Source · Select Committees · Business and Trade Committee
Recommendation 29
29
Deferred
Paragraph: 137
Publish biomass strategy detailing demand assessment, domestic feedstock reliance, and supply scaling timeframe.
Recommendation
The Government was due to publish a biomass strategy last year, setting out the role of biomass in helping to achieve the Government’s net zero target, including whether biomass would be best used to generate electricity or for other purposes The Government should publish its biomass strategy without delay and set out: a) the Government’s assessment of future demand for biomass feedstocks in the UK and globally; b) the extent to which the UK can rely on domestic biomass feedstocks to meet future demand and mechanisms to support domestic biomass supply; and c) the timeframe for scaling up the supply of domestic biomass feedstocks.
Government response summary AI-generated
The government's response focuses on accelerating new electricity network infrastructure and grid connections, including the work of the Network Commissioner and Ofgem's efforts, completely ignoring the recommendation to publish the biomass strategy.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
137
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government · verbatim extract
Deferred
62. The Government plans to publish the Biomass Strategy before summer recess. The Strategy will set out ranges of potential future sustainable biomass availability to the UK, based on updated modelling. 63. Future feedstock availability will depend on a range of factors, including domestic and global land availability, sustainability policies that stipulate supply chain GHG emissions thresholds, government policies and market developments in the UK and in other countries, as well as the prices different end users are willing to pay for the biomass feedstock. 64. To support the assessment of future biomass availability, the Government has updated the UK and Global Bioenergy Resource Model, which will be published alongside the upcoming Biomass Strategy. This was used to develop illustrative scenarios of potential future biomass availability. Given the complexity of the biomass supply system and significant uncertainty of a number of key factors detailed earlier, they do not represent exact limits of biomass availability, but provide a set of plausible future scenarios. More detail will be published in the forthcoming Biomass Strategy.
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