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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of biomass used for energy generation on (a) biodiversity and (b) the UK’s overseas land footprint.

The UK sustainability criteria are some of the most stringent in the world and include requirements under the land criteria and GHG (greenhouse gas) criteria. The land criteria take into account a range of social, economic, and environmental issues, including protecting biodiversity and land use rights.

Where biomass is sourced from forests, the land criteria include requirements around regeneration rates and sustainable harvesting in the sourcing regions, requiring that the carbon stock of the forest from which biomass is derived is not decreased.