Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, if she will undertake an assessment of the effect on the availability of UK-sourced wood supplies of (a) 50MW and under and (b) over 50MW wood-burning biomass plants.

The Department already monitors the use of wood for fuel in the UK through two means:

• Analysis of the sustainability data returned to Ofgem (a requirement for generators >50kW under the Renewables Obligation)
• A voluntary questionnaire which asks the large scale biomass electricity users (>50MW) of their plans for sourcing biomass for the next five years.

Volumes of UK wood being used for electricity and CHP generation are expected to remain at a fairly constant level, at around 1.3-1.4million oven dried tonnes per year. There is no indication that use of UK-sourced biomass for electricity is causing resource constraints for other UK wood users (such as the wood products industry).

The conclusions from our most recent analysis1 reinforce what we already understood: that while biomass generation is increasing, the demand for feedstock is being met mostly from imports.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/woodfuel-disclosure-survey