GRJ0013

Green Jobs Inquiry

Biomass UK Consultation Response

Biomass UK is a subsection of the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology (REA), the largest renewable energy trade association in the UK. Biomass UK is the members’ forum within the REA which advocates for the Biomass Power industry, championing sustainable biomass use for low-carbon energy and its supporting supply chain.

Executive Summary

• Sustainable bioenergy is “essential to reaching Net Zero.”
• The bioenergy industry already supports 46,000 jobs in the UK, and this could grow to over 100,000 jobs by 2032.
• The Government should build on its existing strengths when looking to support green jobs, as well as promoting technological innovation.
• Increased domestic production of sustainable biomass in the UK in line with CCC recommendations is a huge economic opportunity for rural communities.
• Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) has a vital role to play in smoothing the energy transition in traditional industrial areas and supporting the creation of new green jobs.
• Government must join up its thinking on biomass and build on the strengths and knowledge of the existing UK bioenergy industry if the full green jobs potential of bioenergy technologies are to be realised.

Response

1. Sustainable biomass is currently the UK’s largest source of renewable energy across power, heat and transport, performing a hugely important role across the economy, supporting jobs, and helping a whole raft of sectors to decarbonise. Its importance will only grow as the Government seeks to deal with the twin challenges of economic recovery from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ever-pressing need for greater and faster decarbonisation. Indeed, in the recent 6th Carbon Budget, the CCC stated that “sustainable bioenergy is essential to reaching Net Zero.”[i] The highly diversified bioenergy industry has the potential to be a key pillar of the Government’s plans for a Green Recovery, allowing jobs to be both protected and created in future-proof sectors. This will only happen, however, with clear market signals from Government and joined-up thinking across different departments and strategies. The Government must ensure that the coming Biomass Strategy (planned for 2022) is tied in with measures such as the Agricultural Transition Plan, the England Tree Strategy, the Net Zero Strategy and others in order to unlock the green jobs protection and creation potential of bioenergy.

2. According to data published by the REA, the UK’s established and world-leading bioenergy sector currently employs over 34,500 people in the development, installation, and maintenance of bioenergy technologies.[ii] This number increases to over 46,000 jobs when the supply chain for bioenergy feedstocks is included, equating to over 2,500 companies and worth over £6.4bn to the UK economy. These numbers can and will grow with the right policy and market signals from Government. The REA estimates that, if the recommendations in its 2019 Bioenergy Strategy were followed, the existing bioenergy industry in the UK could provide over 80,000 bioenergy related jobs by 2026 and over 100,000 by 2032.[iii]

3. Achieving our Net Zero goals requires an extraordinarily high level of ambition and urgency both from Government and from the private sector. The existing pressures of cost, time and value-for-money affecting the UK’s decarbonisation pathway have only been compounded by the onset of coronavirus. These considerations heighten the importance of provable, existing decarbonisation technologies and their ability to simultaneously deliver both immediate carbon savings and immediate green jobs. Clearly, great strides will need to be taken in innovation and investment to bring new technologies to market (and bioenergy is part of that conversation too, with the need for negative emissions through BECCS, or Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage), but the Government also needs to build on its existing strengths. One notable example is biomass power, which as well as smoothing the transition away from coal and converting fossil fuel-intensive jobs into low-carbon, green jobs, now provides crucial flexibility and balancing services to the grid, allowing for greater decentralised deployment of intermittent renewables such as wind and solar power.

4. The UK economy is currently suffering from the worst downturn in 300 years.[iv] The Government has already enacted sweeping stimulus measures, but more will certainly be required. In order to drive a sustainable green recovery across the economy, the Government should prioritise policies which stimulate economic activity across a wide distribution, in terms of both geography and economic scale. The bioenergy industry is an ideal candidate for this type of support. It is highly distributed and active at widely varying scales, from large industrial plant to small landowners growing energy crops or engaging in agroforestry. Clear policy signals from Government for bioenergy would support green jobs in rural areas through feedstock production, in industrial areas through power plant (operation and maintenance) and supply chains (freight, transportation etc.), whilst also stimulating export opportunities for a renewable energy sector in which the UK is one of the world leaders.

5. Broader suggestions for stimulus measures across renewable energy and clean technology sectors can be found in the REA’s Green Recovery Report.[v] One of these is launching an ambitious national training and re-skilling programme to help workers in oil and gas transition to the net zero world and train a new generation of electrical apprentices to enable the low-carbon energy and transport evolution. Similarly, the report makes the point that bringing forward new renewable power generation capacity and energy storage projects to enable the shift to Net Zero - £2bn funding could deliver an extra 15-20 GW of renewable power, as well as delivering new green jobs.

6. The concepts of Levelling Up, a ‘just transition’ and green jobs are all relevant when we are discussing the benefits that the bioenergy industry can provide. As discussed above, bioenergy is highly distributed, including in areas of the country not traditionally seen as economic hot-spots. Increased domestic production of bioenergy feedstocks is a huge economic opportunity for rural areas. In their recent publication of the 6th Carbon Budget, the CCC recommended scaling up afforestation rates to 30,000 hectares a year by 2025, rising to 50,000 hectares annually by 2035.[vi] They also recommended an acceleration in the planting of perennial energy crops (e.g. miscanthus and short rotation coppice) to at least 30,000 hectares a year by 2035, in order to reach 700,000 hectares by 2050. Achieving these policy goals will require the creation of new green jobs all across the country and especially in areas that do not tend to be favoured by significant investment.

7. Turning from rural areas to the UK’s traditional industrial heartlands, bioenergy also provides a vital tool in the revitalisation of areas which have been hardest hit by the decline of the UK’s industrial capacity. Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) and the negative emissions that it can generate will be crucial to decarbonising industrial clusters in areas like Humberside and Teesside. Creating zero-carbon industrial clusters is not only crucial to the UK’s Net Zero plans, it is also vital to protecting the jobs, skills, and long-term economic future of those carbon-intensive regions which currently stand to be heavily disrupted by decarbonisation. One example is the Zero Carbon Humber Partnership, which has submitted a public and private sector bid worth around £75 million to accelerate decarbonisation in the UK’s most carbon-intensive industrial region.[vii] The Partnership, which includes the UK’s largest producer of renewable electricity from sustainable biomass, Drax, estimates that the initiative could safeguard 55,000 existing jobs in the region, whilst creating thousands of new STEM roles and developing skills, apprenticeships and educational opportunities in the area.

8. Furthermore, a report by Vivid Economics shows that as many as 49,700 direct, indirect and induced jobs will be created as a result of deploying CCS and hydrogen technologies in the Humber region.[viii] As part of this, developing BECCS at Drax would support on average 10,500 direct, indirect and induced jobs per year during construction between 2024 to 2031, peaking at 16,800 jobs in 2028.

9. Bioenergy represents a huge potential green jobs prize for the UK, but the full benefits will only be realised with clear-headed Government thinking and support. Government must ensure that its thinking on biomass is coherent and joined-up across departments, whilst setting out clear policies which enable investment-worthy technology deployment across all bioenergy sectors. The Government should work closely with current industry participants and build on existing best practice, whilst taking into account the effectiveness of market forces in establishing best use of sustainable biomass feedstocks. Bioenergy is, and will continue to be, a crucial component of the UK’s green jobs and Net Zero vision.

January 2021