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
Hmmm … burning trees for heat. Somebody kick me. I seem to be in a mental rut about people in Africa contributing to desertification by burning everything they can collect so that they can cook food and survive the chilly nights.
Take a look at the massive forests in Western Europe. Most of which have regrown after being decimated when wood was a primary source of heating.
As for community heating, I’m reminded of the experience in the GDR (East Germany) where during winter, one could easily tell which were the heating pipes leading to the soul-less, Stalinist apartment blocks. Much of the heating went into melting snow and ice, above and below the pipes.
In the West, I sometimes helped to split wood and to stack it in readiness for winter. I remember that there were 3 or 4 stacks; each about 1.5 metres in diameter and 2 metres tall. One of them was always “drying” IIRC and the others were needed to run the big stove and the copper boiler for washing and bathing throughout the winter. That was the 1960’s. It could’ve been the 1860’s except that there was electric lighting, a refrigerator, freezer and a television.
Central community heating is not new. Soviets probably were the largest users of such systems.
According to:
http://www.census.gov/apsd/cqc/cqc27.pdf
For the USA – “Surprisingly, wood still was used as the main heating fuel in 11 percent of the housing units in nonmetro areas, compared with 2 percent in metro areas.”
According to:
http://www.woodheat.org/why/theargument.htm
“Almost 3.2 million Canadian households burn wood in fireplaces, stoves and furnaces. This number represents 26 percent of all households. In Ontario, the popularity of wood burning is well below the national average, with only 21 percent, or about 940,000 households burning wood. Still, millions of Ontarians and millions more people across Canada build wood fires for heat and enjoyment each winter. By any measure, wood is an important residential energy resource, especially in rural areas.”
Wood is already providing significant rural heat. I am nervous with the idea of fueling cities via our forests. They already supplied the lumber to build them and the paper that keeps them running. Displacing food crops for biomass is no better. Crop residue is needed for healthy, friable soil. Seaweed is relatively untapped but may contain more unintended consequences. GK
The irony here is that a large segment of the “green” lobby industry does not want you to cut any trees for any reason. Irony two is that it is sometimes claimed that we can obtain the wood needed for burning from “waste” but wood waste at the mill is already used for particle board and burned at mills to generate energy and “waste” wood at the logging site is being legally bound to be left of the ground to protect biodiversity (besides being horribly expensive to harvest, being branches or stumps for example). Irony three is that competition for wood will raise it’s price (econ 101) and therefore the cost of paper and lumber — ie. it is not free. Irony four is that England is importing wood chips from the USA, so they can avoid the complaints about cutting trees.
Blimey, burning wood to keep us warm. Brilliant! Never thought of that. What is the really astonishing thing is that this is hailed as such a breakthrough. It is such a no brainer.
Pellet stoves are run by electricity, right. At least the ones I have seen. So when the power goes out? I have a gas furnace and fireplace. The fireplace can run with electricity but I do have a small generater to power the furnace and a few lights. Globull warming has not hit my area yet so at 30 below I like to have backup.
R. de Haan says:
September 25, 2010 at 7:15 am
“In Germany, Ausrtria and Switzerland automated wood pallet burners have become the latest “Green” fashion.”
Pellet, not pallet.
BTW, some commenters have mentioned natural gas as the best solution. I agree for the moment. But just for fun i googled hydrates and combined the search with Shell, BP et.al.
It looks like there are some projects underway to exploit methane hydrates from permafrost and from the ocean shelfs… GM, if you’re listening… don’t hold your breath for peak anything yet…
Oh, and the automated pellet burners clog up frequently due to breakage. Save a little on heating fuel (well, that was before cheap natgas), and spend a *LOT* on repairs.
Many communities in the USA have been there and done that and moved on to other systems. Google finds 263,000 titles for “community heating USA” Even the systems that were coal or gas fired mostly went the way of the mammoth by the 1930s. Don’t know why, but maintenance costs and inability to accommodate new building probably ranked high, along with the host of reasons cited by posters above. Here in the US the tree huggers ain’t gonna let it happen if it means cutting down trees or even harvesting dead ones. Personally, if this idea gains traction, I’m going to purchase the patent for buggy whips and get in that business.
Boy, you hit in right on the nose, feet2thefire. I just thought those in Boulder would jump all over the idea (sarc) and here’s a little story of what prompted that comment, this goes way back.
You said Denver/Boulder in the 70’s. I remember that highway patrol tower at the interstate intersection you could barely see if you were not within a couple of miles from it for the haze.
That was also the same “vacation” when I got to know what an eco-crazy sounds like up close, turned out to be a whole bunch of them, and a whole weekend. Lordy, lordy have mercy and protect us… from them! When they started talking of “getting political” I had a feeling then that trouble may lay down the road of time. Now it is 2010 and guess what!
I’m all for this on a very local scale of this idea if the soot is also handled. Small towns with excess material, wood or otherwise, great, if they can import waste from elsewhere, great. I’m a conservationalist, if it’s managed right and makes sense maximizes resources, I’m usually for it. But liquid fluoride thorium reactors seem a real possible answer for the long run. I’ve read of the other thorium designs and that one seems the safest and totally efficient. Seems India just might beat us to it and I’m happy for them if they succeed. India seem the country with is developing the most innovative experimental reactor designs today.
Let’s see, India becomes the leading developed nation, the West becomes third-world and burns the trees above Boulder to stay warm and whoa, who did this? Déjà vu. Might all come down to the fact that those mentioned above couldn’t have the entire mountain for themselves and mankind was somehow encroaching on “their privacy” and they were going to do everything in their power to stop “it”. I always thought “it” was “all of the neighbors moving in”, but, maybe, just maybe I was wrong and they really meant “mankind”. May never know.
So would Boulder and its ecofriendly populous with plenty of wood we now know is very ecofriendly though soft take this very real and green alternative? Your right, never. Would they go for everyone else doing it? Probably, as long as we don’t touch their mountains and trees. And a tiny wee bit of me, is that on my right shoulder or left shoulder, that thinks cutting Boulders foot-hill trees down for warmth would be a great and good learned lesson for a bunch who live there above Boulder but, there’s really no reason for them or anyone else to suffer if we’ll just be smart now, this time around, and time is short.
I like the majestic mountains of Colorado too. So, Boulder bunch, you’re forgiven. I hope you have forgiven the neighbors that moved in on “your mountain” and have also stopped targeting other people who live on this world too with your very narrow view of this world.
Hardwood? For me the hardwood trees should be for affordable fine homes and furniture and, if co2 bother you, where it’s sequestered for decades if not centuries and maybe we could instead just burn the —- sawdust that is used today to make “furniture” and “homes” that are good to last a decade or two, one week if you ever get them wet, and a wish that for once humanity might make some real sensible progress. It’s there for us to do if we can just get the people’s views out of the way that stand in the way.
There, finally got that off my chest. Now if they can just stop that mantra.
This community heating has been in use for decades in Finland. There is a chemical plant few miles from our house and it’s cooling system is integrated to a closed water system. This and lots of similar constructions provide quite a large portion of my home city’s heating. Lately there has been a move away from community heating. That “waste heat” has become increasingly expensive and more efficent alternative heating schemes have popped up.
Helsinki (The capital. Population 580’000) is one of the few cities in Finland in which the Green Party has a significant representation. Because of this, they have planned to start producing their energy by burning renewable wood. But there is problem.
Finland is sparsely populated, relatively large country (area and population similar to Arizona), with 86% of the land area being forests. Yet to produce the energy the city needs would require burning enough wood to equal the entire growth of the forest from the entire area of Finland. The emissions from transportation alone would be gigantic.
Now if this kind of system is not practical for a country with relatively small population and large forests near by, I have to be extremely sceptical about the practicality of using it elsewhere.
Also this kind of system is not renewable if the nurtients are not returned to the forests after burning. After a few decades tree growth would start to slow down and eventually stop. Transporting the ash back to the forests would increase the cost even more.
@ur momisugly Bernd Felsche September 25, 2010 at 8:02 am:
I’m having a little trouble here with the idea that burning wood reduces emissions.
‘ 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.’ and ‘ including imported forest residues and local grown energy crops, would reduce emissions and save on fossil fuels.’
Burning carbon produces CO2. No way around it. What burns in the wood is carbon. If we didn’t burn the wood, it would live for years and years–absorbing CO2– or, if dead (dead trees or sawdust) slowly slowly degrade in the natural environment, slowly releasing CO2.
Burning wood increases CO2 emissions over NOT burning the wood. Not burning the wood reduces CO2 — burning increases CO2. Nothing wrong with burning sawmill waste, I used to heat my house that way, burning log slabwood (the rounded edges cut off logs when milling lumber). Cheap heat but certainly no reduction in CO2! Does save burning natural gas or fuel oil though.
The whole premise is silly.
Oops, I think Patty forgot that when a tree has been cut down for fuel, it is no longer available to absorb carbon dioxide.
Of course since the distribution of heating/cooling would be centralized your house may very well be regulated by someone who determines that 45degrees in the winter and 98degrees in the summer is all you deserve, Citizen!!!
All Hail the Central Committee….
I’m laughing at the commenters here who think that burning wood releases CO2, but letting the trees rot on the ground doesn’t. City folks, I’m guessing. Where I live, there’s a pretty much unlimited supply of dead pine trees since the environmentalists won’t allow spraying for pine beetles. Either we burn them for heat, or they decompose. Either way, the carbon is released to the atmosphere.
Several of my neighbors heat their homes and hot water with wood furnaces located near their homes. Myself, I just use my Rumford fireplace.
From: DirkH on September 25, 2010 at 9:39 am
Thanks for mentioning that, it actually sounded sort of reasonable as “pallet.” There are more people using “outdoor furnaces” burning anything from logs to paper waste, with sources of scrap wood like discarded shipping crates and old pallets actively scavenged for. Firing a small power/heat plant with a steady supply of unneeded pallets didn’t sound that bad. The “compression of the pallets” part was a bit of a comprehension hangup, although you can certainly break up or cut up a pallet and the remains occupy less space.
Oh, and as an adjunct to wood pellet burners, similar models burning corn were becoming more popular. Yup, corn, dried and right off the cob, people were burning food because it was that cheap. Then the bio-fuels craze hit and corn prices doubled or more… ☻
Maybe the concept becomes feasible with fast-growing genetically modified trees. Like the ones that are secretly grown in the UK. According to the Independent, 2006:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/gm-trees-are-being-grown-secretly-in-uk-476219.html
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 25, 2010 at 4:44 pm
“[…]Thanks for mentioning that, it actually sounded sort of reasonable as “pallet.” There are more people using “outdoor furnaces” burning anything from logs to paper waste, with sources of scrap wood like discarded shipping crates and old pallets actively scavenged for. ”
Same in Germany. Don’t let my brother in the proximity of disused pallets… they’ll be gone. It’s not automatic, but he’ll happily burn them in his stove.
While central steam heat was popular in the old Soviet Union, it’s
also popular in Manhattan! Con Edison has been doing this for
over a century. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system
Yeah, it’s Wikipedia, but sometimes it’s useful.
How come:
burning wood from trees – OK
burning wood from coal – Not OK.
this is a joke – our local sugar mill burns the cane fibre as Biomass and calls itself a Green power station.
Before they used to compost the fibre and put it back into the soil as a high quality fertiliser. It was called bagasse and the carbon in the cane fibre was sequestered back into the soil. I used to get a trailer load for my garden every spring, anything would grow in it.
So now they make fertiliser out of oil and put it on the cane fields and burn the cane fibre and call it green biomass. Someone’s pulling someone’s leg.
am I missing something?
From: John Cooper on September 25, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Oh please, for Rumfords you must supply a helpful link or two for the uninitiated.
Why they work so good.
Main page, much info and a source of supplies/parts.
There, that’s better. ☺
From: LED on September 25, 2010 at 6:37 pm
I concur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_York_City_steam_explosion
There’s at least one of these systems in Italy, but it uses sawdust and woods chips from a lumber mill and furniture factories.
In the town of Parma the idea was to use residual heat from a garbage-fuelled power station for public heating system; a considerable length of insulated pipe has been laid underground and users would have a specific meter to measure the influx of hot water and pay accordingly. However, there are vehement protests against the waste power station, so I don’t know what will happen.
Pete says: Biomass is for energy production is unsustainable. Outside of tropical zones, no one is able to display any truly workable product/methodology
These folks:
http://www.treepower.org/yields/main.html
are getting 30 to 60 tons / acre for 2nd year growth (so ought to rise in the following few years) of cottonwood and Eucalyptus (respectively) in Florida. More “subtropical” than tropical…
There were also some folks in Sweden getting similar yields in a power from wood operation (though I’ve lost the link right now).
It’s actually fairly reasonable. You don’t cut down existing forest, you farm new ones. Turns out the wood pulp industry already has discovered that fastest growth is in the firs 5 years or so; so it’s better to plant trees like corn rather than like a forest.
I once figure out that to cover ALL my energy needs would take about the amount of land on my lot. So not that much really. Though I think the better idea is to run all the yard waste, paper and plastic trash, etc through the power plant. Basically, use the wood for something first, then burn it…