Whoever they are, they now also own at least 3,000 hectares of Scottish forest.
All in a good cause of course. Burning ‘biomass’ is so much cheaper than building offshore windmills as a way of producing energy which is greener than the sort you get from burning coal. And wood creates more energy than other kinds of biomass available for burning.
Question: at what point does wood (green) become coal (black)?
There is a problem however. Power producers can afford to pay higher prices than can existing customers who want wood for building houses, making furniture, fixtures & fittings, or constructing pallets for industry & the transport of goods. So these latter are getting increasingly unhappy about this threat to their livelihood.
Britain currently produces about 10 million tonnes of commercial timber a year & one-fifth of this goes for energy. By the end of this decade we might need 80 million tonnes for energy alone.
One way or another it looks as though we shall have to start importing other countries’ forests.
The English forests sailed the oceans of the world & found new lands full of wildernesses & more forests waiting to be cut down - Kate Atkinson
