The IPCC is examing the argument that carbon savings from wood pellets should go to the country where the wood was grown, not where it was burned. Potential IPCC rule changes could award planned carbon savings from burning US wood pellets to the exporter, not the importer The UK government is gambling with its own climate targets on claims that the Drax power plant will create “negative emissions” because new rules could hand the carbon savings to the US, campaigners say. The owners of the North Yorkshire power plant have promised ministers that a key project to capture the carbon emissions created from burning biomass wood pellets imported from US forests will count as negative emissions in Britain’s carbon accounts. However, a working group convened by the UN’s climate authority, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has begun meetings to draft rules for national greenhouse gas accounting which will apply to “carbon removal” technologies from 2027 at the earliest. Campaigners at Biofuelwatch, a green group, have warned that there is “a strong argument” that the so-called negative emissions from bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, known as Beccs, should be “attributed to the country where the wood comes from” rather than where it is burned to generate electricity. Almuth Ernsting, a co-director at Biofuelwatch, said: “We cannot second-guess what the IPCC expert group will decide, but neither can the UK government.” The government is considering whether to extend a subsidy scheme that pays Drax about £500m a year beyond its 2027 deadline until the end of the decade. The FTSE 250 company, which agreed to pay a £25m fine earlier this year for misreporting its wood pellet sourcing, has already earned more than £7bn in subsidies since work began to convert the former coal power plant to run […]