Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the response by Lord Callanan on 3 July (HL Deb col 983) that most of the pellets used for biomass are “by-product from normal sustainable commercial forests”, what evidence they have to support the claim; and whether that evidence been corroborated and verified by independent experts.

Recent evidence on the feedstocks used in the production of wood pellets is available from a number of sources, for example, from the Sustainable Biomass Program’s 2021 Annual Review, a 2022 Fibre Study by independent experts for the Wood Pellet Association of Canada, and a 2022 review by the US Forest Service on wood pellet production in the US (the primary source of biomass for energy use).