Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment he has made of the effect of Government subsidies for the generation of biomass power using domestic wood feed stocks on the UK's wood panel industry; and if he will make a statement.

At the request of the wood panel industry, the Department carried out an analysis of domestic wood use by biomass generating stations, both through their returns on actual use under the sustainability reporting requirements of the renewables obligation and through the forecasts large scale generators provided to the Department as part of a voluntary exercise. Generators provided information on the amount of domestic and imported woody biomass that is likely to be used for electricity generation up to 2017. We published the aggregated results of last years' analysis at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/246006/UK_wood_and_biomass.pdf

These data support the Department's initial estimates of the amount of UK biomass that is expected to be used for electricity generation up to 2017 (of between 2.5 and 3.5 million oven dried tonnes (modt)). Use of UK biomass for electricity has remained stable over the 2009-12 period at between 2.3 and 2.5 modt (of which between 1.3 and 1.6 modt was wood).

We intend to repeat this exercise this year.