A retro idea in the UK is already in the US, I’d say it is a better method than some traditional power plant operations, but only works if you have an unlimited supply of trees nearby.
From the University of Manchester: How heating our homes could help reduce climate change
A radical new heating system where homes would be heated by district centres rather than in individual households could dramatically cut the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.
In a series of reports to be presented at a major conference this week, scientists at The University of Manchester claim using sustainable wood and other biofuels could hold the key to lowering harmful greenhouse gases.
Building district heating schemes which would provide heat and hot water for a neighbourhood or community would not only drastically reduce greenhouse gases but would also be highly cost effective, the authors claim.
Focus groups to test the UK public’s eagerness for such schemes have already been held and have resulted in the majority of people being in favour of the localised centres.
The plans would only provide cost savings if the heat demand is very steady. Otherwise large scale dedicated electricity plants become the most cost effective way to save greenhouse gases with biomass, with costs per unit of carbon saved around half that of a smaller facility.
The reports state that using wood in UK power stations gave greenhouse gas reductions of over 84% and even higher savings of 94% were possible for heating schemes.
Prepared by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research to highlight the effectiveness of using sustainable fuels rather than rely on fossil fuels, the series of reports will be presented this week at the UK’s first bio conference – BioTen – which begins in Birmingham today (Tuesday 21st).
Author Dr Patricia Thornley suggests using a number of supply chains, including imported forest residues and local grown energy crops, would reduce emissions and save on fossil fuels.
The key is that biomass must be grown sustainably, taking into account potential for damage to the environment or undesirable socio-economic impacts.
Previous work by University of Manchester researchers took this into account in concluding that sustainable biomass could supply at least 4.9% of the UK’s total energy demand.
Realising that potential could result in savings of 18 Mt of carbon dioxide every year, which is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions associated with around 2.7 million households.
Dr Patricia Thornley, from the School of Mechanical Aerospace and Civil Engineering at The University of Manchester, said: “Bioenergy could play a very important part in helping the UK meet greenhouse gas reduction targets that will help to reduce the impact of climate change.
“Heating homes with wood reduces greenhouse gas emissions because plants and trees absorb carbon dioxide when they are growing and then re-release it when they are burnt for heating – so the only increase in greenhouse gas emissions are those involved in things like harvesting and processing the fuel.
“This work has taken a detailed look at all those emissions and established that even when we take them into account, there are still huge greenhouse gas savings to be made.
“If we can combine the low-carbon wood with really efficient heating systems, that offers an efficient and cost-effective route to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions.
“The challenge for the industry now is to concentrate on developing new efficient and cost-effective technologies for biofuel production and to concentrate on getting the heating technologies deployed in the right environment.”
Notes for editors
Dr Thornley is available for interview on request.
The papers, Assessing the sustainability of bioelectricity supply chains and Cost-effective carbon reductions in the Bioenegy sector are available from the Press Office.
The Tyndall Centre, created in 2000, is a distributed national centre for research into climate change mitigation and adaptation, with Manchester leading on decarbonisation of energy systems and long-term coastal processes.
For media enquiries contact
Daniel Cochlin
Media Relations
The University of Manchester
Tel: 0161 275 8387
email: daniel.cochlin@manchester.ac.uk
Oh, man, this brings up memories. The Soviet Union has been doing centralized community heating and hot water for ages. Even if this does something for emissions (who knows?) I’m awfully skeptical that it would be an effective approach from an energy efficiency standpoint, and certainly not over a large portion of the population. For scattered areas, homes that already have high efficiency furnaces, etc., this doesn’t seem like a better approach.
Could have some benefit in some very specific locations, but I’m not holding my breath on any kind of large scale applications.
Military bases where I’ve been stationed use something like this system. Their power plant’s waste steam is used to heat the buildings in the winter. The drawback is that they must switch from heating to cooling at a specific time each year, because you can’t switch at a moment’s notice. So unseasonably cool spring days or warm fall days can get a little uncomfortable.
As far as using wood as fuel, well, you better have lots of space to store it. It just doesn’t have the energy density of coal, so you need lots of it.
Wood is fine for a “few” people. If everyone uses it, we would run out of trees shortly.
Reminds me of the stupid “Split Wood Not Atoms” bumper stickers of the 70’s.
Similar system in use at University of Idaho for over 22 years.
http://www.uiargonaut.com/content/view/7298/48:testset/
Cost of heating the campus with wood is 1/2 that of natural gas and waste heat melts the snow off many of the sidewalks in winter.
Go Vandals!
Integrating this concept into new construction in new planned communities would be relatively straightforward. Retrofitting this concept into existing dwellings in existing communities would be very difficult and expensive.
Recovering heat which would otherwise be rejected to the atmosphere and using it for space heating, space cooling and water heating makes eminent sense from an energy efficiency standpoint, if the economics of the overall project make sense.
Biomass is for energy production is unsustainable. Outside of tropical zones,
no one is able to display any truly workable product/methodology, except for getting funding for their own pockets. Maybe global warming will help. I guess, if we chop down every tree in the world, it’ll work for a while.
Let me get this straight…. we burn wood, one of the best and cheapest ways to sequester carbon on the planet, releasing the carbon into the atmosphere, and we thus reduce carbon emissions…..
My guess is for this plan to work, you need a forest about the size of Delaware that is being constantly replanted. At some point some one has to say enough is enough.
It’s my turn. Enough is enough.
CO2 the fuel by product that comes back home? [Recycles itself?]
If we burn coal and oil releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere, no matter where it is burned, it is equally available as plant food the world over. Automatic redistribution of the carbon wealth, sounds good, conversion by plants to food to be consumed or exported to low or non food producing countries, once consumed, will only release it back as CO2 again.
Those areas that are most efficient at capturing CO2 into food and fuels will have surplus to sell to those who don’t. The inverse of the current policy of coal and oil sales by those few countries that have plenty, only to have the consuming countries return it available to all in the air as CO2. Cash flow one way CO2 flow the other gives a new perspective in renewable energy cash flow balance?
Every world citizen has an equal chance at catching their fair share of the CO2 wealth, by their ability to grow fuel and food stuffs as they need them, and selling any surplus. Why yes in this form, a carbon economy works rather well. Incentives exist for each individual person, region, or country, to be self sustaining, so we don’t need government intervention, UN regulation, or cap and trade stuff.
Just regional answers as to how to best apply solutions needed for the local plant production capacity mode of choice. This article has hit on a good starting point from this regional perspective.
As there never has been one shred of peer reviewed empirical evidence that mankind’s emissions of carbon dioxide have any effect whatsoever on earth’s climate, this whole exercise is irrelevant except insofar as that it may be more efficient at generating and distributing energy. However, a non-distorted, non-subsidised pricing system is out and away the best determinant of what’s efficient and what’s not.
In passing, I should add that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a good thing in that plants grow faster, making it easier for people to feed themselves.
They seem not to be considering agricultural biomass?
For every ton of grain harvested there are many more tons of plant left to rot.
No one ever talks about the fact that green wood has a very large water content. Trying to burn it would be inefficient at best. Materials with a high water content CAN be burned, such as brown coal in Victoria (Australia), but the burners have to be specially designed and the flame temperature (thus thermal efficiency) will be comparatively low. The brown coal fields are up to 1000 feet (330 m) deep, so a lack of efficiency is not as important as it would be if the fuel were wet wood; wood for fuel would not be nearly as concentrated as brown coal, so collecting the fuel would be an appreciable cost.
IanM
How would that be transmitted, steam, hot water, or hot air ?
Lotta plumbing .
Well who’d have thunk it!
I remember back in the 60’s watching dad rake leaves, burn them in the gutter(kerb) & the rain washing them down the street to farming pastures which helped the grass grow. The (harmless) CO2 would be released into the atmosphere after the burn & wait for spring to return to be used by the trees to regrow the leaves. Don’t sound like rocket science to me!
Err.. how is this radical or new when Scandanavia, Russia, Alaska or even hospitals have been doing this for years? Community waste incinerated, hot water or electricty sent back to the community. It fell out of fashion a bit because waste incineration, or ‘energy recovery’ as it’s more politely known is seen as dirty. I tried to convince my council to implement this in a big housing development. Neither they, the local greens or the developers were interested though. There’s no incentive for developers to build in the infrastructure regardless of fuel source. If there were, then centralised chipper and fuel pellet centres could turn trees, garden waste and building waste fuel to complement domestic waste incineration.
“A radical new heating system where homes would be heated by district centres rather than in individual households could dramatically cut the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.”
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Transferring power generation to ever smaller entities, is the reverse of economy of scale. Need I say more. This is backwards thinking, and i’ll bet the trees agree. 🙂
Biomass energy plants make sense only where shipping of the fuel is not a factor. This at least has been the experience in Washington State where hog fuel (saw mill waste) is used to produce electricity in the NE part of the state.
In that plant they used locally provided hog fuel and the plant was competitive. When local sources of hog fuel dried up (the mills closed due to restrictive environmental policies and competition from areas without those policies), they tried to keep it going by shipping fuel from Canada and from the west coast, but transportation costs made the power too expensive.
Oh I get it, so we’ll just remove the whole amazon because that’s good for climate change. The whole point of oil/coal.
These Greenies have TOTALLY lost the plot!
It’s not new, and there are even better ways: In Salzburg (Austria), they burn the garbage and pump hot water to all homes in the city for heating. Basically it is a cost that goes on the local taxes. Given the pretty harsh winters, it makes a huge amount of sense IMO.
It would be best to just burn the low nitrogen plant material [tree trimmings] and compost the more nutrient rich parts, while leaving most crop residue on the fields.
What is a crying shame is that most insurance companies disallow re-use of storm damaged housing lumber. After the Oklahoma City tornado in 1999, the material was carted off to landfills when a lot of it could have been recycled or burned for heat, even in fireplaces. Now I wonder how many potentially recyclable BTU’s that hurricane Katrina generated??
How about expanding on this idea and tell the eco-wackos that lumber from trees for home construction is a great way to sequester CO2. Maybe this will finally get them out of the trees and out of the path of lumber companies.
We have district heating in some communities here in Sweden. It works well. Outlying homes are of course not connected to district heating but neither are they connected to municipal sewage or water in some cases.
Growing up in NYC I learned of the residential & commercial steam heating system from the Con-Edison power plants. It seems to me that where applicable this is a no-brainer regardless of fuel source.
Good Morning, Manchester. This method was quite common i Sweden when I left the country in 1989. I understand the techinques and economy of this way of heating our homes have improved essentially since then. They are also doing it down here in Western Australia. Good Luck. But I think the climate change will still go on whatever yo do. Jorgen
A reality check for wood energy in the UK would be to ask how many acres of forest would be required, taking into account that there would have to be as many years worth of acreage as the years required to grow the trees? All of that forest would also need constant management as a failure could be a problem. Thus, there should be a significant amount of spare acreage just in case. This is a lot of real estate.
They also seem to think that it will be easy and cheap to burn all of the high sulfur wood – it would be about as high sulfur as you can get. Would the chips need drying?
It’s just my impression that England is a bit short on trees and 4.5% of the energy needed is not all that much for the acreage and management required.
The alarmists are all going YEAH! That is because most of them live in Boulder Colorado backed up with mountain upon mountain of trees. Go for it Boulder! ( Just don’t complain when the mountains are not so majestic with new tiny trees. )