Biomass – bonanza or bombshell?
4 December 2008Not so long ago, wood energy was the preserve of hard-core eco-activists living in wattle and daub huts in the forest. Today it’s increasingly big business in the UK. But is there a role in it for the timber trade?
If every proposed biomass-burning power and heat generating plant in the UK comes to fruition, the wood-energy sector will have capacity to burn more timber than the country produces.
That’s an estimate from UPM Tilhill, a company which manages woodland on behalf of investors and ranks as the UK’s biggest timber harvester.
But is this a positive or negative development for the timber sector? Of course the panel products producers have already raised concerns about what they see as a subsidised wood energy business increasingly competing for their raw material and possibly pricing them out of the market. But, if any unfair advantage can be eliminated, doesn’t wood fuel offer a business opportunity?
Certainly on the Continent timber businesses, including sawmills, distributors and processors, have been in the forefront of developing wood pellet, briquette and other types of fuel production. They see it as a natural fit and many supplement their own waste wood production by collecting material from other sources as raw material for their fuel operation.
Could this increasingly be a route for the UK industry to follow? The country does, after all, still dump large amounts of wood waste in landfill and also has thousands of hectares of unmanaged woodland ripe for coppicing.
Combine this with the wood processing industry’s own byproduct output and might it be the basis for a potentially lucrative diversification for UK timber plc? What’s your view?
