M

Member

Speaking in the House of Lords on 11 February 2025

Debate

Great British Energy Bill

Contribution

My final, crucial point is that in all the analyses of carbon neutrality of forest source biomass there has to be an assumption. That is the counterfactual: what would happen to the forest were biomass not being harvested? Let us take the case of the south-eastern United States, where fast-growing trees under the generic name of southern yellow pine are grown for timber, and the forests are owned by private landowners—they are farmers, essentially—most of whom have converted land from pasture or from other agricultural purposes to growing forests. The forest cycle is 27 years from a seedling to a mature saw-log tree that is harvested for building material. In that 27-year cycle, two thinnings take place to enable the remaining trees to grow tall, straight and large, and it is the thinnings that are used by Drax. In former times they were mainly used for paper purposes but, as paper use goes down, Drax and other companies take the thinnings to turn into wood pellets.

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