Got even more wood ?
February 3, 2010
So DECC has launched a consultation document package for its Renewable Heat Initiative (RHI)
Lots of good stuff in there, but the bit that I’d like to comment on is the incentivisation of wood chip/wood pellets for domestic heating.
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong but to me this provision looks like a commitment to an effective long term taxation of the rural poor. Its a bit counter-intuitive at first sight, after all how could an incentive to use local renewable biomass result in higher bills ? Well, its all to do with having a limited land package available to provide that biomass.
There is a distinction in the consultation between biomass that originates from wood, that which comes from grown for energy crops and that which is the result of existing agricultural processes (such as straw), but what concerns me is the interaction between existing managed woodland and possible new energy crops such as mycanthus and willow. The problem is that the RHI incentives only relate to pellet or chip burning boilers effectively replacing fossil-fuel burning boilers and central heating. Standing hardwood doesn’t make economic sense for pelletisation or chipping, its wears the machinery and takes more time and energy to produce and harvest.
What the consultation leaves out (and I can’t find mentioned anywhere in the document package) is the economic impact on existing wood users and those who cannot replace boilers. In other words me !
My situation is as follows: I live in a little village in Cornwall that is a good 10km from the nearest gas main. Most houses in the village use coal or wood to supplement Economy-7 electric heating. In many ways its a typical granite-built miners village. No cellars, very little outside space, houses are well over 100 years old (so low ceilings) and built of thick solid stone walls. Speaking for myself only; I don’t have a boiler, just an immersion heater that I turn on if and when I need hot water. I don’t have central heating, just a single electric storage heater that is powered by Economy-7 over-night. I rent the cottage and have only a small amount of space outside. I am not unusual in this county.
What I do have is a nice big fireplace that I can settle down in front of in the evening. I burn wood in that grate and buy my wood from local suppliers or one of the many local shops who sell 5kg bags of split logs over the counter.
My concern is that if pelletised or chipped wood becomes a lucrative product, managed woodland in the area will shift towards those products and away from larger trunked species suitable for splitting and domestic use. It’ll take time, I don’t expect to see the price that I pay for wood to rocket overnight, but the house that I live in will be around for at least another 100 years so the issue is not gong to go away. Over the 20-50 year timescale, by shifting the forestry from bulk wood to processed chip you will see a price differential mount that penalises those living in houses that cannot be physically altered to accommodate pellet burning boilers. These houses are generally smaller, cheaper and occupied by those less able to cope with price rises. Effectively this is an incentive that will put the rural poor at a greater disadvantage than ever.
I like the idea of increasing biomass use as I previously stated in Got Wood ?, but this particular policy seems poorly devised.
Got wood ?
November 23, 2009
Now that I’m a rural type with an open fire and only electricity to back it up (I’ve always had gas or oil as a third fuel before), I’m starting to look at wood with a bit more interest.
Though not strictly energy-related I was struck by the potential of liquid wood, which is not some elixir sold under the counter in Soho, but a bio-plastic that apparently can be injection-moulded into a variety of remarkably unattractive items. I think that the German engineers need to hand this one over to the Italian or British designers now or it will be relegated to butt-ugly functional grommits.
Of course the hunt is on by several industries that use crude oil as a chemical feedstock rather than a fuel to find a raw material that has less price volatility and more security in its supply chain. Plastics is probably the largest volume with approx 100m tonnes being used every year. Not all of that comes directly from crude oil, there are other chemicals added to give it colour or specific performance qualities and inert fillers to add bulk, but its still a lot of oil and I wonder what the economic dynamic would be if even just 25% of the plastics industry headed for the woods ?
Its not one of the best known of the UK’s energy intiatives, but apparently 15% of renewable energy is supposed to come from biomass by 2020 and dedicated biomass production and generation is currently one of the most heavily inentivised energy production mechanisms in the UK. It gets between 1.5 and 2 ROCs (Renewables Obligation Certificates) per MWh generated. I think that’s fair enough. Its not as if you can incentivise it through capital investment in fuel/production capacity, as you would be able to do with nuclear or wind or coal, after all how much do a few saplings cost ? Even fast-growing mycanthus, willow and poplar take a few years to get to maturity and all are subject to the whims of weather and disease.
As this map shows, biomass generation is still pretty small scale with only just 2GW planned (compared to 25+GW of offshore wind), and the ‘large’ dedicated power plants, such as Prenergy’s planned 350MWe Port Talbot plant, are looking for security of supply using imported wood chips. I know that Drax’s co-fired capacity is set to go up to half a GW, but it uses ‘residues’ rather than grown for energy biomass, so to me it feels more like a giant incinerator, sorry, waste co-generation project.
I know that the Welsh National Forest AKA Woodlands for Wales is a really central part of the Red Dragon’s strategic economic plans, but its a long-play. A new Wylfa may even have been constructed by the time the sustainable forest economy has been built. However, looking at this report from the Land Use Policy Group would suggest that sustainable managed forestry as a part of an integrated energy/economy/environment strategy might work better (and cheaper) than what Wales has right now. Until then, expect the first shipment of wood chips from the Baltic or Canada to be unloading in Port Talbot some time in 2011.
I don’t know about you but wood feels good for Wales. It seems like an appropriate scale. I wish that it wasn’t but the steel industry is on its last legs, so the really big point consumers just don’t seem to be around any more. My grandad and dad were born in Cardiff and Barry respectively after my great-grandad settled in Cardiff just after the Great War, so I have an affection for what is truly the Land of my Fathers and its good to see the Assembly taking a long view on how best to live in Wales.
Update
DECC has just put out this statement on primary biomass projects. The funding is tiny at £1.5m, but as I mentioned its tricky to find large capital projects in this space and it looks like this is aimed at providing things similar to the German model where wood collection and delivery is guarenteed at a state or district level to put security of supply on a par with other fuels.
Random Energy Ideas Part One
June 16, 2009
In this train of posts I’m going to share some of the better (less stupid) energy related ideas that I’ve had over the last year or so.
Rural Energy Clusters
It may be difficult for a single farm in the UK to justify the expense of a decent sized wind turbine, biodigestor, biomass CHP (willow), CSP or it may not have a sufficiently large stream to install a micro-hydro plant. However cluster 3 or 4 farms together and the economics may get a great deal better. Not only is the CAPEX spread between several farms, but having a diverse set of energy technologies should smooth some of those intermittency issues and make the finance side more predictable. Farms being farms, they would probably qualify for some grants already, but if not you could put a policy instrument in to encourage low carbon energy use.
Don’t misunderstand I’m not proposing that these clusters go off-grid, they are businesses that require energy whatever the weather after all, rather that they each have a smart meter that reads generated electricty back into a central, aggregated account and offsets each individual farm’s electricity use in proportion to their investment. The only additional infrastructure needed would be the generating technology and a relatively dumb smart meter, maybe a few substation upgrades if it takes off. Where the work is needed is in the back-office to aggregate the account details.
This is where it starts to get interesting. While it would be better for generating technologies such as biomass & biodigestion, where actual stuff is being moved, for the farms to be located close to each other, the characteristics generating technologies such as hydro, solar and wind mean that the farms don’t even have to be in the same district. They just need to come to a mutual agreement to team up where energy is concerned. Distance is no object. Its a sort of extension to the town twinning scheme.
There you go. A way for farms to co-operate in energy production and work towards carbon neutral food production.
