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Energy Bill

I have always had some doubt about trying to enforce this kind of minimum requirement in the use of biomass. One’s mind goes back to the most significant biomass demonstration plant in this country—the so-called ARBRE project—which failed, largely because the distance that one has to carry the biomass source in order to reach the place where it is to be burnt outweighs any possible advantage, certainly of cost, of having a biomass plant. That is often neglected in this argument. We have had a lot of argument about whether it competes with food products and so on. That argument has reached the point where there is good biomass and bad biomass, and anything that competes with food in the present world is properly regarded as bad biomass. If you take the other costs into account, one must realise what the results can be. I saw a figure a few years ago, which I do not think has ever been doubted. I quoted it in public. It was suggested that instead of having nuclear power stations we should have far more biomass sources, but I was told that if you were going to replace just one nuclear power station—the example was Dungeness B in Kent—you would have to plant with willow coppicing, or whatever you were going to use, the entire undeveloped area of Kent that was not already towns and cities. That is wholly ludicrous. One would never dream of doing anything like that. It would be absolutely nonsensical. I therefore have doubts about the practicality of the noble Lord’s amendment, although I understand his objective. Clearly biomass should be used where it can be used economically and properly, because it is a rotating source; as you burn and emit carbon, the carbon can be soaked up again through the successive planting of the biomass. I understand that, and I think it has a part to play, but I would be very cautious about trying to impose the sort of obligation suggested in the proposed new clause.