Policy Briefing Structure Guide

Your briefing answers the question: “Is UK biomass electricity carbon-neutral?” It should be about 2 pages and aimed at a busy policy-maker — someone who needs to make a decision and has 10 minutes to read.

Structure

1. Summary (3–4 sentences)

The most important part. Your reader should be able to stop here and still know:

  • What the question is
  • What your answer is (with appropriate caveats)
  • Why it matters

Write the summary last, after you’ve done the analysis — but put it first in the document. Policy readers read top-down and may not finish.

Example opening: “UK bioenergy generated approximately 40 TWh of electricity in 2024 — about 14% of total supply. Under current international accounting rules, this is counted as zero-carbon. However, this classification depends on assumptions about…”

2. Evidence (1–2 paragraphs + 2–3 figures)

Present the key data that supports your answer. Every figure should have a clear “so what” — the reader should know what to take from it without reading the surrounding text.

Good figures for this briefing might include:

  • UK electricity generation by fuel over time (the big picture)
  • CO₂ emission factors under different scenarios (the core comparison)
  • Bioenergy as a percentage of total (context for scale)
  • Import origins or transport distances (supply chain angle)

Figure guidelines:

  • Label axes with units
  • Write captions that tell the story (“Figure 1 shows that biomass grew tenfold…”), not just describe the axes (“Figure 1 shows generation vs year”)
  • Include a data source in the caption
  • Don’t include more figures than you discuss in the text

3. Caveats and uncertainty (1 paragraph)

Acknowledge what your analysis does not capture. This is not a weakness — it’s a sign of rigour. A briefing that claims perfect certainty is less trustworthy than one that honestly states its limits.

Things to consider mentioning:

  • Which emission factor scenario(s) you used and why
  • What the range of estimates looks like under different assumptions
  • What data you didn’t have (e.g. plant-level generation, detailed lifecycle analysis)
  • Whether your conclusions depend on timescale (20-year vs 100-year payback)

4. Conclusion or recommendation (2–3 sentences)

What should the reader conclude? If this were going to a minister, what would you want them to do?

You don’t have to recommend a specific policy. You can recommend further investigation, a change in accounting rules, or simply caution in interpreting the current figures. But you should say something — a briefing without a conclusion is just a data dump.

Checklist before you commit

Format

You can write your briefing in any of these formats:

  • Quarto (.qmd) — recommended if you want to include R code chunks that generate your figures inline
  • R Markdown (.Rmd) — same idea, slightly older format
  • Markdown (.md) + exported figures — write in plain text, save figures as PNG files
  • Word (.docx) + exported figures — if you prefer

Whichever format you use, commit it to your GitHub repo. Your reviewer will read it there.