It argues that British politicians ‘need to learn to love their biomass’, and look seriously at how farm-produced energy can make a massively bigger contribution to energy security, to climate change policy and to rural development.

An important spin-off from increased British and European production of biomass energy will be a greater capacity to support the energy needs of developing countries, many of which are mainly agricultural economies that have a far greater reliance on biomass. Reduction of the burdens on developing economies imposed by high oil prices will also be an important gain. Bio-energy works all over the globe. It has to play a much bigger part in Britain.