By charles the moderator
We missed this story in May, but in order to replace the use of coal in the UK, power stations are being refitted to burn wood chips. But the UK doesn’t have enough forests to supply the wood chips, (biofuel) so…
Wait for it…
Wait…
Yup, power companies in the UK are planning on purchasing timber in the United States to be converted to wood chips to be shipped across the Atlantic to burn in the previously coal-fired power plants.
From the BBC
Swamp forests in the US are being felled to help keep the lights on in the UK. Is this really the best way to combat climate change?
Environmentalists are trying to block the expansion of a transatlantic trade bringing American wood to burn in European power stations.
The trade is driven by EU rules promoting renewable energy to combat climate change.
Many millions of tonnes of wood pellets will soon be shipped annually to help keep the lights on in the UK. Other EU nations may follow.
Critics say subsidising wood burning wastes money, does nothing to tackle climate change in the short term, and is wrecking some of the finest forests in the US.
The insanity of this is difficult for me to put in perspective, but it seems comparable to shining spotlights on solar collectors.
Read the full BBC story here.
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Not only that, but diesel generators are being installed all over the country to top up power that windmills are not producing. The National Grid site shows current demand at 36.88 GW of which .25GW is being produced by windmills.
The insanity of UK government climate policy is beyond description or understanding. All their data comes from the Met Office or the IPCC and there is not the slightest attempt to obtain independent non idealogical data.
In fact they are proposing a reduction of Co2 by 80% which should effectively shut down British Industry.
While most of the world is beginning to realise that CAGW is nonsense the British soldiers on with eyes shut and ears closed. Its quite unbelievable.
All the veggies here think we shouldn’t eat meat. Okay. Burn meat for heat instead. I can just see it now. Bessie, the 4H cow, gets sold to the UK to help keep the children warm there. Somebody make a poster. I’m sure the kids will go for it.
@Pamela Gray – just think of the “pollution” from that! You would have Burger King subsidizing it, and everyone’s mouth watering and trying to get DOWN wind of the power plants! 😉
The stupid…..It burns!
The “Bishop Hill” (Andrew W. Montford) blog covered this insanity very nicely over the past year beginning with: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/9/26/wood-insanity-be-the-reason.html
This is a great idea! Perhaps it will catch on and the US timber industry will add jobs and tax revenue at the expense of our competitors industry and tax base. As the saying goes; “a fool and his money soon part”.
can you just see the conference /meeting where they, with straight faces discuss how they will do this to save the world.
that is a special kind of delusion which an eternity in hell wont be enough to satisfy the stupid that they are.
Bring on more of the Environmental Industrial Complex!
Madness. And they sit around at their cocktail parties smugly asserting the creativity of their problem-solving and how sustainable it all is.
M.Courtney:
Yes its a crazy situation in the UK. North Northamptonshire is being overun by wind farms, not because there is a lot of wind there, but because the connection charges are low, being in the centre of the grid.
In the UK there are three basic rules for Government and the Civil Service:
1. never employ anyone who has the slightest knowledge or experience of the job to be done
2. always ignore and reject any form of proven technology or working practice
3. maximise wastage (of time, money and resources) by attempting to develop the most stupid, ludicrous and illogical methodology possible.
So the logic is that wood chips from the US are a RENEWABLE source of energy, and thus complies with “green” sources of energy. However, burned wood chip give off CO2 as well, right? Reduced forests in the US cause reduced CO2 sinks, right? The wood has to be transported to Europe using energy that more than likely increases CO2 levels, right? Now I finally realize that not only do increased levels of atmospheric CO2 make climate scientists stupid, but they also make everyone stupid. If ignorance is bliss, what is stupidity?
I’m sure we can find some old growth forest here in Oz to sell to the Poms.
Why not burn Flour though, it has similar calorific value to Coal, and with the right flour air mix burns really well, what’s that – People will starve – never stopped them before.
I make my point yet again, the next best fuel after coal is Flour, not Nuclear.
Will they also sip glacier water bottled in Iceland and shipped over?
I have known about this being in the works for quite a while. This is what happens when government imposses a tax to make a product unusable. The power plant doesn’t want to switch from coal to wood, but they cannot operate at a big loss caused by the carbon tax. They will be getting a subsidy for being renewable. Of course shutting down is not an option since wind is such a large part of the UK’s power grid now. This is all being forced on the UK by the EU, who signed the Kyoto agreement.
I also forgot to mention, while piling on, it is the LAW of unintended consequences, not the suggestion, or the possibility, or the probability…. IT’S THE LAW… and around here we obey the law, mister. No no, not law in the legal sense, LAW in the Science sense, like Newton’s three famous ones.
In my experience (not opinion, experience) it’s always those with the best intentions that are bitten by this particular Law, because they are blinded to the possibility of a “downside” due to the nobleness of their plan.
Like our friend in the other thread who thinks forced sterilization is a good thing, and yet he would be completely blindsided by the unintended consequences (rioting in the streets, wars, panicked residents fleeing the country, etc.) Of course, others see these consequences coming from a Gazillion miles away, but hey… we’re sorta experiencing the same Law in effect in Alberta, in the “unintended” flooding from building neighborhoods on the beautiful green riparian floodplains.
It does the worst thing possible for the climate. You cut down the trees, you cut down the low-level clouds. Well documented. In Africa they have learned this lesson and started to plant trees in order to make the temperature more even. The “green” people deserve a colour change to brown.
Don’t ask how many million acres of forest will be required to fuel just the Drax power station.
I need to buy some shares in logging truck manufacturers.
Why not bury the woodchips in the US and dig up the coal in the UK?
I know, it is as stupid as the original plan, but it will be cheaper.
Atlas Shrugged becomes more and more prescient every day.
On the bright side, lots of jobs are being created in rural places where unemployment was 40% as lumber mills shut down. The company I used to work for had an allotment of several million acres of timber in Ontario that they wanted to use to make alternative fuel. But the economics for building a plant to convert solid feed into liquid hydrocarbon fuel was not economical. So, they never built that plant. It would have created a good number of jobs felling trees and making fuel, but even government subsidies (RIN’s) couldn’t make the number work.
But making wood pellets is far cheaper. Solid feed is going to solid product, a much easier conversion process. Only problem is, the trees would be cut in Canada and the US, and for the Canadian situation, Panamax freighters would be loaded with pellets in Vancouver and go through the Panama Canal to get to England. Cost is something like $200/ton for 7500 Btu/lb fuel to replace maybe $30-40/tone coal that has 11,000 Btu/lb. Numbers will vary for coal depending on source and mining costs, but the wood pellet energy content and delivered prices are pretty good.
The forests do need to be harvested to manage them properly, but this is not the best idea for use of the harvested timber. Maybe houses for homeless (Habitat for Humanity) would have a better use for the wood.
This is no longer a plan. It has been going on for a couple of years in the Netherlands already:
http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/en/522380/rwe-innogy/technologies/biomass/procurement-international/waycross-georgia/
Subsidised at an estimated 5,000 Euro per hour.
We have a gazillion acres of bug killed line here in BC. Need to expand the current pellet plant capacity to supply the European demand. Any investors?
Shortly before the use of coal became common in the 19th century, Europe was almost entirely de-forested due the excessive use of wood for cooking/heating, as well as for construction work.
Some areas like the Luneburger Heide in Germany are still treeless.
Gas, coal and oil are the most environmentally friendly fuels availlable today.
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
Wait. Was there no one in Britain who stopped and said, “This is bloody stupid?”
I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK, I sleep all night and I work all day. I chop down trees, and chip them up, and ship them to the UK. We need to reduce our emissions, so we burn trees instead of coal. I’m a lumberjack…