- This event has passed.
Webinar: The potential role for biomass as a long-duration store of energy
November 26, 2025 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Webinar: The potential role for biomass as a long-duration store of energy
26 November 2025, 13.00-14.00, online
Mike Colechin and Keelan Colechin from Cultivate Innovation have produced a report on behalf of the Supergen Bioenergy Hub and the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), exploring the potential for biomass to act as a flexible, low-carbon store of energy within the UK energy system.
This webinar will take a deep dive into the findings and offer an opportunity to put questions to the authors.
About the report
There is an increasing requirement for long-duration energy storage to accommodate seasonal and weather-related variations in wind and solar electricity generation. Government targets for the decarbonisation of the UK energy system are leading to large-scale deployment of these renewable generation technologies to displace the use of fossil fuels for electricity generation and in the heat and transport sectors.
This study draws on knowledge from around 50 public, private and academic-sector stakeholders to explore the implications of the current national strategy on the biomass sector. This has been set by the UK’s National Energy System Operator (NESO) who have identified that biomass “provides a renewable low carbon power source” that can be used as dispatchable generation to “help meet demand during times of low wind and solar output”, contributing to the delivery of a more resilient energy supply. However, where carbon capture and storage (CCS) is installed to create a “negative emissions” BECCS system, NESO suggest that higher load factors would be desirable to “maximise carbon removal from the atmosphere”.
This study has established that bioenergy supply chains already store energy over prolonged periods, and that there is potential to make use of this characteristic to address the seasonal variations in wind and solar renewables output that affect electricity, heat and gas markets. There are multiple options for delivering system flexibility with biomass. Additional work will be needed to establish the scale of this potential on a commercial basis and in the context of the wider economy.