Biomass Strategy Challenge, UK

Clearcut old growth forest in British Columbia. UK-based Drax manufactures trees from these forests into wood pellets that are burned for renewable energy at its power plant in North Yorkshire. Photo: Dominic Dellasala, Wild Heritage.

The UK government continues to promote burning trees for renewable energy, despite evidence submitted by scientists and advocates showing that burning forest biomass is increasing greenhouse gas emissions and destroying forests. The UK Biomass Strategy, published in August 2023, doubles down on this climate and forest-wrecking scheme by promoting biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) as a means of removing carbon pollution from the atmosphere, also known as “negative emissions”. The Lifescape Project filed an application for judicial review of the Biomass Strategy, alleging the Strategy misrepresents the capability of BECCS to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and arguing that the Strategy is ‘irrational’.

After extensive delay, on 20^th March 2025, the Court finally decided to deny a full hearing of the case.   As the request for judicial review is most fundamentally a complaint about the process that the Government undertook, this means the court did not examine the detail of the case or the merits of the scientific arguments concerning the true climate impacts of bioenergy and BECCS. Instead, the Court concluded that because the Government had conducted public consultations and commissioned the Task and Finish Report, it had fulfilled its duty of “adequate inquiry” to support publication of the Biomass Strategy.