Power plants

Power Plants

The Wood Panel Industry is greatly concerned about the impact that the construction of large-scale biomass power plants will have on domestic wood panel production and on the sustainability of wood supplies in the UK.

The combined capacity of proposed biomass electricity plants for the UK exceeds 3000 MW.  This would require around 30 million tonnes of wood – approximately three times the UK’s annual harvest.  If even a fraction of this total is sourced domestically, the existing forest industries will be irreparably damaged, because demand is already outstripping wood supply in the UK.

Yet the environmental benefits of large-scale electricity generation from woody biomass over other uses of wood (manufacturing, local heat production and combined heat and power) have not been demonstrated.

Since 2002, the RO has rewarded energy companies that burn wood for electricity generation, allowing them to outbid existing wood users.  Before long, a critical mass of biomass plant will be reached, when the wood panel industry will no longer be able to compete with the subsidised energy sector.

These biomass plants are receiving planning consent without due attention to the sustainability of the feedstock.  If Prenergy’s Port Talbot plant sources a significant amount of its feedstock from the UK, to take advantage of the much lower price of domestic wood, the plant would consume around 30% of the UK’s annual timber production.  This would cause enormous erosions of operating margin in the wood panel industry and jeopardise the survival of UK operations.

The following proposed plants are arguably unsustainable in the context of wood supply in and to the UK:

  • Prenergy, at Port Talbot: 350MW
  • Drax, at three sites in East of England: combined capacity of 900 MW (excluding co-firing)
  • MGT Power, at Teesside and Port of Tyne: combined capacity of 600 MW
  • Anglesey Aluminium, at Holyhead: 299 MW
  • Forth Energy, at Dundee, Grangemouth, Leith and Rosyth: combined capacity of 400 MW
  • E.ON, at Portbury Dock, Somerset: 150 MW
  • RES Group, at Port of Blyth: 100 MW

The building of such large plants will put enormous pressure on the already tight UK wood supply.  Although some projects will initially source wood from across the Atlantic, many intend to source British wood in the longer term.  The promise of “green jobs” in biomass energy plant proposals will be illusory if the construction of large scale biomass power plants causes the wood industry’s collapse.

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