Biomass imports will serve 81 per cent of the UK bioenergy market by 2020 warns new research from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).
Biomass feedstock imports to the UK are expected to rise due to the expected shortfall in domestic biomass production which will not be able to meet the demands of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED).

The report Bioenergy: A Burning Issue from the RSPB warns that the nation's domestic biomass supply will fall drastically short of the amount needed to serve proposed bioenergy market in the UK.

Currently 74 per cent of the bioenergy industry is supplied with domestic feedstocks, but this is expected to increase to 81 per cent imported biomass as the UK struggles to meet the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) which specifies that 15 per cent of energy is to come from renewable sources by 2020.

The RSPB warns that the number of proposed biomass-fired power plants across the UK will increase the demand for biomass which will result in an increase will wood imports, from 13 per cent to 68 per cent. This will mean that biomass will dominate the market, reaching an estimated 39.1 million tonnes a year.

The report says that if all the proposed power plants were up and running around 48.3 million tonnes of biomass would be needed to fuel them, which is 9.3 times more than the amount of biomass consumed to date.

Should all the proposed plants be operational by 2020 the UK's current domestic biomass supply would only be enough to serve just 19 per cent of the market.