A cheaper fuel to power poultry farms amidst the fuel cost crisis.🔥🌱

The UK produces 4.5 million tonnes of wood waste every year, so it makes sense to use recycled woodchip to create heat and energy this winter. CFE has recently completed two woodchip biomass projects, installing:

• A new 1.5MW Justsen woodchip biomass boiler, backup kerosene boilers and air handling units in a poultry site in the North West (5-sheds)

• A 1MW Heizomat woodchip boiler with additional heat recovery system and backup kerosene boilers for a poultry site in the North East (6-sheds)

Our challenge for both projects was to:

1. Meet the new sites energy demands with sustainable, low cost, low-carbon technologies

2. Deliver a good ROI to satisfy owners and banks

3. Fuel costs and supply to be as stable as possible

The new systems are meeting energy demands and showing notable fuel cost savings, by burning Grade A recycled woodchip in biomass boilers.

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Fuel cost comparison (October 2026)

What does this mean for a commercial site?

For a typical 6 house poultry broiler site (320’ x 80’), rearing standard birds and requiring an industry average of 550,000 kwh of heat energy per shed per year, this totals 3,300,000 kWh of heat annually.  

Carbon emission reduction

Based on the example above (6-house broiler site using 3,300,000kWh of heat energy per year), the annual carbon emission reduction for this site would be about 700 tonnes on heating. (Based on BEIS UK greenhouse gas conversion factors)

Although there is currently no financial direct carbon penalty/tax in place in the UK, businesses which report and record carbon emissions may consider these on-farm  reductions in their Scope 1, 2 and 3 reporting. (For example a carbon tax at £50 per tonne equating to around £35K per year).

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The tables and graph show that despite capital and maintenance costs of a biomass system, there are still substantial fuel cost savings to be made by switching from fossil fuels to recycled woodchip.

Woodchip may however require more storage space, fuel handling, ash management and more robust fuel-quality controls than liquid fuels or pellets.

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Both Justsen and Heizomat’s woodchip biomass boiler systems will attract RHI payments, and are non-IED (Industrial Emissions Directive) boilers. Because of this, the boilers are burning ISO EN 17225-4 compliant (Grade A) recycled woodchip.

Recycled wood allowed to be burned in non-IED boilers must:

• Be mostly natural or slightly processed, i.e. only minor contamination from use

• Contain no more heavy metals than fresh, untreated wood

• Contain no halogenated chemicals from preservatives or coatings

• Be similar in treatment standards to wood by-products from the wood processing industry

Examples include pallets, transport crates/boxes, wooden packaging, cable reels, clean construction wood. Any waste wood to be used as fuel would need to be tested at an UKAS accredited Laboratory with a WRA02 testing suite, such as Woodsure.

Burning ISO EN 17225-4 compliant (Grade A) recycled woodchip instead of wood pellets in a biomass boiler carries these benefits:

• Lower production costs

• Less energy-intensive production: just chipping wood, not milling to sawdust and compacting

• Can be done with a mobile chipper on site or locally

• Higher feedstock flexibility 

• Quicker to process than pellets

As gas and electric prices continue to rise due to conflicts in the Middle East, there is a huge sense of uncertainty for businesses when it comes to spending money on energy bills – especially for farmers and producers who have to use a lot of energy to keep their businesses going.

The best way to safeguard against soaring energy prices is to start thinking about implementing low-carbon technology on your farm.

For more information on our low-carbon technology installation projects, please see our Case Studies on our website:

Case studies

If you would like to contact CFE for questions and queries, please email Jules at jules@cfeng.co.uk.

Thank you for reading!