The Development of Renewables within the United Kingdom: Biomass Unrealised Potential

There exists guarded agreement that climate change is happening and that one cause may be the generation of greenhouse gasses released by the burning fossil fuels. Fossil-fuel fired electricity generation contributes to these emissions, and most western governments now recognise that their reduction offers the best hope of meeting international emission targets. Inevitably this will lead to closure of generating plant leaving a capacity shortfall unless alternative energy sources are developed. Renewables are commonly proposed as a partial solution, being both environmentally neutral and free from the safety concerns relating associated with nuclear energy. Electrical and thermal generation using biomass represents a positive environmental choice that can in most cases be considered effectively carbon neutral. This technology is mature, and does not suffer from problems of intermittency that characterise other renewables. However, considerable challenges remain for its successful development in the United Kingdom (UK). These exist in three principal domains; fuel supply, markets and market incentivisation, and regulation. These issues have already been overcome in the Nordic states, and it is not unreasonable that biomass could at least partially address the projected capacity gap in the UK. This paper considers the development of renewables to date, and in particular biomass in the context of its interaction with the developing electricity trading markets, incentivisation mechanisms and associated physical electrical system.