax, in partnership with Alstom. The news is incredibly welcome in my constituency, and we look forward to seeing how the trial works. I thank the Minister and the Secretary of State for all their efforts to ensure that Drax had the project.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. He has twice used the word “sustainable” to describe biofuels. “Sustainable” is only accurate if one discounts how much carbon dioxide is released from the soil when the trees and vegetation are moved and how many significant journeys will be made to take the biomass from North America to this country. Does he accept that?

[Nigel Adams]

Yes. The biomass that we use must come from sustainably managed forests, by which I mean forests where growth is at least equal to harvest. Nobody is saying that biomass is carbon-neutral; it is low-carbon. We must ensure a neutral, or ideally a positive, growth-drain ratio. The hon. Gentleman makes a particularly good point, to which I shall come later in my remarks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I want to make a few general points. First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) on initiating this important debate. If I was in his situation and had in my constituency two major coal plants that would shut if they were not converted to biomass, I would take exactly his position.

I want to take a step back and give a slightly wider perspective on what is happening, in line with what the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) said about energy and climate change. I can think of no country in history that remained competitive while it had higher energy costs than its competitors. At the base of our present energy policy is a huge gamble that gas prices will increase and that therefore the investment that the Government are making will make alternative energy competitive. At the moment, however, it is not competitive, and we need to bear that in mind, particularly given the worldwide increase in shale gas.

The second point I would make about the conversion to biogas is that it has two drivers: one is bonkers and counter-productive, while the other should not be implemented. One is the 2020 directive from Europe, which is an attempt to achieve a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020. On one level, that would be fine, but the measure deals with only one side of the equation—emissions. It does not deal with consumption, and the reason why the carbon budget in Europe and this country is going up is that we are importing machines and other products from elsewhere, which is why the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing generally. The policy is not working and it is counter-productive—it is a deindustrialisation policy disguised as an environmental policy.

The other problem, which the hon. Lady mentioned, is the large combustion plant directive. I do not understand why this country must implement the directive by a particular date. In that respect, the Minister, who I think is excellent—I rather prefer his interpretation of the country’s energy policy to the Secretary of State’s—owes me, unusually, a letter. I asked him why we had not applied to extend the deadline for implementing the directive, which is allowable under its provisions. Perhaps he will tell us in his response.

There is a subsidy and a cost to biomass. The hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty made a good case, and he gave two reasons for using biomass. One was jobs; as I said, I would make the same argument if I was in his situation. However, when we give an industry a subsidy, as is the case for biomass and the rest of the alternative energy industry, there is a cost elsewhere, as the hon. Member for Thurrock said. That subsidy could be costing jobs elsewhere, even though it may not be necessary.

The second reason that was cited related to security of energy supply, which I would always put at the apex of energy policy. One can argue about price and how energy is made, but if we do not have any, we have nothing to argue about. I remind the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty that, in times of difficulty, whether that is to do with energy or anything else, an energy supply that comes across the north Atlantic is not totally secure.

[Nigel Adams]

The hon. Gentleman should consider where the fuel comes from now. We buy millions of tonnes of coal to fuel our power stations. It comes across in ships, and I imagine it is extracted through open-cast mining. That has been going on for years, so this is not a new phenomenon. Of course we must get the biomass from somewhere.

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. The trees and forests of this country certainly could not be a sustainable supply, given the level of burn that there would be.

I am reminded a bit of Aneurin Bevan’s comment that we live on an island made out of coal and surrounded by fish, and it would take fools to damage our food or energy supply. I do not know what has happened in the past 30 or 40 years.

[Ian Swales]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting counter-argument. Previous speakers in the debate have cited north America as an example, but he will be aware that the paper and pulp industry has long imported biomass, mainly from Scandinavia. The power project to which I referred in my speech is in detailed talks with the Finnish industry as one of its main suppliers.

[Graham Stringer]

In a stable world economy, crossing the Atlantic or the North sea is not a problem, but a secure energy supply really means being able to do things here, and there is a risk to our energy security from moving from fossil fuels, of which we have hundreds of years’ supply, to biofuels. I just want to make that simple point.

Another point that has not come out much in the debate is the problem of toxicity. I have tabled several parliamentary questions on the matter in the past year or so. According to an answer of 23 May 2012, at column 701W, the burn of biomass in 2010 added to the atmosphere 160 tonnes of chromium, 130 tonnes of arsenic and 16 tonnes of hexavalent chromium, all of which are damaging to health and likely to reduce people’s life expectancy, although the figures are not completely available.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend puts his finger on the concerns of people in my constituency. Does he agree that in addition to the emissions and their possible impact on air quality, there is concern about incinerator ash and a sense that that, too, should be treated as hazardous waste?

[Graham Stringer]

I know from my hon. Friend’s constituents, who have written to me, that there is great concern about these problems in Stretford and Trafford, so I wanted to bring that to hon. Members’ attention, because it has not yet been discussed.

Finally, I think that the carbon debt is slightly greater than the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty said, partly because some new trees will be used. Interestingly, to hit the European 2020 targets, the carbon must be back in a tree by 2020, so if we are dealing with trees that take 10 or 20 years to grow, biofuels should not count towards the target, because that will not have happened. I think there is a bit of a fiddle going on.

[Ian Swales]

The hon. Gentleman is repeating one of the great fallacies about the industry, on which I think that the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) touched. Let us say that there is 20-year cropping of a stand of trees, with a 20th taken out and replanted. All the evidence shows that the overall carbon in that stand of trees at the end of the year will be the same, or will even have increased, despite the cropping, because all the other trees will have become bigger. The idea that when one tree is taken out—

[Ian Swales]

Thank you, Mrs Main.

[Graham Stringer]

It is a complicated equation, although I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. There is also the question of the carbon that comes out of the earth, however, and the black carbon, which is a product of the combustion and also leads to global warming. It is a very complicated equation, so it is simply wrong to say that the process is carbon-neutral.

Although I have the greatest respect for the case made by the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty, we are dealing with a subsidised industry that would not have been established without two European directives, one of which is counter-productive, while the other is deindustrialising the country. People’s health is being damaged and, in the round, the policy is not a good one.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—