While timber processing companies view the wholesale burning of wood for energy with varying degrees of suspicion, it is the panels sector that most obviously bears the brunt of competition for raw material. However, panel producers are not taking it lying down and are actively lobbying government, advocating the ‘hierarchy of use’ principle – use, reuse, recycle, recover, burn.
Norbord has been at the forefront of the lobbying, coming up with its own "Use Wood Wisely" campaign, with its most recent activity on this front being a demonstration outside the recent Biomass Awards event in London.
But while the pro-biomass camp might think of these activists as akin to Luddites, the campaigners themselves are at pains to point out that they are not anti-biomass per se.
Norbord UK managing director Karl Morris sums up the sector’s stance as "not fundamentally anti-biomass".
"We’ve burned process residues as an energy medium for years ourselves," he said. "In those terms it’s nice that the rest of the world has caught up with us.
"But we are very keen to separate our view around the various technologies. We believe using wood for electricity generation is the least efficient and a perverse direction of travel, while combined heat and power – if it’s efficient – has its place. The most efficient use [of wood biomass] is to produce heat.
"Our objection is that the way the subsidy process has evolved has skewed the market and will lend itself to the wrong use of the material at the wrong time. There is nothing wrong with maximising the value of wood at the end of its life but it should be just that – the end of its life."
Mr Morris added that the UK panel sector’s concern was centred on the use of domestic timber because phytosanitary controls limit the volume of timber that can be imported for panel processing.
"Where there is a shortage of supply and choices have to be made, then those choices should be made around the hierarchy of use."
It’s not just the destination of virgin fibre that concerns the panels sector, but also that of recycled wood and residues. DECC, said Mr Morris, has struggled to define "quality wood" but for a board mill the definition is easy.
"Quality wood is wood that can be used in manufacturing before it is used for energy and that includes recycled and sawdust. The panel industry uses about 50% of all recycled wood in the UK and about 80% of all the sawdust.
We’ve found a use for materials that were previously going to landfill and to say they are now suitable for burning is as perverse as saying standing timber is suitable for burning."
Long term there may be question marks over sustainability of supply but the main impact being felt in the here and now is on price.
A few years ago the Wood Panel Industries Federation (WPIF) established that while the EU member states had set their own biomass policies there was no inter-member state communication on where the material would be sourced from and no collective statistics.
A WPIF freedom of information request revealed that if all 27 (at the time) member states hit their targets for biomass, it would present a requirement for around one billion tonnes of wood per year – 30% of the world’s current harvest.
Destabilising effect
"It’s nonsensical and the reality is that it won’t happen but just the prospect of it has a destabilising effect on the market," said Mr Morris. "The panel industry’s own data shows a 52% increase in our base wood costs over a five-year period. DECC and the power companies say they aren’t actually using much [wood fuel] at the moment but the point is that if the guys in the forest see that they’re going to get more money for their standing timber in the future, they want that increased price today.
"We’re already seeing an impact on wood prices at some of our mills in the US south," continued Mr Morris. "It’s bizarre that the price of wood into a southern US OSB mill should be impacted by sticking it into a boiler in Drax in the UK. Huge pellet plants have been built in the US, subsidised by UK taxpayers, and they’re gobbling up wood. And it’s not just the panel industry bemoaning the impact. Ironically perhaps, government policy has managed to align some strange bedfellows, with many of the largest environmental NGOs also pointing to the irrationality of the process."
Of course it’s not just panel manufacturers who have to deal with rising timber prices.
"Early on I think the sawmills had a perspective that there may be a relative bonanza for them in terms of finding another market for their residues but they are now experiencing the impact on the whole tree cost," said Mr Morris. "And one new customer potentially jeopardises an existing one, so they don’t see biomass as a panacea."
In wider economic terms the figures don’t stack up either, added Mr Morris.
"We’ve carried out independent research that shows it takes nine times as many jobs to process a tonne of wood as it does to burn a tonne. It is clearly madness to suggest that it adds to the UK economy. At its extreme, if it were to jeopardise some of the manufacturing then you would have a double whammy – a 90% reduction in jobs associated with the production of timber products and the cost of importing all the materials that were being made in the UK."
He’s not sold on the ecological rationale for woody biomass either. "The reality is that burning wood releases more CO2 than burning coal when taken over the next few decades. The [pro-biomass] argument that the CO2 is recovered over 80-100 years is not terribly pertinent; the problem is here and now," he said.
In the UK, Norbord has a common biomass agenda with Egger and Kronospan and, through the WPIF, the companies work hard to lobby the decision makers. And there has been some success – albeit mainly Scotland-based.
"We’ve had a better and much more rounded response from the Scottish Parliament than we’ve had from Westminster," said Mr. Morris. "The policy in Scotland is to limit the scale of dedicated biomass to 15MW. And there is a declared intent to maximise the value of the Scottish woodland resource. Of course we want to see those words translated into policy and action and we will continue to lobby for government response, both north and south of the border, that respects the common sense hierarchy of use."
