Burning Biomass for Electricity is Worse Than Coal
Burning biomass has long been misclassified as ‘renewable energy’. The reasoning was always overly simplistic, and amounts to little more than: “we can always grow more trees, amirite?!” In reality, the biomass industry destroys forests, harms health and communities worldwide (especially in North America), and emits a shed-load* of CO2 and PM10 pollution (*not a scientific term — precise quantities to follow).
The story as to how — and why — this happened is a little more complex. The industry for forest-derived wood pellets for electricity generation is barely a decade old, over which time it has dramatically increased. Since 2012, the UK’s biggest coal power station, Drax, received more than £4 billion in public subsidies to convert four out of its six boilers to burn wood pellets instead of coal to produce electricity. In 2019, the UK imported 8.5 million metric tons of wood pellets — astonishingly, given its small size, more than any other country in the world. By 2022, Drax’s giant wood pellet boilers generated 11% of the UK’s overall ‘renewable power’, at times peaking at up to 22%. Drax closed its two-remaining coal-fired generation units in March 2021.
But is it really ‘renewable power’? Drax chooses to import its wood pellets rather than invest in UK forestry. According to figures from Friends of the Earth, 4.6 million…
