Wood pellets are manufactured using waste and residues from the wood processing industry such as sawdust and wood shavings. Unlike other forms of biomass they are energy dense and can be stored in a compact store with a similar footprint to a bunded oil tank holding the same calorific value.
Wood pellets are a proven, highly efficient and cost-effective energy resource providing low carbon heating & hot water for domestic and commercial customers.
The UK Government’s Biomass Strategy is due for publication in Spring 2023, and this will create a framework for how biomass (including wood pellets) is to be used to help the country move away from fossil fuel use towards cleaner, low carbon heating.
Some of the most challenging and hardest to heat properties are located in rural off-grid communities, and following the commissioning of an independent report by the UKPC, it has been demonstrated that more than 1.45 million (and up to 1.9 million) rural homes can only make the switch from oil, LPG or coal-fired boiler systems by choosing biomass or bioenergy.
UKPC representatives have been calling for ministers to deliver a dedicated, fit-for-purpose heat decarbonisation policy for rural off-grid properties that fully supports biomass, and therefore enables some of the highest heating polluters to switch to low carbon systems.
Working hand-in hand with sustainable forestry management and timber producers, the biomass (wood pellets/heating) sector creates more green jobs than any other renewable energy. This successful circular economy (well-managed woodland through to wood pellet supply) supports an estimated 46,000 bioenergy jobs in the UK, the majority in rural areas.
In line with DEFRA’s woodland creation policy as well as energy security strategy, the UK Government has a real opportunity here and now to back and invest in the domestic wood pellet production market.
Biomass Heat Works! is the lobbying and public affairs arm of the UKPC, and has made significant progress working with UK Government and the Department for Energy Security & Net-Zero (DESNZ) to reaffirm and make clear the need for responsibly-sourced wood pellets in net zero policy.
The UK’s biomass sector is a very niche and totally separate industry to the larger biomass industry, yet despite its smaller size, could play a key role in boosting and strengthening the country’s energy security.
This year, the UKPC, on behalf of its members, actioned measures to restructure its global supply chain to ensure that pellets produced in Russia or Belarus are no longer imported into the UK. Representatives are working closely with overseas partners to ensure alternative and continuous supplies of biomass wood pellets for UK customers, navigating short-term price rises seen across most of Europe, and ensuring imported stocks are well managed and prioritised over the winter months.
There is, however, a very real and significant opportunity here and now to better support and heavily invest in a ‘home-grown’ wood pellets production market. This would see the UK not only becoming mostly self-sufficient for biomass wood fuel (and hit less by energy price hikes), but also attract greater inward investment for new manufacturing plants, create thousands of green jobs for rural areas, and fully support the Government’s woodland creation strategy (Defra -Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs).
The UKPC hopes that the forthcoming Biomass Strategy, a long-term roadmap showing a level of support for the industry as part of the country’s efforts to decarbonise domestic and commercial heating, will be the start of this process.
Go to www.biomassheatworks.co.uk for more details.
