The Wood Panel Industries Federation (WPIF) and the British Furniture Confederation (BFC) have both campaigned against government support for power stations to use biomass in large-scale electricity generation.
The government’s Electricity Market Reform Delivery Plan, released for consultation last week (ttjonline July 18), recommended that subsidies for existing power stations that have been converted to burn biomass will end in 2027.
The government is also proposing to cap payments to new dedicated biomass electricity-only power stations at 400MW.
“We have long argued that biomass-fired power-only generation was both a wasteful use of wood but also significantly threatened existing wood processing industries,” said WPIF director-general Alastair Kerr.
“Whilst not eliminating that threat, the signals this sends should help in the long term to limit the scale of development.”
The BFC said biomass subsidies were increasing timber prices and having a “devastating” knock-on effect on UK furniture manufacturing.
Recently it teamed up with Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth in writing to The Times to decry the subsidies.
“This is a victory for common sense and a result of the industry’s lobbying, which helped to highlight the issues caused by the biomass subsidies,” said BFC chairman Paul von der Heyde.
But he expressed “disappointment” that subsidies would not be fully removed until 2027.
