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 report by BBC Panorama on 3 October 2022, regarding the type of wood products selected for burning at Drax power station, if he will make an assessment of how far Drax complies with sustainability criteria for biomass energy.

The Government only supports sustainable biomass and generators only receive subsidies for biomass that complies with strict sustainability criteria.

The regulator, Ofgem, is responsible for auditing the sustainability of biomass used by biomass electricity generators who receive support under the Renewables Obligation and has a process in place for this. As is routine, Ofgem is establishing whether the sustainability criteria have been met by the generator.

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.