Wood Biomass

These wood biomass pellets are being made and used in an area of South Yorkshire that was once at the heartland of the now defunct coal mining industry. After decades of living with “drifts of coal soot inches deep on their window sills”, residents of Barnsley are now embracing this much older but cleaner plant-based fuel. Wood heating has been installed in all of Barnsley’s new public buildings and refurbishments, as well as in a 166-unit social housing estate. Local residents report that this move back to biomass in the Noughties was stimulated by a “mix of environmental reasons and affordable warmth because of the massive increases in gas costs”.

Unlike wood chip, which requires a specialist boiler to burn it, wood pellets can be used with most existing coal boilers. However, they usually cost much more than wood chip because there is little production in the UK and they often need to be imported from the USA or Scandinavia. These particular wooden pellets are locally grown though, coming from around 14,000 hectares of managed woodland in South Yorkshire, which keeps fuel delivery emissions to a minimum whilst boosting the local economy. These wood pellets are either made from wood residues such as sawdust, wood shavings and offcuts that would otherwise be destined to go to waste, or from managed woodland grown for the purpose.

However, the sustainability of wood pellet biomass use more broadly has been called into question. For example, Drax, the UK’s largest renewable power station in Selby, Yorkshire, has been converted to burn wood biomass pellets instead of coal. However, their wood pellets are shipped in enormous quantities from areas of the US like North Carolina, where huge swathes of forest land have been given over to biomass pellet production. Although these biomass producers are important local employers, these industries are often responsible for air, water and noise pollution that impacts on local communities. There’s also some controversy around the way carbon emissions are accounted for with this kind of imported biomass, as the country producing the pellets bears the brunt of their carbon emissions, rather than the country burning them.