https://www.newpower.info/2025/02/ccc-seventh-carbon-budget-the-industry-responds/ Expert information for all those invested in the UK's energy future Fri, 20 Feb 2026 08:08:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6 https://www.newpower.info/2025/02/ccc-seventh-carbon-budget-the-industry-responds/#comment-96606 James Hewitt Fri, 28 Feb 2025 11:08:04 +0000 http://www.newpower.info/?p=13729#comment-96606 The Top Story of this morning’s edition refers to the UK’ Seventh Carbon Budget. One of the quotes it refers to, from the REA, is vulnerable to critique.
1) As local farmers remember all too well, the UK’s largest biomass-fired power station has already tested and then rejected the use of agricultural crops / residues – other than as a (very) small percentage of its fuel.
2) The “need” for large scale BECCS assumes that it will work at the capture rate proposed and – crucially – will be disposed of permanently and at a cost and energy penalty which can be readily accommodated.
3) Negative emissions from BECCS based on fuel whose feedstock grew outside the UK would of course be credited to the supplying country, not UK.
4) Wood pellets burned in large power stations derive from clear cut forest tracts which are unlikely to recover the loss of sequestered CO2 and ecosystem services which the clearcutting causes by 2050 (if ever). As such it is wrong to describe that biomass as sustainable – and to subsidise burning it.

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