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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Once wood chip project is exhausted there is an environmentally superior plan B:
using existing generating power to extract hydrogen from sea water by electrolysis. UK will have excess of the sea water supply, to its current requirement, due to forthcoming sea level rise.
So acquired hydrogen will be burned in the existing gas powered stations.
This has two advantages:
a) There is no CO2 emitted by burning hydrogen
b) water released by such process could be used
1. for irrigation, since climate scientist predicted that in decades to come England will be as arid as Spain, or if that does not come materialise
2. this pure water will be return to the Atlantic Ocean reducing the ocean’s acidification.
(no need to put end sarc, is there?)
Bob Tisdale @ur momisugly 7:23am:
Yes, and using all those diesel generators won’t add much CO2 to the atmosphere, will they?/Sarc.
I despair for my country. The lack of basic commonsense and justice is mind-blowing.
I’ll try again:
“Planting trees is a great way to offset your carbon footprint and become carbon neutral. Through photosynthesis trees absorb carbon dioxide to produce oxygen and wood.”
http://www.carbonfootprint.com/plantingtrees.html
But also in Great Britain they have figured out that burning trees produces less CO2 than burning coal. So, logically they refitted their power plants to burn trees instead of coal. They soon ran out of trees to burn so now the U.S. is providing them with trees.
What can go wrong with this plan?
After the wood pellets run out, what do they burn next? People?
Why not build combination coal/wood fired plants in a forest, then run the stacks horizontal into the forest to help accelerate the forest growth? Sell the wood for building materials and then you get your wood waste.
Chris says:
August 6, 2013 at 6:51 am
……….In fact they are proposing a reduction of Co2 by 80% which should effectively shut down British Industry…….
It is not only British industry, the CEO’s of the power generation companies have already warned of blackouts in UK inside two years due to the EU mandated closure of perfectly serviceable coal fired power stations, which (as tallbloke reports) are often literally on top of coalfields.
If the predictions of forthcoming severely cold winters are correct, Cameron, Clegg, Milliband and the assembled morons in the Commons will have many dead people on what passes for their consciences.
RC Saumarez @ur momisugly 8:23am:
Thank you for one laugh today, albeit a wry one.
The University of Missouri has burned wood in their power plants for decades, and while one plant is switching to geothermal (in Rolla) the main campus is changing to a significant wood and biomass feed.
Okay, but you don’t seriously think these pellet plants exist only for UK orders do you? Those orders merely went to the highest bidder for that capacity over a specified period. Otherwise, the fiber would go somewhere else.
Definately NOT the smartest species on the planet.
Don’t people throughout the world, but mostly in the Middle East, rather routinely burn effigies of U.S. presidents? Now, if Obama continues his stellar Middle East policies, which he just simply can’t tell us about, is it not possible that he will be the most effigiently burned U.S. president of all time (particularly in Egypt)? Couldn’t some enterprising young green savior wannabe figure out some way to harness the energy from all these burning U.S. president effigies rather than burning wood, or even worse, wood that’s been dead for a couple million years? Granted our (ok, Europe’s) energy supplies would still be coming from the Middle East (and, of course Pakistan) but at least it wouldn’t be those supposedly dirty fossil fuel supplies but instead coming from otherwise wasted (insert your own adjective) U.S. president burning effigies.
Complete madness of course, what next shipping millions of tons of liquid gas from Qatar /Sarc
I may have a story that tops this:
When Sweden had a referndum too abandon Nuclear in 1980 they decided sustainable energy had to make up the majority of the new mix. Several thermal power plants were built/converted for biofuel but even in Swededen that is in short supply. So they imported a lot of peat from the Baltics. Now peat is dried, dead moss from old bogs and it takes about 1000years/m to grow it. Haarvesting it is clearly not sustainable but never mind, as long as it goes into the statistics as biofuel and is excempt from fossile fuel taxes.
The heat density of peat is low so you will have a small peat mountain outside the Power plant. One of these caught fire and it turned out it couldn’t be extinguished , the dry peat kept on smoldering no matter how much water they poured on and they had to let the mountain burn itself out. To prevent this from happening again it ws decided to store the peat in 40′ shipping containers so then you had a container mountain. The cost of this folly was covered over the electricity bill and was quite affordable because it only happened on a relatively small scale, not like Danish wind or German Solar/Wind efforts.
My explanation is that when you take economy and common sence out of the decission process you can end up with “solutions” that in retrospect everyone agree are mindbogglingly stupid.
What happened to the containers you ask? They switched from peat to a fuel that is renewable and available for free – garbage. In the end sense prevails.
Resourceguy: There used to be a thriving trade with Norway, shipping ice to the UK for the English Gentlemen to put in their scotch on warm summer evenings.
It was considered superior to English ice stored in ice-houses on the big estates, and a more reliable source given that not all winters produced good crop of ice.
Lots of excellent comments above, about the energy stupidity of this “enterprise.” However, a few observations and clarifications are in order:
* Regardless of the leaps made in technology over the past few years, it remains that more than 50% of the wood volume harvested every year around the world is used for FUEL, heating, cooking, or both, primarily in the 3rd and developing worlds.
* While piles of wood chips can and do spontaneously combust, they need not do so if handled properly. Pulp mills around the world have mountains of chips piled in their wood yards, and these days rarely deal with spontaneous combustion as long as the pile is moved and utilized promptly.
* Several have repeated the canard that harvesting of trees equals deforestation. In the 3rd world maybe, but certainly not in North America and other parts of the world with enlightened forest management ethics – oh and BTW, mature, developed economies that rely upon low cost, high energy fuels such as coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear.
* Wood pellets can be an excellent source of heat for individual homes, but burning them to produce electricity and thinking you are saving the planet is madness.
@ur momisugly Resourceguy, what’s your point? The law of supply and demand means that along with this new demand will come new, additional supplies.
I can only imagine what this will do to the price/availability of pellets here in the U.S. My understanding is that supplies can already run tight. Lots of folks invested (unwisely, I think) in pellet stoves when the price of oil spiked a few years back. Although Uncle Sam probably kicked in generously for those stoves, being “green”.
And the insanity just rolls on and on … in the Daily Telegraph you can read how the Liberal Democrats now want to ban petrol and diesel cars from UK roads by 2040.
Fortunately, as their alliance with the Conservatives has been widely (and rightly, IMO) regarded as traitorous activity among their rank and file members, it should matter little what these particular dipsticks think for quite a long time into the future. If we have a future, that is.
Maybe the UK could take all the unneeded extra “U”s they put into words like “color” and burn them.
This has been known about for at least 2 years. Drax power station is a standalone coal fired station (listed separately at the london stock exchange) which produces a fairly large % of the UK’s electricity. The EU demands that the UK stop using coal so rather than have an energy policy all governments decided to delay and provaricate until there would be no other choice but to shut it or fuel it with wood. The rest of the stupidity is there for all to see. What I find so fascinating is that highly paid, ‘intelligent’ people can blunder along, putting the UK’s industry and people in danger, without being call to explain their actions.
Sigmundb says:
August 6, 2013 at 9:39 am
Somewhere in the UK, from memory, there is a peat fire that has been burning underground for decades. Can’t put it out.
Stacey says:
August 6, 2013 at 9:22 am
Complete madness of course, what next shipping millions of tons of liquid gas from Qatar /Sarc
Unwarranted sarcasm. Energy density per fuel cost to transport is fundamentally different and if you are a greenie loon very important. Cost per joule per mole co² is what counts.
Will the UK take our used tires that garbage dumps no longer accept?
They can have mine for nothing.
No one on here yet has sussed why it really really is a good idea to burn American wood .
There is a huge industry in Britain in composting food waste ( every household has special bins to put the scraps in ) to produce high quality plant fertilizer food . Now the composting medium naturally becomes acidic which cuts down the composting efficiency , so a cheap neutralizing source of alkaline material is needed in very large quantities ……… wood ash from Drax !
Plus , as neat wood ash is itself a good fertilizer that can be put directly on the land then a vast supply of wood ash will be great for the growing of our Nations food .
The fertility of the USA forests will be helping to keep Britain in both food heat and power , not forgetting of course the fertilizing effects of the vast quantities of burnt wood CO2 constantly wafting over the countries farmland and gardens ,
A win win situation for our nutrient deprived little country , we chopped down and burnt our own forests years ago and really do need a cheap replacement , so thanks you guys in America !!
A snake eating it’s own tail.
As in Orwell predicted in “1984”… declining technology is being portrayed as an advancement for mankind. Someone is using the book, as a blueprint, for the new world order. GK
Sitting here in southwest Montana, breathing smoke from forest fires in Idaho Oregon and Washington, the idea of shipping wood pellets to the UK sounds pretty good.
For years our local forests have been managed by tree huggers and a federal judge. The result of this peculiar combination of expertise is a forest full of trashy undergrowth ravaged by beetles when it’s not on fire.
Not wanting to be left out of the Green Team, the US Forest Service has declared that the nation will, among other requirements: …”live with wildland fire.” USFS.GOV: “A National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy”.
Sorry, UK, no pellets from here, we’re going to turn all that wood into CO2 and lung disease in situ.