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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re Bert says: August 6, 2013 at 6:57 am
Bring on more of the Environmental Industrial Complex!
Had not seen this term before, but it absolutely fits, we need to use it more often so that it becomes a part of the media lingo.
“On the bright side, lots of jobs are being created in rural places where unemployment was 40% as lumber mills shut down”…”The forests do need to be harvested to manage them properly, but this is not the best idea for use of the harvested timber.”
Agreed!
Pamela Gray:
At August 6, 2013 at 6:51 am you suggest
Too late. It was done.
Cattle slaughtered because of the BSE scare were burned in the same power station (i.e. Drax) which is the subject of this thread.
Richard
patrioticduo says: August 6, 2013 at 7:13 am “Atlas Shrugged becomes more and more prescient every day.”
You need to be more cognizant of Ayn Rand’s and AS’s philosophical provenance, all the way back to Platonism versus Aristotelianism, and Nietzsche and Hegel. It’s a good story but not philosophically reliable. For no other reason than Peikoff’s absconding with Randian Objectivism.
CTM: If memory serves, to help suppress brown outs in coming years as electric demand outweighs supply, the UK is also signing up large electricity users (industrial plants, hospitals, large office buildings, etc.) to a program where they will run their emergency generators when asked.
Regards
US forests declined rapidly until 1900, when coal replaced wood as the primary fuel source. Only over the past 100 years have US forests begun to recover. Now it appears US forests are once again to be cut down and burned.
http://forestry.about.com/library/bl_us_forest_acre_trend.htm
@ferdberple – Yea, i can see the environmentalists going for that!
http://youtu.be/roFB7bGCAgc
I suggest that they do not burn anything.
That woul;d solve all kinds of “problems”.
BradProp1 said @ur momisugly August 6, 2013 at 6:30 am
I must be a moron then! Firewood energy costs me ~$AU0.03 per kwHr and heats my home, provides hot water and cooks my food. Because we consume very little electricity, it costs us nearly $AU0.30 per kwHr, ten times the cost of firewood per unit. Of course, if I was “intelligent” as you, I could obtain all of my energy needs from electricity and “reduce” the cost to ~$AU0.20 per kwHr.
Maybe if they could find a spotted owl in the forest …
Tilbury power station on the River Thames opposite to Gravesend has had to stop using woodchip pellets because of them catching on fire in the stockpiles.
It’s also true that Drax power station is only miles awy from some of the biggest reserves of coal in the UK
If you’re planning on visiting Britain – bring your own batteries!
Sadly, I live in the UK and have to put up with this insanity. Any criticism of the government brings the Police round your house with Tasers.
I am a 51 year old man with Ischemic Heart disease having had two heart attacks. I was Tasered last May after an argument about my Online Nationalist views. That put me in hospital on a de fib. Reason: Two young coppers thought I was being aggressive.
mogamboguru says:
August 6, 2013 at 7:16 am
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.
—
The Lueneburger Heide is actually mostly forested again – it is only a few places that are kept free of forest and covered with heather for the sake of tourism.
Also note that most of that wood was used in former centuries for boiling down the brine pumped from underground in the Lueneburg saltworks. This used to be a major operation that lasted through several centuries. The salt was shipped via Lauenburg and Luebeck across the Baltic to Scandinavia, where it was used to pickle fish that was then sold to Mediterranean countries. The salt trade enriched both Lueneburg and Luebeck, and both cities have some splendid architecture extant from those times and are well worth a visit.
“BradProp1 says:
August 6, 2013 at 6:30 am
It would make more sense to burn coal and offset the Co2 by planting trees. Only a moron would burn trees!”
Hey, I burn wood! If a tree needs removal in my yard, it’s going to heat my house in the winter. Apparently, if I were a large enough enterprise I could even get the government to subsidize the process. And that’s where it all goes wrong….
Windmills being built across the land, burning wood for fuel, scare stories when the sun is shining in summer, people freezing to death in winter. What century are we in again?
Beat me to it. I don’t but wonder if this scheme were subject to a life cycle analysis it wouldn’t show a net loss of energy. Is anything so silly that subsidy cannot promote it?
Bob Tisdale says:
August 6, 2013 at 7:23 am
a program where they will run their emergency generators when asked.
=============
We had the same situation in Papua New Guinea (north of Australia). Electrical supplies were unreliable so everyone had gas/diesel generators. It was not unusual to have multiple power failures a day from the power company.
Mains electricity was so expensive that it actually cost more to buy power from the power company than it did to run your own generators, so the government passed a law making it illegal to run your generators when there was power available from the power company.
One can foresee the time when this happens in the UK. Didn’t they just sign a law in Spain, making it illegal for people to use their own solar panels to replace more expensive power from state sponsored (monopoly) power companies.
Governments are not only promoting a monopoly product, now they are forcing you to buy it rather than turn to cheaper alternatives.
I know some folks who are doing conversions of small coal-fired boiler/power plants to wood fired. They do them very close to the wood supply and rely on green energy credits. As long as the wood is close by and relatively cheap they will do ok. Preparation of dry pellets and shipping a lower energy density fuel several thousand miles is an economic and ecological loser for all the reasons already mentioned. But, as Robert Heinlein said “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”
Our politicians when asked to explain this lunacy report that the UK is setting an example for the rest of the world…….
I’m afraid that there will never be another empire, Victoria!
Apparently the use of a synonym of one of the 7 words got my previous post round filed. Original sanitized post follows:
Why does the Green energy agenda always entail taking something useful like wood or food and wasting energy to grow/transport it just to burn it to make some energy? The whole ________ universe runs on nuclear chemistry. Why do we think ultimately that we aren’t going to have to do the same?
I am so, so ,so, so, so, s, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, sorry, but yes it is all true, it’s due to ill thought through legislation dictated down from on high by half-wit (polite) European Commissioners, (who are in large part failed socialist ex-politicians, who couldn’t exert power before so do so by stealth) who run the Peoples Democratic Republic of the European Union, or the European Union of Socialist Republics. We are destroying your forests to keep our lights on because of Global Warming! We have a half-wit for a President & we didn’t even get to elect him!!!!!! It is an obscenity to be honest. This is the “post-democratic” world in which we find ourselves in Europe. Guess what chaps & chapesses, you’re next with the lunacy legislation, & just like us, democracy is circumvented by your President empowering your EPA to pass laws without a check or balance, to see if it’s makes sense, as they do so under health & safety crap!!!
Please note that the BBC’s mildly questioning report is by super greenie CO2 will kill us all ‘Environment Correspondent’ Roger Harrabin. For him to express any doubts at all is earth shattering.
ferdberple says: August 6, 2013 at 7:36 am “Mains electricity was so expensive that it actually cost more to buy power from the power company than it did to run your own generators, so the government passed a law making it illegal to run your generators when there was power available from the power company.”
My Island can be self-sufficient on 2.5 MWe diesel-electric generators. FedGov is issuing limited pollution permits necessitating all but our newest pair be disabled – no back-up.
Ah, yes…. Leftist often have a hard time seeing the forest through the trees…
This is just a literal example of that sad phenomenon…..
You could not make this up …… its like the story of how the Spanish government has to sell bonds on the international markets (at 7%) so they can fulfill their EU obligations to share in bail outs of (eg. Italy) with ony a 3% return.
Utter madness.
And it only seems like yesterday that Dud Dudley was having problems with militant charcoal burners trashing his Sea-cole burning blast furnaces…
See Dud’s book Martellum Martis 1665 for details.