Examinatin of Witnesses (Questions 200-201)
SIR BEN
GILL AND
MR DAVID
CLAYTON
19 APRIL 2006
Q200 Chairman: At the domestic level,
the Energy Saving Trust has indicated that there could be a 3%
reduction in household carbon emissions if biomass was used. Do
you think that consumers realise this? What kind of supply chain
could they look to if they were to embrace the use of biomass?
Is that an area that ought to be looked at, notwithstanding your
comments earlier that you are strongly in favour of district heating
systems—in other words, biomass in bulk—as opposed
to biomass in little bits and pieces?
Sir Ben Gill: The efficiencies
of district heating are there to be seen. You cannot ignore the
fact that a lot of the biomass will be in regions that are remote
from large conurbations so there will be a need to look at smaller
systems. The development that I am doing on my own farm in North
Yorkshire will be built with a biomass boiler. I will use my own
biomass commercially on site. The case for smaller ones needs
to be taken through though as the supply chains develop. I am
aware of certainly one business that is producing a very high
quality wood chip that will work in a number of boilers today
and could be bought at a variety of stores just as you might buy
a bag of coal and would fire accordingly. You could tip it into
a hopper. We saw in Finland one domestic residence that was not
quite completed. It was being built by an engineer and he had
put in the garage a small building. Where you might have seen
the oil tank he had his hopper. He was using wood pellets but
you could, with the quality of wood chips that is achievable now,
put the wood chips in there and it fed automatically into the
system. There are boilers now marketed in the UK—Baxi Technologies,
for example—that can be powered either by wood pellets,
wood chips or even wheat. It is computer controlled and you just
programme in what the product is. The market is there. What we
believe will happen is that if the government demonstrates by
example, then you have these supply chains built and other people
will build on them.
Q201 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed. It has been a fascinating insight into this area. You
have lost none of the enthusiasm you demonstrated in your previous
incarnation as the President of the National Farmers' Union for
trying to explain to people sometimes very complex subjects. I
do not think I am left in any doubt that this is still a complex
area but I think you have identified clearly where you think the
best results could be obtained by the use of biomass and, to that
extent, the Committee is very grateful to you for your presentation,
for your evidence and obviously the report you produced for a
wider audience. Thank you both very much for coming.
Sir Ben Gill: Thank you. I am
very clear in my mind that it is not going to be a matter of doing
this or that. Do we do biofuels or biomass? Do we do virgin or
waste materials? We are going to need every opportunity. There
will be strategic needs to do biofuels but they need to be put
into a holistic picture that is adequately and properly communicated
to the country as a whole as part of a strategic plan with a vision
for the use of the UK, European Union and World land mass as a
whole.
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