I heartily applaud growing the use of green energy and that everyone should do their bit by helping the environment. I believe that people in the UK timber trade do act responsibly and our industry is one of the most environmentally friendly involved in the construction trade.
So why are we being penalised?
In this climate of economic uncertainty, when margins are under ever-increasing pressure, we are now being threatened with price increases in 2011, especially for MDF, because of the shortage of virgin wood fibre due to its use in the biomass industry. Why can that industry afford to buy it to burn when we struggle to buy it, for the correct money, to manufacture products?
Simple: the government has got involved. It has fiddled with something it knows nothing about, upset the balance of an established industry and, as usual, money is being chucked at it because nobody has planned in advance or thought about the consequences. Grants are available for every tonne of wood burnt: whose brilliant idea was that?
We are effectively being punished for having the wood available because we have managed our forests wisely to ensure we have the material to supply our industry so we don’t chop down unsustainable forests. The result of doing that job properly is that we are paying twice; an increased price for the raw material as well as increased electricity costs. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.
The forecast requirement of timber to be burnt in the UK is up to 50 million tonnes per year, but the maximum available is 20 million. This, therefore, leaves a shortfall of 30 million tonnes of wood, and that’s before we have even made one sheet of MDF. We seem to be a forgotten industry, and so we applauded Kronospan’s recent European-wide strike to bring attention to this issue.
Nobody is in favour of industrial action, as no-one would like to see a shortage of supply, but unless we get the seriousness of the situation across we could be faced with that shortage through no fault of our own.
There is still plenty of stuff going to landfill that could be burnt, including a large amount of waste wood. So how can they continue to use timber, a product which is so valuable in keeping the carbon footprint of a building down, for burning to create electricity to make products which increase that same carbon footprint?
I suppose we should be flattered that the environmentalists, the government and the electricity companies see our product as the way forward; that they have realised that, yes, it is one of the only renewable natural resources, and that responsibly-sourced timber is the greenest product available.
So isn’t it time our green credentials are shouted even louder by the government when it comes to supporting our industry in the construction sector? As it now understands the CO2 neutral position of wood for burning, it should clearly understand that actually locking CO2 away by using wood in construction is massively beneficial.
If we are not careful, next year could be a choice based on availability not just price, and the environmentalists will be burning the very bridge which is there to rescue us.
