Has the UK Government Effectively Implemented the Sustainability Requirements for Electricity Generated from Biomass?
Author: Dakota de Freitas
The below article is one of a series of blogs based on a Policy Brief shortlisted as a finalist for the 2025 Chronos Sustainability Prizes
Biomass remains a central pillar of the UK’s renewable energy strategy. However, recent scrutiny raises concerns about the efficacy of the sustainability requirements applied to its largest user, Drax Power Station. These concerns have been raised despite the introduction in 2021 of updated sustainability criteria intended to ensure renewable energy sources contribute meaningfully to climate mitigation.
Despite receiving over £11 billion in public subsidies, the National Audit Office (NAO) has stated that it cannot verify whether emissions savings from Drax Power Station have genuinely been achieved.
Weak oversight of Drax’s carbon accounting, combined with permissive self-reporting requirements, has enabled Drax to continue receiving government support while sourcing feedstocks from regions associated with alleged deforestation and questionable reforestation assurances. Drone footage from British Columbia, for instance, has revealed extensive clear-cutting in areas described as sustainably managed. Investigations into Drax’s North American sourcing, particularly in British Columbia, have suggested that that many logs arriving at Drax’s mills lack publicly available spatial data, raising concerns about whether these logs have originated from ecologically sensitive or old-growth forests.
The Drax Power Station case suggests that there are systemic weaknesses in the UK’s oversight frameworks for biomass, with knock-on implications for subsidy payments and for emissions accounting regimes. The UK’s market-based regulatory approach, shaped in part by post-Brexit policy discretion and now subject to the current Labour government’s priorities, has allowed industry actors to define and interpret sustainability standards in ways that reflect operational interests more than climate commitments. Public funding mechanisms have, in effect, legitimised existing biomass models without ensuring genuine emissions reductions or long-term ecological integrity.
This research suggests that the UK government should:
Require independent, upstream lifecycle assessments and third-party audits of biomass supply chains. These assessments should account for emissions across the entire life cycle including harvesting, processing, transport and combustion. Audit results should be made publicly accessible and regulated by an independent authority, rather than industry actors.
Amend Ofgem’s subsidy eligibility criteria to close carbon accounting and feedstock classification loopholes. The changes required include enforcing stricter replanting timelines, clarifying definitions of primary versus secondary biomass, and mandating emissions reporting over the full lifecycle, not only post-combustion.
Expand parliamentary scrutiny of biomass subsidies. Reviews should assess whether current subsidies contribute to long-term decarbonisation, evaluate the robustness of sustainability criteria, and investigate how industry influence may be shaping implementation outcomes.
Notes
Dakota de Freitas’s policy brief “An Assessment of Whether, Since 2021, the UK Government has Effectively Implemented the Sustainability Requirements for Drax Power Station for Electricity Generated by Biomass” was a finalist for the Chronos Sustainability Postgraduate Prize 2025. A copy of the policy brief can be accessed here.
Dakota is completing a Master’s in Environment and Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), building on prior experience as a solar analyst. She also recently co-authored an academic research paper for the Funders Initiative for Civil Society, and her dissertation, developed in collaboration with the Grantham Research Institute, focuses on how informal water economies are shaping rural water management and adaptation in Burkina Faso, particularly under conditions of climate change and increasing seasonal variability.
Photo by Robin Joshua
