Biofuels: Electricity Generation
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, how much biomass electricity generation contributes to the UK's carbon footprint.
Answered by Michael Shanks
Government considers the use of sustainable biomass for electricity generation to be low carbon. This assessment takes into account emissions attributed to biomass from across the supply chain.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero publishes territorial emissions estimates, found here https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/uk-territorial-greenhouse-gas-emissions-national-statistics. However, international reporting guidelines, established by organisations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), require carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the combustion of biomass to be accounted for in the land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector rather than the energy sector. Correspondingly, CO2 emissions from the use of imported biomass are accounted for in the LULUCF sectors across the national inventories in which the biomass was harvested.
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