Biomass sounds like a great idea, but I've always had a bit of a nagging question at the back of my head about whether it would be possible or sustainable if we all suddenly converted to wood fuelled heating. Haven't we, over the years, been denuding Britain of trees to such an extent that we can’t afford to be burning them all up? Will we end up like Easter Island?

I’m glad to say that my worries have been put to rest by a chat I just had with Stephen Green, the biomass project manager at RegenSW. Down here in the south west of England the Forestry Commission estimates we have the potential to extract between 200,000 and 400,000 tonnes of wood fuel each year sustainably.

Before you ask, that means wood from active woodland management, where more is planted to replace any extracted. The huge range reflects the ease of access to the woodland, and the harder to access wood is only likely to be used if the price of wood fuel is high enough to make it economic to extract.

So, it sounds as if there’s plenty of room for growth in the market for a while yet. And that’s just new wood. Even more encouraging for the sustainability of future wood stock is the news that much more recycled clean waste wood is being used, and that there are projects which are developing ways to exploit the non-clean waste wood. It has the added benefit of keeping the substantial amount of wood waste produced by the building industry out of landfill.

Four years ago, when I was contemplating a biomass boiler, I was worried about the supply of wood pellets. There only seemed to be one supplier anywhere nearby. Now I can go on the South West Woodshed website and find three suppliers that are close by, with more to fall back on if they had any problems. This makes investing in biomass seem significantly less risky than it was.

The growth of enthusiasm for biomass heating has meant that sawmills that previously had the cost of disposing of their residue, can now turn it into a new income stream by making it into wood pellet - benefits all round it seems. As the market grows, the number of companies taking advantage of this is expected to grow, and security of supply for consumers will grow too.

While there is a growing UK industry, wood pellet is also imported from Scandinavia and other countries with much bigger timber industries than our own.  While there might be a few more fuel miles (if I may call them that) involved in this, it is surely still preferably the alternatives – scarce fossil fuels.

Photo by jhritz

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