UK 'green' biomass sourced from forests with 150 year old trees

Trees which take over a century to regrow are being used to supply a new generation of "green" British power plants subsidised by tax breaks intended to stop climate change, the Daily Telegraph can reveal.

The Telegraph found Drax, which runs the UK’s biggest biomass operation, is sourcing some of its wood pellets from forests in Russia that could take up to 150 years to regrow, five times longer than we have to meet our net zero target.

Biomass - any organic matter burned to create energy - is the biggest single source of renewable energy in the UK, accounting for 11 per cent of its entire electricity usage.

That has helped the UK reach a milestone in early June with a record-breaking two months without coal burning.

But there are concerns that one of the major planks of the UK strategy to get carbon neutral by 2050 could leave the global climate worse off.

The industry receives direct subsidies worth around £1bn every year, the vast majority of which goes to Drax, which has converted four of its six coal plants in Yorkshire into the UK’s biggest biomass operation.

It also receives further effective tax breaks worth at least £333m a year, according to a new report, because its emissions are considered carbon neutral under a British law introduced by the European Union and are not taxed. This is on the basis that the trees that are chopped down are replanted, ultimately sucking up the same amount of carbon dioxide as they release when burnt - which can be higher than from coal.

But there is growing criticism of this classification in the wake of the government’s goal to reach net zero emissions by 2050, due to concerns over the length of time it will take for the emissions to be sucked up by further growth. The classification also ignores emissions from the manufacturing, shipping and storing imported wood pellets and there are concerns that the wood burnt for biomass displaces other uses that would suck up more carbon from the atmosphere.

"If the government is (rightly) going to get rid of coal but then burn this stuff instead because it is classified as renewable under the EU directive, it is pretty obvious that the directive is badly designed,” said Dieter Helm, a professor at the University of Oxford who wrote the government’s 2017 review on how we can affordably meet our climate change goals in the energy system. "If people really think that’s the way we’re going to resolve climate change, then there isn’t a lot of hope.”

Think tank Ember has called for the government to tax the carbon emissions from biomass, which it estimates could be worth up to £754 million a year, as the UK leaves the EU.

"Biomass power stations are in receipt of a huge tax break, based on an outdated assumption that burning wood is carbon neutral. Meanwhile renewables like offshore wind guarantee emissions cuts - for less than half the price of burning wood in a power station,” said Phil Macdonald, the head of Ember.

Despite rising concern over the burning of trees for energy, the British biomass industry is expanding, with the world’s largest dedicated plant under construction in Teesside. Critics say it is also driving tree felling and the destruction of biodiversity in the southern United States, the main source for the UK’s wood pellets.

On a visit to one plantation that supplies the UK biomass industry, The Telegraph found older trees, which store more carbon, were being replaced with faster growing pine trees, to feed growing demand.

Analysis by the Telegraph has also found that a company in Russia which last year supplied pellets to Drax is harvesting its wood in areas where the trees could take up to 150 years to grow back.

ULK, which last year sold 7,300 tons of pellets to Drax, is one of the fastest growing logging companies in Russia. It is based in the Arkhangelsk region, where the climatic conditions means trees grow much more slowly than elsewhere in Russia.

“For 150-200 years the wood in those forests grew and took in carbon,” said Alexei Yaroshenko, forests campaigner, at Greenpeace Russia. “The compensation will happen when it will be too late for the climate, too far in the future.”

Drax and its US supplier Enviva say they only use sustainable biomass, according to the highest UK and internationally recognised criteria. The biomass Drax takes from Russia is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Sustainable Biomass Program (SBP).

Drax also says it does not use wood that creates a carbon debt, and only takes sawmill residue for its wood pellets from Russia.

The government’s climate change advisers say there is a role for biomass in the UK's net zero plans, but have called for tighter regulations to ensure all emissions are properly accounted for.

And experts warn that without a reassessment of the policy, the UK may continue to contribute to global warming even while appearing to be carbon neutral.

The government will phase out the roughly £1bn annual direct subsidies for coal plants which have converted to burn biomass by 2027, but is considering extending multi-billion subsidies to support the industry in the development of cutting-edge carbon capture technology, which will see the carbon emissions captured and stored.

That could embed biomass imports, which some have argued should only ever have been seen as a short-term fix to move away from coal, into our energy systems in the long-run.

“Biomass is a high risk technology for the UK's transition to a zero carbon power sector," said Mr McDonald.

A Drax spokesperson said: “Drax is committed to using sustainable biomass that delivers the best outcome for the climate, the environment and the communities where it operates while also providing reliable and flexible renewable electricity for millions of UK businesses and households.”

“Our sustainable biomass sourcing policy already goes beyond existing regulations and is led by science, best practice and transparency and is overseen by an independent advisory board of scientists and forestry experts led by Sir John Beddington – the UK government’s former chief scientific adviser.

“Sustainable biomass with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), which we are already trialling at Drax Power Station, is a vital negative emissions technology that will help the UK meet its 2050 net zero target at lowest cost, while generating reliable electricity to support more renewables on the grid and driving cleaner economic growth and jobs after the Covid emergency.”

Once the darling of environmentalists, how biomass became controversial in the southern United States

Olivia Rudgard, in North Carolina

A clear-cut forest is a shocking thing for a visitor unused to the economy of the southeastern US to see for the first time. In North Carolina, pleasant wood-lined motorways frequently give way to a bare, smoking landscape, with nothing but scrub, tyre tracks and brown soil visible across a wide, flat plot.

The area has long sourced furniture and other timber industries, providing private landowners with income for generations past. “Pine pulp is a huge market right now. It's going gangbusters,” says Kathy Stallings, 69. A retired teacher, her family has owned land in the region since 1879 and her home, which overlooks a now clear-cut plot, is furnished with chests, beds and coffee tables made from their own harvests.

While the demand for pine has boomed in recent decades alongside the appetite for cheap furniture, landowners are now seeing a new source - European biomass, subsidised by governments including the UK.

Last fully cut in the 1970s, her plot was a mixture of hardwoods and pines, but her family plans to replant it with fast-growing genetically modified pines, which can be cut in 15 to 20 years, providing a faster source of income.

Biomass was once the darling of US environmentalists who saw it as a solution to global reliance on fossil fuels. Many of them have now changed their minds.

The pellet industry has faced considerable criticism for cutting away wetland hardwoods, a rare and ecologically diverse environment, where trees with flared roots grow directly out of the water.

Workers in the local forestry industry say Enviva, the main supplier for Drax, is now trying to increase the amount of pine it uses. Pine plantations, also widely visible on the sides of roads in the region, are sparse, sterile environments which ecologists say provide few of the benefits of a natural forest.

In North Carolina, they have grown from one million acres to almost three million acres since the early 1970s. A visit to one of the few remaining protected longleaf pine forests, Weymouth Woods State Park, makes the differences clear.

Where plantations are barren, with nothing on the ground other than leaves and pine needles, a natural forest has wiregrass and bog-dwelling plants such as orchids and pitcher plants.

Longleaf forests provide habitats for several endangered species including rare red-cockaded woodpeckers, salamanders, snakes and tortoises.

Dr Alan Weakley, an ecologist specialising in the southeastern US, said that most forests in the regions have few protections from the state or national government despite their contribution to biodiversity.

The growing European pellet industry means there is “increased incentives for private landowners to clear-cut areas,” he says. “The pine plantations may be an efficient way to make wood pulp - cellulose - but they have minimal other values, they don't really have other recreational values, they don't have high wildlife values, they don't have biodiversity values.

Enviva argues that the wood pellet industry supports the use of land for forestry rather than other uses such as agriculture or development. On a recent visit piles of logs were visible in three of Enviva' plants which supply the UK biomass industry.

Enviva says it only uses byproducts and waste wood from established industries such as sawmills and wood pulp, and says these logs would have been second-tier, low-value wood. A spokesperson said it was “important to note that quality, not size, determines a log’s value in the marketplace."

But Dr Rajan Parajuli, assistant professor of forest economics and policy at North Carolina State University, said the trees were of a smaller size not used for lumber, but could also have been used for pulp and paper mills, fluff mills, and other energy mills, potentially saving on the immediate carbon emissions associated with biomass.