The Biomass industry had front page news this morning, which has awoken the great debate on future technologies which will be responsibly employed in the next 30 years to bring us to a net carbon United Kingdom. The Committee for Climate Change submitted their report which gave a solid goal for us, but few finer details on how to achieve them on heat.
Committee on Climate Change Report 2050 Carbon Biomass Wood Pellets Plus Pellets Gmbh ResponseCommittee on Climate Change Report 2050 Carbon Biomass Wood Pellets Plus Pellets Gmbh Response
I would like to make it clear that we are all aiming for the same goal, for a move to low carbon technology for our energy and heat requirements by 2050 and using carbon sequestration along with planting up to 3 million trees to create a zero carbon economy.
Biomass is predominantly used for heat, whether that’s wood chip, wood pellets, non-woody biomass such as sunflower husk or one of the many other alternatives. I noted when I first read the report that heat is responsible for 30% of our carbon emissions, however the majority of our gas boilers 85% will be banned. This leaves a huge gap, with the expectation that a future technology to take up this is currently unknown by the committee.
Myself, Plus Pellets Gmbh, the UK Wood Pellet Council, the Wood Heat Association, and the Renewable Energy Association all issued statements today to the Government that decarbonising heat will only be achieved if we rapidly scale up the deployment of proven renewable heat technologies. In particular this should include the use of modern clean-burning biomass heating systems – a technology which is ready to deploy today and constitutes the largest source of low carbon heat across the rest of Europe.
We have huge uptake in this technology throughout mainland Europe, and also new projects being developed in South Korea and Japan. The technology is renewable, sustainable, and proven. It uses highly efficient and modern boilers that burn a calorific dense and compressed wood pellet sourced from renewable forests.
The UK needs to embrace this technology and get behind Biomass in the UK. Wood Pellets and other Biomass are a proven, highly efficient, low carbon, renewable heat technology. We must back biomass now