WHA/REA response to RHI Biomass CHP consultation

WHA members have expressed concerns regarding the proposals put forward by BEIS to reform the support for biomass CHP:

• It will negatively impact the development of small and medium-scale biomass CHP plants and that the proposals will make them economically unviable to build. The 20% efficiency originates from the CHPQA, whose remit has traditionally been conventional and very large scale CHP where 20% would indeed be an achievable level of power efficiency. This level is unachievable in practice on small to medium scale Biomass CHP because advancing the power generation efficiency towards this level will render the heat derived from the CHP to be of such a low quality that it is not usable, thereby not being sufficient quality CHP.
• Although outside of the scope of this consultation, it is worth keeping in mind the current proposals on grid charging for electricity generators connected to the distribution grid network, which would see a 95% reduction in the benefits they receive for not using the transmission network. This, together with the biomass CHP proposals, may well push many such schemes outside of profitability.
• Defining efficiencies against NCV fairly measures the quality of an installation, whereas GCV penalises good quality installations for the moisture content of their fuels. Therefore NCV must be used to measure the power efficiency of projects against the proposed threshold if this is kept.

The WHA’s full response can be found here.

The Renewable Energy Association (REA) and the Wood Heat Association (WHA) are pleased to submit this response to the above consultation. The REA represents a wide variety of organisations, including generators, project developers, fuel and power suppliers, investors, equipment producers and service providers. Members range in size from major multinationals to sole traders. There are almost 700 corporate members of the REA, making it the largest renewable energy trade association in the UK.

The WHA is the UK trade association for the modern wood heating and related biomass heating industry including wood fuel suppliers, biomass boiler and stove installers and distributors, and anyone involved in the supply chain. The WHA is a fully owned subsidiary of the Renewable Energy Association. Members range in size from major multinationals to sole traders.