Some of the points in your letter to The Times were well made but there are also other issues.

The first is the scale of the biomass plants proposed: 30-40 million tonnes of wood is a huge quantity, especially when UK forests’ output is only 10 million tonnes. Domestic production can supply the existing plants but the planned increase can only be supported by massive imports.

The second is the idea that this material is freely available on the world market, much of it as ‘wood waste’. Our operation has no waste. Sawdust is used for chipboard production, chips for MDF and bark is mulched for compost. No-one sends forest products to landfill. The same applies to overseas producers. They also have carbon emission targets and even if they have spare material now, the chances are that they will need it for their own use in future. Then UK power plants will be starved of fuel and will buy UK wood at any price. Southern & Scottish Energy already has plans to buy UK forests, as outlined in The Times on November 18.

As a result of increasing timber supply from UK forests, UK forest product industries have developed over the last 20 years to become major players in the UK. All this economic activity, import substitution and employment will be lost if the UK log supply is hijacked by the energy companies.

Fourthly, and this is not generally recognised, the UK forest resource is not sustainably managed. New forest planting is at an all-time low of 5,000ha per year. Worse still, replanting is being driven by grants for hardwood and native pinewood trees that will never replace the productivity and carbon capture ability of the fast-growing conifers they replace. I estimate we are losing 6,000ha of productive woodland every year. There is consultation out now on a proposal to deforest 30,000ha of English forest to return it to heathland. We are deforesting Britain and now burning the wood.

The biomass plants are driven by Renewable Obligation Certificate grants of £1.6bn per year. Compare this with last year’s planting grants of £33m. The incentive is the wrong way round. We are paying to burn wood, not to plant it. If there were more incentives to plant we could have reforestation, carbon capture, buoyant forest products industries and, when the wood products were of no further use, we could burn them for fuel in a way that really is sustainable.

Philip G Blake
Munro Sawmills LtdD
ingwall