A new industry association, the Wood Heat Association (WHA), has been formed to ‘give a clear voice to the UK’s fast-growing modern wood heat industry’.

Founded in interim form last year by wood heat companies, the WHA seeks to establish a single trade body to represent the modern UK wood heating industry and ‘co-ordinate, represent, inform, lobby and promote the interests of its members, as directed by the members’.

It has now been established as an affiliate association to the umbrella trade body the Renewable Energy Association (REA), which also represents those in the marine energy, solar and anaerobic digestion sectors. The REA also hosts the UK Pellet Council, which is the UK licence holder for the European ENplus standard for wood pellet fuel quality.

All corporate WHA members will automatically be given membership to the REA’s existing Biomass Heat Group (BHG), and vice versa, with the two groups set to run in parallel until at least 2015. The REA has said that the two groups will work closely together, with the WHA ‘building on the BHG’s expertise in policy to raise standards within the industry and awareness among the general public’.

‘One of the major players in UK renewables’

Speaking today at the All-Energy Exhibition & Conference in Aberdeen, Julian Morgan-Jones, Managing Director of South East Wood Fuels and Interim Chairman of the WHA, said: “This is an exciting time for the wood heat industry. Wood heat is rapidly becoming one of the major players in UK renewables. As the industry grows, it is increasingly important to establish a clear identity and a strong voice to government and stakeholders. The REA is already doing great work here so there’s no need to reinvent the wheel, which is why we are very happy to be working with them.”

He said that the WHA will work to ‘secure the future of the RHI beyond 2016’, and ‘raise awareness and standards across the wood heat supply chain’.

Morgan-Jones concluded: “Together we’re seeking to encourage more joined-up thinking between fuel suppliers and equipment installers.”

Dr Nina Skorupska, REA Chief Executive, added: “One of the REA’s key objectives is to empower its members to achieve sustainable growth. As individual technology sectors reach that tipping point, they begin need a more distinct voice to government and stakeholders, with dedicated resources, to keep the momentum going. We are giving the wood heat industry that extra level of support to achieve exactly that.

“The WHA will drill down more deeply into the specific benefits of wood heating as a key part of a sustainable bio-based economy, helping households and businesses cut their heating costs as well as their environmental impacts.”

Find out more about the Wood Heat Association.

Biomass ‘dirtier than coal’

Wood heat, a form of biomass, is thought to be one of the fastest growing sources of low-carbon heating in the UK, in part due to support from the UK Government’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI).

Indeed, biomass accounted for 56 per cent of investment and over 90 per cent of energy generation under the scheme between 2010 and 2012, and last week, both Houses of Parliament approved amendments to the non-domestic RHI that will double the tariff for large biomass projects (of one megawatt and over), from one pence to two pence per kilowatt hour.

However, there have been concerns raised from environmentalists that burning whole trees in power stations can be ‘dirtier than coal’.

A report released by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace in 2012 found that generating power from typical conifer trees results in 49 per cent more emissions than burning coal.

And earlier this week, energy firms Savills warned that a ‘fresh approach’ is required to managing feedstock supply chains, if the UK biomass sector is to continue to grow ‘while meeting the stringent new sustainability and reporting criteria’.

Stuart Campbell, Director at Savills Energy, warned: “All generating plants with an output of 1MW and above using solid biomass now have to submit an annual independent audit report which assesses compliance against strict sustainability criteria.

“The greenhouse gas (GHG) [lifecycle] criteria ensure that biomass delivers savings against fossil fuel while the land use criteria specify that forests are managed sustainably. However, with greater emphasis on the sustainability of feedstock, the supply chain is coming under increasing scrutiny.”

He pointed to research commissioned by the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) that highlighted that the UK power sector will need 23 million tonnes of feedstock by 2020.

He concluded: “Despite the potential impact of a feedstock failure, traditional business interruption insurance does not cover many of the risks a biomass supply chain may face. This issue has become more acute as heat off-take and the consequential contractual obligations have become more relevant.”

As such, he said that the insurance sector will need to work to ‘de-risk’ the market as “pre-empting and managing the financial implications of feedstock supply chain failure better and more proactively will act as a catalyst to unlock the potential in new and existing bioenergy projects”.

Find out more about some of the perceived problems with biomass.