Low carbon economy: Putting their Trust in biomass
TheBusinessDesk.com, in partnership with Drax and DLA Piper, has examined the challenges and opportunities that the low carbon economy presents for Yorkshire.
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THE National Trust is an organisation that is recognised as concerned with the past, but its commitment to preservation stretches into the future too.
Nostell Priory, near Wakefield, is just one of its properties across the country that has embraced biomass as a way of reducing its carbon emissions.
Five years ago a biomass boiler was installed as part of a much larger project to refurbish the stable block, which had previously been heated by oil.
Tracy Sykes, facilities manager at Nostell Priory, is clear on what motivated the National Trust’s decision.
“Our big factor is the environmental factor, that’s the key thing for us” she said.
“Before the refurbishment we didn’t really heat the stable block and it was a building at risk.
“It is now used as a hub for Nostell Priory. It has office space, it has a shop, and we updated the cafe and equipment to include a warm-up kitchen as well
as a small catering outlet and toilet facilities.”
It is all heated by a biomass boiler that also has the capacity to heat the main house, which is an option that “is being looked at”.
Sykes said the National Trust is committed to biomass heating because of the way it supports the organisation’s ethos. “That’s key to it,” she said. “It’s
helping to preserve or conserve what we have for future generations.”
For the last two years, Nostell Priory’s wood pellets have been provided by Billington Bioenergy, the UK’s second largest wood pellet distributor. Although the company is just seven years old, it is already one of the old-timers in the UK bioenergy industry, which is still in its infancy.
“We have been working with Nostell Priory for a couple of years,” said Billington Bioenergy’s managing director Roger Pearson. “It’s part of a national procurement contract we have with the National Trust.
“They are a good fit and they are very keen on using biomass. Their chief executive came out about a year ago saying they were backing biomass and they are looking at putting more boilers in more National Trust sites. It’s a good synergy.”
The Biomass Energy Centre highlights the strength of the environmental case of biomass in the context of carbon emissions from different fuel sources.
Its data, which combines emissions from production and heating use, shows the saving in carbon from going to a wood pellet boiler from an oil boiler. Oil creates emissions of 314 kilograms per megawatt hour (kg/Mwh) compared with wood pellets which produce 26kg/ Mwh.
But many companies make the decision to switch to biomass because it can reduce costs as well as carbon emissions.
“In addition to carbon reduction a significant attraction of wood pellets is really an economic case for people who are on heating oil or LPG, where the price is at best volatile and at worst very expensive,” said Pearson.
“The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) is the big driver in this area. It’s a government subsidy, with different rates depending on how big your boiler is.”
The RHI guarantees a rate of subsidy for 20 years from when an application is approved, although the level that subsidies have been set at have been falling since their introduction.
“Rates that have been in place for a couple of years made it far cheaper than oil or LPG,” he said.
“The payback period for a boiler installation used to be 4-5 years with 15 years of profit on your capital investment. Nevertheless, you are still
looking at a payback period of only 7-8 years for commercial installations.”
The volatility of oil and LPG is not limited to price, but also supply, with sources and pipelines controlled by countries that can be less safe or well-disposed to UK interests.
Pearson said: “These factors are growing in terms of their prominence, including security of supply and where the product comes from.
“Most of the UK’s pellets come from within the UK, but the country’s LPG and oil is from, for instance russia and the Middle East.”
Currently the manufacturing capacity in the UK of ENplus A1 pellets – the
highest quality standard within Europe – is around 350, 000 tonnes.
“That’s just reharvested and planted and can keep going for ever,” said Pearson. “When we go above that we will then look at imports.
“We are probably going to get there next season or so. we are reasonably close – there’s 200,000-250,000 tonnes being used per year. with the growth rate at
the moment we will get there soon.
“In 2007, no-one had a clue what a wood pellet was, but since then the market has grown exponentially.”
The potential scale of the biomass industry can be seen by how it is currently dwarfed by the use of oil boilers.
He added: “If we want to replace all the oil boilers in the UK with wood pellets you are looking at needing millions of tonnes of pellets coming in to the country.
The potential is huge, if you are doing only 200,000 tonnes at the moment.”
Billington Bioenergy, which has a strong Yorkshire presence among its nationwide customer base, will continue to focus on large domestic and smaller commercial boilers, where it sees a lot of future growth.
“About one in five, one in six, of our commercial customers are in Yorkshire and there is a lot of potential in Yorkshire for people who are paying a lot for their LPG and oil,” he said. “We have grown 50% from last year and are hoping to do the same next year.”
