What opportunities does new biomass strategy offer farmers?

The area of land devoted to perennial biomass crops has remained stubbornly low, despite an aspiration to increase the use of home-grown biomass in the power, heat and transport sectors over the past two decades.

According to government statistics, in 2020 around 121,000ha of land – or just over 2% of the agricultural area – was used to grow biomass crops for energy, with the majority of this used for biofuels and biogas.

See also: Grants to improve biomass crops efficiency

Of this, 29,000ha of wheat and 7,000ha of sugar beet were used for biofuels, 85,000ha of crops used for anaerobic digestion, with just 8,000ha of miscanthus and 2,000ha of short rotation coppice used in biomass.

Domestic crops exported for bioenergy are excluded from this data.

The Climate Change Committee has previously proposed that there needs to be more than 700,000ha of perennial biomass crops by 2050 to help the UK meet its net-zero targets.

In August 2023, the government published a new Biomass Strategy, which set out its vision for the use of biomass in the UK.

The 200-page document highlights that, in 2022, 11% of the total electricity supply was generated from bioenergy, adding “its future potential is extraordinary”.

However, Dr Jonathan Scurlock, NFU chief adviser on renewable energy and climate change, says despite some welcome statements about the potential for biomass to play a significant role in decarbonising nearly all sectors of the economy, the strategy is underwhelming.

Warm words – no policy action

“It’s a bit of a sham,” says Jonathan. “There are warm words in the forewords by the energy minister and the departmental chief scientific adviser, Professor Paul Monks, but there is a very poor resource assessment and no proper policy action recommendations.”

Government figures estimate that, in 2022, 66% of biomass feedstocks used in renewable energy supply was from domestic sources.

However, this figure is described as “questionable” by a number of independent commentators, who believe the percentage has been inflated significantly by a guesstimate of how much wood fuel is burned domestically in open fires and stoves.

The document talks about the need to reduce barriers to increase domestic production of biomass, but there is little policy detail given of how this might be achieved sustainably.

Indeed, the report says the UK will take an “agnostic approach” to where biomass feedstocks are sourced from, as long as they comply with the relevant sustainability criteria.

“Domestically produced feedstocks are not inherently more sustainable than imported feedstocks,” says the strategy.

Jonathan says this lack of endorsement is disappointing at a time when farmers are looking for alternative sources on income, in response to Basic Payment Scheme payments being phased out.

“Perennial energy crops won’t appeal to every farmer – notably those without long-term land tenure, under farm tenancies or contract farming agreements – but they offer potentially stable diversification of farm income, together with multipurpose land use that can provide game cover, harbour biodiversity and perform other ecosystem services such as slowing floodwaters or capturing diffuse pollution.”

The biomass strategy acknowledges that any increase in the production of energy crops must not undermine the commitment made in the government’s Food Strategy to maintain current levels of food production.

Land Use Framework awaited

Finding the right balance between different land use priorities will be one of the objectives of the Land Use Framework for England, which has been promised later in 2023.

Jonathan says the NFU will be looking for the government to implement further measures to show its commitment to maintaining food security.

However, the union does believe that biomass crops, when located on less productive land, can be managed in a sustainable fashion that works alongside rather than competing against food production or other environmental targets.

“In many cases, land can be multifunctional,” he points out.

Kevin agrees there is frustration within the sector that the strategy downplays the role of home-grown biomass despite the environmental benefits offered by the crops.

Opposition from environmental groups to large-scale imported biomass had cast a shadow over locally produced biomass crops and led to the strange situation where organisations that should be a natural ally to the biomass sector are lobbying against it.

Their concerns tend to be around the planting of non-native crops and the fear of replacing one monoculture with another.

Planting 700,000ha of biomass by 2050 is a large area that will take decades to achieve. This means that checks and balances can be put in place to make sure any detrimental effects are minimised, says Kevin.

“The whole idea of the climate emergency is that we need to be cracking on with implementing measures that make a difference, and crops like miscanthus and willow can make a quick and rapid difference,” he says.

Flood mitigation

“I am all for planting trees, but when it comes to flood mitigation, trees are not going to help in two or three years, whereas willow and miscanthus can.”

The government has recently invested £36m in a Biomass Feedstocks Innovation (BFI) programme, which ends in March 2025.

All the projects that have been funded under this scheme are required to have a commercialisation strategy in place to take their innovations to market.

However, if farmers do not have enough confidence to put biomass crops in the ground, then any momentum that has been gained will be lost, says Kevin.

This would be disappointing given there are some groundbreaking innovations coming out of the BFI.

He – along with a collection of other industry stakeholders – says the solution is to design and implement a long-term scheme that will convince farmers they can make a viable income from biomass crops.

This could involve a tiered approach with the highest payments available for biomass crops planted in a way that maximises biodiversity and environmental protection.

“Farmers are not going change what they have done for their entire lives if it offers only a 5% increase in return, it needs to be enough for them to become a no-brainer.

£40/t gap

“I would say there is still a gap of about £40/t between what the end user is prepared to pay and what a farmer needs in order to convince them to grow it.

“If we had a scheme that offered at least the equivalent of that, it would probably be enough to stimulate extra supply, which would mean the innovations from the BFI would have a market.”

Kevin argues that a scheme could be rolled out on a trial basis in 2025, involving a limited number of growers or land area, and then given a full launch in 2027.

“These timescales are considered to be realistic and will provide the assurance required by biomass crops companies to invest and scale up capacity with confidence.”

Another concern is that biomass crops have become synonymous with bioenergy, but there is considerable potential for farmers to derive new revenue streams by looking at different aspects of the crop.

This may be the ecosystem services they provide while the crop is growing.

However, there are also current and planned R&D projects looking at biomass crops for use as pharmaceuticals, biopolymers, bio-packaging, insulation, cement replacements, biochar, mulches, composts and animal fodders.

“All of these are potentially more lucrative for a farmer than selling into large-scale bioenergy facilities,” says Kevin.