Agenda item

(1)         The Chairman and Members welcomed Mr Tubby and Mr Woodcock to the meeting and asked them to give their presentation (a copy of the presentation is attached to these notes).

 

 

(2)         Mr Tubby said that he wanted to reassure Members on the technologies used in the wood fuel systems and highlight some of the areas, which could cause projects to fail, which he suggested were easy to address and some of the non wood fuel related biomass that the Forestry Commission dealt with from time to time.

 

(3)         He began by referring to a graph, on slide1, on the issue of carbon stocks.  He advised that the carbon content in all trees had approximately 50% of carbon and 50% of water.  He then offered 3 scenarios as follows:

 

(4)         For high forest, if you planted up a hectare of field with small trees and did nothing to it there would be a slow take up amount of carbon, once the canopy closed and the trees were photosynthesising at a rapid rate and putting on growth very quickly there would be a rapid increase of carbon on the hectare of field.  After 80 years depending on the trees and the planting density that would plateau, as some of the trees would die, branches would fall off; the carbon would oxidize and be returned to the atmosphere.  In this scenario the carbon stock would remain constant and in the hectare of land you would remove 150 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere.  The growth rate would be just less than 4 oven dried tonnes per hectare per year, which was a reasonably fast rate of growth and would be achievable in Kent.

 

(5)         The other extreme in woodland management would be clear fell assuming the same yield but when you harvest the trees your carbon stocks in the land fell back to zero and increased again when you replanted.  Mr Tubby referred to a slide that showed 3 harvests.  The carbon stock on the hectare of land would average at 100 tonnes per hectare, a lower level than the scenario above but each of those harvests meant that you were removing the carbon from the woodland and could be included in construction or remain resident in the lifetime of the building or it could be used to displace coal, oil or gas and keep fossil carbon locked up into the ground.

 

(6)         In Kent he suggested that you would find this scenario, which was the establishing of woodland and once the woodland was mature you would take some thinnings every 10, 15 or 20 years that would result in the carbon stock on the hectare of land falling but the carbon could go into the fuel supply chain or the construction industry where it would remain locked up again for the lifespan of the building. 

 

(7)         This was simplistically how carbon stocks build up in woodlands under different management systems.

 

(8)         Mr Tubby provided information packs for Members on the management systems.

 

(9)         Mr Tubby then spoke on soil carbon.  If you were planting forestry on well worked agricultural soil that had a very low organic content the carbon stock in the soil would probably have built up considerably over a period of time.  Conversely, if you planted woodland on a carbon rich soil, eg peat, you may lose carbon from the soil because of the exposure to the air and oxidise during the establishment phase.  This was a complex area but demonstrated that as well as the above ground carbon flows and stocks, the soil carbon should be considered and was an area that was coming under increased scrutiny in terms of bio energies sustainability issues and soil sustainability, where you plant the forestry and how the woodland was managed. 

 

(10)    Members were given the opportunity to ask questions which included the following:

 

(11)    In response to a question by the Chairman, Mr Tubby advised that coppicing would resemble the clear fell example mentioned in paragraph (5) above but instead of planting new trees you would be relying on regrowth from the coppice shoot.  It would depend on the scale you were coppicing at.  If you focused on a hectare of coppice, the stock on the hectare would build up then fall back to zero as you removed the above ground growth.  Looking at the coppice plantation as a whole, one that was in active management there were all stages of coppice growth, the carbon stock should remain fairly constant because the wood that you were removing at one harvesting operation would be replaced in the same years growth on the blocks of coppice that you did not harvest.

 

(12)    In response to a follow up question by the Chairman, Mr Tubby explained that the example he gave where trees reached 80 years old was for high forest.  For coppice, you would be coppicing every 15 or 20 years because after that point the productivity of the coppice would go down because of the competition for light and nutrients or the size of the material on the coppice stores would be too big for your end market, those were the things that governed the coppice lengths rather than the harvest happening at 80 years it would happen after 15 years and each of those sore teeth shapes (he referred to the graph) would take place after 15 years instead of 80 years.

 

(13)    In response to a question by Mrs Tweed, Mr Tubby advised that the calorific value was very similar for different species of trees, if you look at it in kilowatts per tonne, a kilogramme of seasoned oak and a kilogramme of seasoned pine you would get the same amount of energy from both of those samples if they were at the same moisture content.  Species choice would come down to the type of site you were looking to plant on and you would need to match the requirement of the species to the soil you were working with eg with loamy soil you may be able to plant ash, which burnt well on open fires and in stoves.  In the poorer soils you might chose other species that did not grow quite as quickly.  In terms of combustion and conversion there was not a species you should avoid at all costs.  

 

(14)    Using a slide, Mr Tubby then explained that the carbon stocks at the woodland scale, in terms of carbon savings when you use the wood to displace oil that could be achieved.  He explained that the first bullit point was based on a house using about 20,000 kilowatt hours per year and how switching to wood could save 7 tonnes of CO². The second bullit point 340 tonnes saving enough carbon dark side to send 100 passengers from the UK to Australia.  If you looked at carbon omissions with different renewable technologies and wood fuel you would need to look at the life cycle analysis figures not the figures for omission on combustion because if you burnt a kilogramme of wood and a kilogramme of oil the carbon omissions themselves would be similar because you were burning carbon to generate your energy.  Biomass and wood fuel would only save carbon if it was being sourced from well managed woodland where new trees were being planted or coppiced regrowth was taking place, which was an important distinction to make especially with large scale end users that may be importing biomass from overseas.

 

(15)    There were two scales for markets; large scale, industrial end users that were burning tens of thousands of tonnes of biomass each year, Mr Tubby did not think that there was a huge potential for those markets of benefit from Kent’s forest estate because they were trading biomass on an international market and the price they were paying feed stock was not attractive to foresters it would not cover the cost of felling, extraction and processing.  It may appeal to farmers looking to get away from arable or dairy and looking to plant SRC acanthous but across the country the uptake of this had been slow because of the price being paid by the end market.  He felt that the opportunity for foresters existed in small scale heat applications and that type of market you may be able to sell woodchip for £50 - £110 per tonne depending on the quality of the fuel and moisture content and the customer’s specification.  A large scale power generating plant may be paying £20-£30 per tonne and at that point it would not be economically viable unless you were a tree surgeon and your job had already paid for the wood you had at the back of the truck and you may face a disposal cost. This market could change quite radically with the renewable heat incentive coming in 2011 where you may see various business models and business packages for; boiler installers, fuel suppliers and energy supply companies to sell to end users.

 

(16)    Mr Tubby showed a slide that indicated a few best practises in a boiler set up.  He indicated that best practise was not followed at places he had seen.  He said that typically he had seen a boiler being installed before energy saving measures had been made to the building, to cut the carbon footprint, to minimise energy use where ever it came from.  The energy saving also had a bearing on the boiler size; unfortunately people were still over specifying boilers. This tended to happen where someone sized the boiler accurately the job, the job then went to tender, they looked at the specification and they added 10% on the capacity just to make sure, that tender then went to another party who added another 10%, and before you knew it you had a very large boiler ordered, which meant the capital cost went up, the efficiency went down and there were problems with omissions.  Most of the problems tended to come up in the fuel reception, the fuel storage and fuel handling areas, if Kent and others were going to see wood fuel deployed on a larger scale and many more installations going in those would be the areas that would need to be addressed. There needed to be good communication between the energy user the fuel supplier and the boiler installer to make sure the delivery lorry was compatible with the fuel store and the end user was not ordering fuel on a weekly basis because this would push up the costs and increase traffic movements and would generally be unsatisfactory.  He felt that people became hung up on fuel supply distances.  The Planning Guidance suggests that 25-30 miles should be the maximum.  In terms of carbon omissions there was no difference if the biomass was coming from 10 miles or 70 miles away you would still realise huge carbon savings within those distances.

 

(17)    In response to a comment regarding the line on the slide that read “Seriously consider energy supply Companies”, Mr Tubby explained that quite often potential end users who would like to switch to wood fuel felt that they did not know enough about the fuel supply, where to buy woodchip and did not know much about the biomass boilers themselves, all they wanted was a warm building.  Energy supply companies took on the risk of boiler maintenance and fuel supply and just sell heat to the end user and the heat would be measured by a heat meter and the energy user would be billed accordingly.  The energy supply company approach could be very attractive to schools where they would not have enough time to compare quotes and fuel supply and get the best dealer, boiler in and go to tender for an energy supply company rather than biomass boiler installers.  It also gave energy installers the opportunity to add value to what they were selling, instead of selling woodchips, they were selling kilowatt hours of heat and if that could be linked to fossil fuel prices then hopefully the energy user would be making a saving and the heat supply company would be making a profit.  For that to work the profit needed to go back down to the people supplying the biomass in the forest.

 

(18)    Mr Tubby then spoke on the potential for energy crops both on the very large scale and potentially on a heat only scale if the moisture content could be kept down.  He advised that a couple of County Councils were looking into the potential of growing Sure Rotation Coppice (SRC) [Willow coppice that you harvest every three years, an automated process, grown on agricultural land] on their own land holdings to supply their boiler and other parts of their buildings estate.

 

(19)     Mr Tubby said that the Forestry Commission was fielding many more enquiries on anaerobic digestion technology from across the country and he felt that it would be a technology that there would be more of in the future and not just used to managed slurry but also potentially to manage food waste mixing it with grass or maize silage as well.  That approach did not affect the change of land use which many people got concerned about when they hear about energy crops and biomass.

 

(20)    Mr Tubby then spoke on straw advising that if there was agriculture in the region producing rape straw and wheat straw there could be potential for developing that as feed stock for energy production.  There was a lot of discussion on whether there was more potential to feed it back into the soil as a fertilizer or whether there was potential to use it as energy feed stock.

 

(21)    He added that in the short term, the renewable heat incentive that was coming through looked very good but he had concerns that there would be a lot of demand and that he was not convinced that there were enough approved appliances to meet the demand.  He felt that there would be more and more concerns expressed about air quality and the need for cost effective verbate technology would increase.  The Forestry Commission was also coming up against Sustainability Assurance Schemes, in the future that could cause fuel suppliers some problems if they had more paper work to fill and they were quite a small forestry operation of only a few hundred tonnes per year, it could be another reason not to go into that sector.  The Government needed to be careful how it was implemented.  He felt that there would be more small scale CHP in the next few years, normally it works on an industrial scale and he was not convinced that it gave farmers and foresters the opportunity at present.

 

(22)    For the future there were second generation bio fuels which could use enzymes to release sugars from straw and wood to produce bio ethanol but because of the mass flow, 5 tonnes of wood was needed to produce one tonne of liquid fuel, therefore price of fossil fuel would need to be very high to make those economics stacked up even if the technology was in place.

 

(23)    In response to a question by Mr King, Mr Tubby explained that in terms of conversion efficiency just burning wood to generate heat and displace gas and oil was the most effective way to go.  The boilers available today had an efficiency of 80% upwards. Generating power with wood blending with coal and coke firing it would have a conversion efficiency of 25%.  He said that he was not entirely sure of the figures for producing the liquid fuel but estimated it at 20-25%, it depended on what other co products could be sourced from the process as well as the ethanol there may be char that could be burnt to generate heat or electricity or put into the soil.  This mass flow and what the most appropriate end market was was something that had not been resolved at government level.

 

(24)    Mr Woodcock highlighted that the Government Biomass Energy Centre was the government’s one stop shop of information on all forms of biomass including anaerobic digestion.

 

(25)    Mr Woodcock then highlighted some of the key issues from his slide presentation that affected Kent which included the following:

 

(26)    He advised that the Regional Forestry Strategy encapsulated all the benefits that the woodland could deliver to society and the environment.  He felt that in order to do that there needed to be a robust industry to keep them delivering that.  In Kent there were 40 000 hectares of existing woodland, the Forestry Commission directly managed about 3½ thousand and  other public bodies managed 2½ thousand and the Wildlife Trust circa 95 charities managed 1200 but this could be more as they had recently bought more land and could be up to 2000.

 

(27)    In response to a question, Mr Woodcock advised that because predominantly the woodland type was coppice or native woodland, there were about 3000 hectares of conifer and 2000 hectares were the Forestry Commissions, the majority of the woodlands in Kent were of coppice origin.  In order to deliver the biodiversity the coppice would need to be brought back in cycle, although there may be reticence in some areas to manage, to deliver the biodiversity most of it would need active management, there would always be some areas which were none intervention, which was important too but the majority could be managed.  He referred to a slide that indicated in pink the areas where the Forestry Commission had grant schemes for felling licenses approved for, highlighting that this did not mean that all the wood in those managed woods was harvested at the moment, conversely it did not mean that those not in the scheme were not managing their wood, though they should not be felling too much of it, that was critical.  The England Wood Field Strategy was agreed with Government 3 years ago where the forestry Commission agree to bring in an extra 2 million cubit metres of wood to the wood fell market by 2020 from currently under managed woods.  The South East had a ¼ of that target and on a County basis by taking the woodland area per county removing the woodlands that ere managed by the Forestry Commission and looking at what was left, Mr Woodcock felt that discussions should start for Kent at about 90 tonnes per year potential.  That was not much more than half of a very conservative estimate, if a hectare of woodland in Kent could grow at 4 cubic metres of wood per year, chestnut was 8 per year on a good cycle, so would ash, hornby would be less but the density was higher, if you multiply the area by 4 you had about 140 thousand cubic metres per year at a conservative estimate. Mr Woodcock felt that half of that would be available to the wood fell market.  He felt that Kent was strong in this regard because of its history in managing the woodlands was relatively recent and the accessibility to the woodlands was relatively good.  He reminded the Committee of the Governments Low Carbon Transition Plan and the aspiration to create a lot more woodlands across the country.

 

(28)    In response to the regulation covering the Forestry Commission Woodcock explained that the prime legislation on felling trees in the Forestry Act where by anyone wishing to fell more than 5 cubic metres of woodland per calendar quarter needs to get a felling license from the Forestry Commission.  However active coppice management which would be chestnut on a 15 year rotation usually did not get to a size which fell into a licensable category. He recalled that someone tried to remove that exemption and was shot down robustly by the Kent Coppice Growers, if it were in cycle it would not need a license.  The felling license was there to ensure the areas remain as woodland and that the felling was carried out in a sustainable way.  There were a wide range of guidelines backed up by the UK Forestry Standard, which sets out the sustainability criteria.  He referred to tree preservation orders that had been historically important in Kent.  The small coppicing that fell out of the licensing requirements were being grobbed.  There were cases in Kent where the woodland were being broken down into small holdings some worked well as 5-6 hectares in a block with people that wanted to do the right thing even if they did not know how to but there had also been woodlands broken down into caravan site blocks in eg Ashford. Ashford District Council historically had used article 4 directive to prevent the loss of woodland to develop the woodland in that way.  It was a useful regulation to stop the loss of woodland.

(29)    Mr Woodcock advised that anyone that wished to create a large area of woodland or remove large areas of woodland the Environment Impact Regulations for Forestry apply. The only place that they had been applied in Kent was when Mr Prescott gave money to create Jeskyns Farm near Gravesend.  There had been a full environmental impact assessment on the proposals there, the final outcome on what was delivered was very different to what was originally proposed and took on board a lot of local comment, the same would apply if someone wanted to remove an area of woodland to another land use.  In terms of protecting species there was the European Protected Species Regulations which owners get very concerned about, the way this had been addressed was to give best practise guidelines for owners when you should coppice when you had eg dormouse and as long as they had those guidelines they would not require formal license to work the wood from Natural England

 

(30)    Mr Woodcock then spoke about the requirement for central government bodies to buy any woodland products from demonstratively sustainable sources.  There was a process called independent certification of woodlands, which most of the south east woodland owners did not go for because it was quite complex.  The Central Point of Expertise on Timber Procurement (CPETP), a government body, says that an owner would have a management plan on their wood which the Forestry Commission could give grant aid and there would be an audit protocol, which the Forestry Commission would do as part of its normal inspections and this would be checked by some one else on a sample basis.  The CPETP category B allowed the smaller woodland owners to meet those categories without too much burden on themselves.  As a whole he felt they were robustly covered to ensure that the woodlands were not treated inappropriately that if the market went very strong the forestry Commission was watching.

 

(31)    Mr Woodcock advised on issues to consider when considering a wood fill  heating system which included the following

 

(32)    Mr Woodcock advised that the forestry commission had made studies tours to Austria and Finland (Mr Brazier was present on the tour to Austria).  He tabled a newsletter that came out of the study tours.  Those were two countries where wood was use all the time the technology was very advance, the boiler were like those used in this country and were very efficient.  The problems in this country were the cost, a Finish specialist was invited to this country in June to give advice on a selection of sites.  Mr Woodcock said that if the County Council would like the specialist to look at a site in Kent he would be happy to arrange that for either a site that was not working too well or a new site this would be independent advice. 

 

(33)    The Chairman thanked Mr Woodcock and said that he would like to take up the offer and asked Ms Frampton to speak with Mr Andy Morgan.

 

(34)    He went on the say that because there were a limited number of installations the experience of putting these systems was low and the companies that could do the installations was low a bigger barrier was the Government Procurement Rules that Forestry Commission had to go to a certain number of tenderees, which ended up being a sequence of subcontractors in that process he referred to the Maidstone Borough Council case  where one of the sub contractors went bust and the reason why the system was not running was there was a leak in the chimney and no one would agree to fix it.  He said that there were now small companies being set up in Kent and the South East, which he feared would be excluded from the tendering process and because of that a small number could keep the prices high.  Mr Woodcock asked whether something could be done about this.  There was a need to understand the whole system there were a lot of companies that would sell the boiler the standard on the continent was to provide a turn key service basically you ordered a heating system and they provide one that worked they did not just sell you a boiler and expect you to get a plumber in to install it, you got a full snagging contract and you were left with a system that worked.

 

(35)    In answer to the question on re establishing Kent’s network of woodlands, Mr Woodcock said that if there was a market for the product then the woodlands would be managed.  The price for the woodchip, if you wanted to buy woodchip for a high quality boiler like the Austrian type, which was very efficient, you would be paying approximately £80 per solid dry tonne to be delivered.  He felt that as things bite that price would go up because owners of woodland would realise that the woodland had value and £100 per tonne would be more realistic, this equated to a fuel cost of 3 pence per kilowatt hour. The incentive proposed under the renewable heat incentive for systems up to 45 kilowatts was 9 pence per kilowatt hour from 45 – 500 kilowatts was 6½ pence per kilowatt hour and beyond that it was slightly less.  Those incentives could make a huge difference to the viability of the systems.

 

(36)    Mr Woodcock stressed the need to raise awareness in the business opportunity for the rural secure.  The standard model on the continent was for a group of farmers or forester who had got together who might rent a room at a school they fit the boiler they facilitate the sourcing of the fuel and the school buys the heat. He felt that the people who would be strongest at that would be those who had learnt to do it for themselves, those that had already put in systems and had established their own supply chain and had demonstrated their credibility.  The next step would be for them to go into selling heat.  If a relationship could be struck up with someone with a wood close to the heat user the carbon transport costs low, a local relationship going and the buyer is assured of their supply.  When you put wood on a lorry this added 7-8 pence per tonne to transport the wood.

 

(37)    There were problems with woodland skills.  There was a very aged workforce and there were more skills that needed to be encouraged. The management would be more mechanised than at present.  He said that he was trying to discourage oversized machinery working in Kent’s woods, because there would be damage to the stores, compact the soil and vulnerability to pests. Some of the continental machinery that had come into the south east region such as tractor based harvesting had a long reach of a minimum travel ability and could reach sweet chestnut.  It would not suit everything and he said that he was not saying that all woods should go into wood fuel. 

 

(38)    Mr Woodcock then led onto exemplas of best practise.  He felt that there was a need to promote those systems that were working well, because everyone remembered those systems that were not working well.  There was a public understanding of the benefits to woodland forestry management because the majority of people felt that chopping trees was wrong.

 

(39)    Mr Woodcock tabled posters on the management of forestry. 

 

(40)    Mr Woodcock explained that he had been asked to give examples of where some focused effort could be put in to try out some mechanisms to develop the wood fell market rather than doing things everywhere, to see what worked and what did not work.  The two areas selected were the South Downs National Park and the North Kent Downs.  He was in discussions with Mrs C McKenzie, KCC and Mr N Hanson from Kent Downs, Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) looking at a KCC INTERREG project. They would be looking at three key areas ie market pull, what could be done to get the markets running to make it easy for them.  The information gained from the woodland heats solution project from the continent would be useful for this.  The Forestry Commission had sponsored HETAS, solid fuel company, to finish their training course for their plumbers on solid fuel for wood and was hoping that they would roll out the training package to Kent or the South Downs at least.

 

(41)    Mr Woodcock advised that in terms of the supply chain the Forestry Commission already worked on the principle that if someone was interested in putting in a system to use wood, Commission would try and make the introductions to the wood foresters owners etc advising of the potential market and these are the incentives that could help to pursue that market. 

 

(42)    The Forestry Commission was also trying something very new in helping woodland owners who had woodland close to woodland that it directly managed to help them manage their woods because there was a shortage of Management Foresters over the years there had been a sharp decline.

 

(43)    Mr Woodcock then spoke about communications referring to the Kent Downs Orchid published to raise the benefits of woodland management.

 

(44)    Mr Woodcock felt that it would be good to explore ways of jointly looking at opportunities by looking at the KCC estate, he acknowledge that a lot of work had already been undertaken on this, to find benefits, biodiversity and jobs.

 

(45)    Mr Woodcock then led onto exemplars of best practise.  He felt that there was a need to promote those systems that were working well, because everyone remembered those systems that were not working well.  There was a public understanding of the benefits to woodland forestry management because the majority of people felt that chopping trees down was wrong.

 

(46)    Mr Woodcock tabled posters on the management of forestry. 

 

(47)    Mr Woodcock explained that he had been asked to give examples of where some focused effort could be put in to try out some mechanisms to develop the wood fuel market rather than doing things everywhere, to see what worked and what did not work.  The two areas selected were the South Downs National Park and the North Kent Downs.  He was in discussions with Mrs C McKenzie, KCC and Mr N Hanson from Kent Downs, Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) looking at a KCC INTERREG project. They would be looking at three key areas ie market pull, what could be done to get the markets running to make it easy for them.  The information gained from the woodland heats solution project from the continent would be useful for this.  The Forestry Commission had sponsored HETAS, solid fuel company, to finish their training course for their plumbers on solid fuel for wood and was hoping that they would roll out the training package to Kent or the South Downs at least.

 

(48)    Mr Woodcock advised that in terms of the supply chain the Forestry Commission already worked on the principle that if someone was interested in putting in a system to use wood, the Commission would try and make the introductions to the wood foresters owners etc advising of the potential market and these are the incentives that could help to pursue that market. 

 

(49)    The Forestry Commission was also trying something very new in helping woodland owners who had woodland close to woodland that it directly managed to help them manage their woods because there had been a sharp decline in of forest managers over the years.

 

(50)    Mr Woodcock then spoke about communications referring to the Kent Downs Orchid publicised to raise the benefits of woodland management.

 

(51)    Mr Woodcock spoke on partnership working with KCC and said that it would be good to find ways where the Forestry Commission and KCC could jointly look at opportunities in the KCC estate, he acknowledge that a lot of work had already been undertaken on this, to promote the benefits, biodiversity and jobs as this would be an opportunity to secure jobs in the rural environment and provide jobs.  Helping the industry establish itself and considering the fuel potential from the KCC existing wood.

 

(52)    With regard to the Governments aspiration for more woods, Mr Woodcock advised that Kent was a well wooded area and, questioned whether there was a need for more woods, he gave five areas where there could be thought given to potential woods as follows:

 

•   Around the Thamesgateway to improve both the look of the area and the accessibility around the area.

 

• Within the AONB, particularly where there could be linkage between woods to improve the ecological productivity,

 

• There were also areas around flood amelioration around areas like Ashford where you could put in a low down and identify areas that could be flooded and by using trees on that environment you would not reduce the productivity of it. It was also possible to use trees and the short rotation coppice to slow down the flows through a flooded area too.

 

• Hobby farms on the High Weald, where we know that the land had been broken up over the last 30 years. A lot of ownership was in smaller blocks, where there were 2 or 3 paddocks creating woodland to provide the fuel for the property or a group of properties may be an option in a well wooded environment. A few more hundred hectares would not make too much difference to the landscape.

 

• The Low Weald, because of the nature of the soil was very carbon hungry in terms of maintaining agricultural production; hence there may be an opportunity for some woodland creation in those areas.

 

(53)    In response to a comment made by Mrs Tweed regarding support and advice for farmers,  Mr Tubby advised that the Biomass energy Centre worked closely with the National Non Food Crop Centre that provided advice for farmers looking to grow industrial crops that could include oil seed rape, and so they would argue that that advice was out there.  Mr Woodcock added that when they took the study tour they were taken to a town called Murek, eastern Austria, where they had a group of farmers that had set up the whole sustainability package for the town so that they had district heating with wood, AD producing methane, and the gas was going into the gas network too. They had solar photovoltaic, they also had an oil seed rape plant producing biodiesel. The pump at the front supplying that biodiesel went back to the growers.  There were technical issues about the process it was not just a matter of pressing the oil seed rape.  The plant was not huge, the farmer brought in the oil seed rape it would be crushed and they took their biodiesel back.  He then mentioned the example of a project DEFRA ran on the Goodwin Estate. 

 

(54)     In response to a question by Mr Prater, Mr Tubby explained that one of the down sides to biomass systems was the high capital cost. A new gas boiler may cost £1500 to £2000, if you bought a wood or pellet boiler it may cost £10 000 for the equivalent output. The heat incentive was aiming to give the owner payback after 8-10 years - if your boiler was in place more than 10 years you would get a greater incentive.

 

(55)    The Government was making sure that it was a not coming up with perverse incentives.  For a normal household they would deem what was an average heat load using the SAP rating process which was used to calculate how much energy a house would use.  For a domestic house it could be estimated that they would use 15000 kilowatts of heat so you would be paid no more that 15000 times the value of the incentive, so it would be down to you where you sit there shivering or spending the money given to you.

 

(56)    In response to a follow up question by Mr Prater, Mr Tubby explained that the building itself would be assessed to say 15000 kilowatt hours.  For a school or a larger energy user they would use a heat meter.

 

(57)    In response to a question by Mr Smith, Mr Tubby advised that the maintenance of the machinery would be ash removal which would be undertaken by staff maybe once a week or once a fortnight.  A lot of the systems were self cleaning to a degree but needed to be serviced annually.  It was a concern that he and his colleague had as to whether there were the skilled people to carry out the maintenance at a reasonable rate.  The maintenance costs can be very high and the response time by the boiler installation companies could be quite long. Mr Woodcock said that if you thought of that for a local grower to put in a system they would take on all that responsibility, they would look for a local relationship with a local engineer and plumber.  The technology was very robust.  You would not have to buy the best boiler at £10000 you could buy a log boiler for £3000 from Baxi.

 

(58)    In response to a question by the Chairman, Mr Tubby and Mr Woodcock advised that difference in price for a boiler was because of them being less common and it was intrinsically more expensive.  The engineering in a biomass boiler was a lot more complex that a gas or oil boiler which puts the price up. There were cases of people importing the boilers themselves rather than going through a UK agent. As there were more biomass systems going in and competition get stiffer the capital cost would reduce to a degree, but it would never compete with gas or oil because the technology needed to be more robust.

 

(59)    In response to a question from Mr Smith, Mr Woodcock explained that wood would not solve all the problems -  it was one element in a renewable energy mix.  It was silly not to use a resource we had that was currently not being used. 

 

(60)    At the current time, when talking about a small installation of 100 kilowatts this was not a problem, even at 90,000 tonnes we could do 90 community colleges the size of Crowborough, which would be a big system to start off.  There were a lot of people using fire wood which may continue to grow.  What made him really nervous was people speaking of large installations saying “I am going to put in a power station and I want to see if there are 250k tonnes a year from Kent”. We say “there  probably was but how much will you pay”? They then say  “£25 per tonne” and we say “come back”!.  He recalled Sittingbourne pulp mill that use to take 100k tonnes of wood per year and we never had all the woodlands in Kent managed just with that market alone.  There were a few investors looking at small scale CHP that would be looking at tens of thousands of tonnes per year.  The difficulty would be to find a site to use the heat.  He mentioned the Eastern Quarry, a site of that scale could use that heat.

 

(61)    In response to a question by Mr King, Mr Tubby advised that there were 10 energy supply companies that already supply boilers maintain it and you just pay for the output such as Dalkia. He felt that companies like that would be doing interesting things with the new heat incentive.  They may own the boiler and sell the heat to the owner of the building - that approach removes the high capital cost to the end user but meant that the company had to be careful with their cash flow to ensure that they did not have all their capital tied up in boilers with insufficient revenue coming back through the renewable heat incentive.

 

(62)     There were fuel suppliers and installers that were looking at ways in which they could wrap up finance packages and payment packages to the end user to address the high capital cost and the use of the renewable heat incentive.  He felt that the heat incentive was a step in the right direction and moved away from the capital grant scheme, which potentially could leave end users looking for someone to maintain the system.

 

(63)    In response to a question by Mr King, Mr Woodcock suggested that no one had come forward with a scheme for local heat and power because Ashford was too big.  The builder did not want to do this because they were unfamiliar with it and the area was probably too big for the small local estates to invest in because it was not just the boiler it was the investment required in putting a heat main into the new estate as opposed to conventional power, with a boiler in ever house.

 

(64)    The Forestry Commission had been working with SEEDA on their forestry site to encourage them to get the developers as part of the norm to put in a heat main from day 1 and then it would be easier.  The heat main was very common in Europe that made a site like Ashford work.  He felt that until we saw one or two going in and working smoothly people would be reluctant to go ahead.  He gave an example of a system of homes in Redhill with a central boiler - some one got it wrong by leaving gravel in the pipes. Mr Tubby added that this was touching on the national psyche where people would say I could not possibly share my boiler, I want my own boiler that I have complete and utter control over and if I am on a shared system how would it affect my house price.  People would need to be educated that this would change the control they had over their homes.  Trying to educate the developer and the users was another challenge.  Mr Woodcock said that one of the key things on wood fuel as a whole was networking information about what had been done and where and doing that in a way that raises the awareness of the public and technical advice to the companies. He felt that the economic slow down had been beneficial because it had stopped that drive for more and more houses and people were now starting to think about these things.

 

(65)    In response to a question by Mr Hibberd, Mr Tubby said that there were trace elements in wood, which would reflect the type of soil that it was growing in.  Using wood from a traditional site there could be a trace element of metal.  In a coastal location there would be a high salt content which for a heating system,  could cause corrosion.  On an industrial system the contents of the wood was measured very closely but this should not be a problem on a small scale project.

 

(66)    In reply to a follow up question Mt Tubby advised that for 13 kilowatt hours you would burn 1 tonne of wood.

 

(67)    In response to a question by Ms Frampton, Mr Tubby advised that any imported boiler would need the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) accreditation.

 

(68)    In reply to a question by the Chairman, Mr Woodcock and Mr Tubby suggested the following should be carried out by KCC:

 

(a) Lead by example

 

(b) Educate the potential users

 

(c) Lobby for sympathetic planning

 

(d) Work on a pilot in Kent

 

 

(66) The Chairman and Members thanked Mr Tubby and Mr Woodcock for attending the meeting.