Wood energy debate hots up

This week we had yet more evidence of timber’s capability, versatility, and utility.

Following the riots, where the UK’s underprivileged youth joined forces with students and millionaires’ offspring to express their inalienable right to free iPads and trainers, what was used to protect shattered shop fronts? Wood panels, of course.

In the Netherlands, meanwhile, the performance of Accoya modified softwood is being put to the ultimate test. It has been used to make a footbridge. Nothing particularly outstanding there, you might think. But, turning the general concept of a bridge on its head, this one doesn’t fly over a stretch of water, but is partially submerged in one. Users have the surreal experience of crossing it with the water level at shoulder height. But Accoya maker Accsys says they’ll be able to do so for years without getting their feet wet, such is its faith in the material.

Another example of timber’s potential will soon be on display at the entrance of the Victoria & Albert Museum. For the London Design Festival, The American Hardwood Export Council, architect AL_A, engineer Arup and contractor Cowley Timberwork have teamed up to create the Timber Wave. This intricate arch, made from hundreds of sections of laminated American red oak, is designed to demonstrate the structural and design possibilities of wood generally, and the characteristics of this species in particular, the most prolific of all US hardwoods.

All of which, combined with the fact that these varied wood products lock in global-warming CO₂, begs the question as to whether the UK should be planning to burn quite so much wood in power stations to help reduce dependence on fossil fuel and cut emissions.

According to a report in the Sunday Times, Npower’s new wood pellet-burning ‘green energy’ power station at Tilbury alone will need 2.3 million tonnes of wood pellets over 16 months. That is more pellets than America currently exports in total and Npower has built a plant in Georgia, US, specifically to supply its needs. More such biomass facilities are planned for the UK and abroad, with the Sunday Times stating that power giant Drax alone intends to build three.

The drive to burn wood for power is government subvented via the Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROC) scheme and it’s predicted that a current review of the latter could make the subsidies even more generous.

According to a growing body of opinion in the timber sector, however, the green energy drive is blinkered, taking no account of the needs of current wood users, and is already impacting on its supply of raw material. First in line in competition for wood fibre with the energy sector are, of course, the wood panel producers and to date they’ve been most vocal in their criticism of the green energy subsidy regime. The fear is that, as fossil fuel prices and green energy subsidies rise, others further down the timber chain will be affected too. In fact, garden products companies say the biomass business is already pushing up the price for log-roll material.

The Wood Panel Industries Federation’s (WPIF)?Make Wood Work campaign urges the government to take the timber sector’s needs into account, change the ROC regime so power companies can’t use subsidies to buy UK wood fibre and also establish a “hierarchy of wood use” in its green energy policy.

The WPIF isn’t completely opposed to burning wood for energy and heat, but says this should only be done at the end of its useful life, after it’s spent as long as possible as one of the huge range of carbon-storing products that can be made from timber.