The Tories, including Claire Coutinho when she was Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, spent years promoting tree-burner Drax as a “carbon neutral” climate solution and have recently promoted bioenergy with carbon capture and storage – BECCS – as the most important way to deliver “negative” emissions.

Now it turns out that Ms. Coutinho, at least, had serious doubts about bioenergy and BECCS – a welcome if belated revelation.

Two pieces in the Times of London – an opinion piece by Ms. Coutinho, and a commentary article about it – conclude that giving billions to Drax in subsidies to burn trees and bury the CO₂ belowground is a total waste of money. As Ms. Coutinho’s piece states, “I started pulling at threads and the case for Beccs simply unravelled.”

We wish the Tories had admitted earlier that the scheme was a badly knitted sweater, since this might have prevented a good deal of forest destruction, millions of tonnes of CO₂ emissions, and billions wasted in public subsidies. It’s Labour’s problem now, however, so we hope the current government will benefit from Ms. Coutinho’s conclusions.

What her revelations reveal, however, is how poorly advised Ms. Coutinho was on this issue. Her piece points out the obvious: burning wood for energy emits more CO₂ than coal, and “emission-offsetting trees are not growing back quickly enough.”

Given these facts, advocates been asking the UK government for years, including in the legal case the Lifescape Project filed against Ms. Coutinho, to explain how burning trees can be “carbon neutral” (it’s not), and how BECCS can pull CO₂ from the atmosphere (it won’t).

But the really astonishing thing here is Ms. Coutinho’s simple and obvious observations run counter to arguments that civil servants and government lawyers, including those that worked for her, have used for many years to justify counting biomass as having “zero” net CO₂ emissions right at the time of combustion.

Official UK government policy considers imported wood pellets to have net zero CO₂ emissions instantaneously, not “after the trees grow back.” Government lawyers tasked with defending the UK’s biomass policy must have been smacking their heads as they read Ms. Coutinho’s clear-eyed summary, because they’ve spent years and untold sums variously claiming that:

1. Imported wood pellets burned in the UK have “zero” CO₂ emissions because under international GHG reporting, forest carbon losses from harvesting are counted in the country of origin (thus the UK is not responsible for emissions from pellets imported from the US or Canada)
2. The government’s “sustainability” criteria ensure that forest wood harvested in such a way that it really is instantaneously carbon neutral or at least “low carbon”.

Note: these rationales are mutually incompatible. Either there are net emissions, and they’re counted in the source country… or the magic “sustainability” criteria of the UK ensure there actually are not any net CO₂ emissions. You don’t get to claim both.

Such incoherent reasoning has been a governmental hallmark for years.  Now, Ms. Coutinho’s arguments drop the façade, acknowledging that it’s impossible for burning trees to deliver carbon neutral or low carbon energy instantaneously (and in reality, probably never).

Ms. Coutinho’s statement that she “insisted that each policy had to either benefit billpayers or businesses, or indeed reduce global carbon emissions” is significant, and gets to the heart of the problem. CO₂ is a global pollutant. It does not “reduce” global emissions if the UK accelerates forest liquidation in other countries by incentivising burning wood pellets for “zero carbon” energy at home. (An aside, however: Really? Benefit billpayers “or” reduce emissions? Shouldn’t it be both?)

The Biomass Strategy, which was released while Ms. Coutinho was at the helm, is both costly and carbon-spewing. Lifescape is asking the courts to review it for the very reasons Ms. Coutinho has identified – it greenlights continued logging of ancient forests for fuel and increases CO₂ emissions. It is irrational because it undermines climate mitigation instead of advancing it. (The Biomass Strategy also proposes to massively upscale imports of agricultural biomass from all over the planet, including from North Korea, a plan nearly as ludicrous as burning trees).

Ms. Coutinho identifies the UK’s carbon budget as a problem, because “Without Drax we cannot meet that target, which would then legally require us to set out unacceptable alternatives that come with hefty price tags or force behavioural change on an unwilling public.”

But the public is unwilling because the policy-development machine has never come clean (at least to the public) about how climate change will impact the UK, and what real mitigation will require. Instead, policymakers have spent years defending the indefensible, claiming they can keep the lights on by burning trees instead of coal, until even proponents of such policies break under the deception.

Further, as Ms. Coutinho herself observes, it’s Drax and BECCS that have the “hefty” price tag. Truly zero-emissions energy is a bargain by comparison, delivering both lower CO₂ and cleaner air.

The road back to public trust and a science-based climate policy is a long one, but it starts with a single step. The UK needs a carbon budget and net zero plan that puts nature and climate first.