Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the Panorama report, aired on 3 October, on the environmental and financial cost of shipping wood pellets from North America to be burnt at Drax power station, whether his Department has made a recent assessment of those potential (a) financial and (b) environmental costs.

The UK only supports sustainable biomass use which can deliver genuine greenhouse gas emissions savings compared to fossil materials. The regulator Ofgem is responsible for auditing the sustainability of biomass used by electricity generators which receive support under the Renewables Obligation. Ofgem routinely checks whether the sustainability criteria have been met by generators.

Sustainability information is publicly available on Ofgem’s website, with the latest dataset accessible here: https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/biomass-sustainability-dataset-2020-21. The forthcoming Biomass Strategy will set out recommendations for further enhancing the UK’s stringent biomass sustainability criteria.