7 January 2023
There are significant problems with the Council's plan to reach their target of Net Zero in 2030. Among them are the number of council-owned buildings that are now heated using biomass boilers with wood pellets or wood chip as fuel, replacing the previous gas boilers.
Biomass boilers are claimed by the council to be carbon neutral, thereby reducing overall council CO2 emissions, but an increasing number of studies and countries are coming to the conclusion that biomass sourced from wood is not carbon neutral on any meaningful timescale.
In the council’s document ‘Planning for Renewable Energy Development’, it says:
“Biomass is the combustion of wood and other plant materials in a stove or boiler to produce heat which can be used to generate electricity or other processes. Although biomass combustion gives off carbon dioxide, this represents release of the gas that was absorbed when the plant material grew, and thus biomass fuels are regarded as carbon neutral.”
In reality, compared to allowing woodland to grow, cutting it for bioenergy increases carbon dioxide emissions and worsens global warming for at least 50 years and possibly over 100 years depending on forest composition and climatic zone – time we do not have to reach net-zero emissions and avoid the worst harms from climate change. Claims of using only saw-mill waste in wood pellets have been widely shown to be untrue such as in the recent Drax powerstation investigation by BBC’s Panorama.
Even Kwasi-Kwartang, a man not widely admired for his grip on numbers, believes that wood pellet biomass is not a sustainable energy resource. It appears that it is only a matter of time before subsidies for biomass heating systems will be removed.
The council has set itself a CO2 reduction target of -25% by 2021 for its own yearly emissions, but even if this target is met, due its unaccounted-for biomass emissions, North Lincs Green Party research estimates that in reality, the reduction in yearly emissions is only half of this, a mere -13%:
Target Reduction: -4,500 tonnes CO2 (-25%)
Plus Biomass Emissions: +2,200 tonnes CO2 (+12%)
Equals Actual Reduction of: -2,383 tonnes CO2 (-13%)
Even recent claims by the leader of the council on Facebook Live that use of wood pellet biomass helps to reduce reliance on importing energy from countries such as Russia holds no water. There are similar supply problems and cost increases associated with wood pellets as we have seen with natural gas – why? – because as for gas, a large amount was imported from Russia!
The North Lincs Green Party calls for the current council policy that treats wood bioenergy as a carbon-neutral energy source to end. The carbon dioxide emitted from burning biomass pellets should be counted in the same way as emissions from all other fuels: fully, at the point of combustion and accounted for in the council’s own carbon emissions.
No new wood-fueled biomass heating systems should be installed and existing biomass systems replaced at the earliest opportunity. Existing low-carbon technologies such as energy efficiency, solar PV and air or ground source heat pumps should be used instead.
A full version, including details of the calculations used is attached as a PDF here.
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