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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Too late. Try to find a stand of trees in Caithness. All the standing trees in all of Caithness wouldn’t equal the Patuxent River State Forest in Maryland – and it ain’t that big.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) August 6, 2013 at 11:50 am
A lesson there for those who believe that there is no (UK) ‘joined up thinking’. The dead, as with ‘future generations’, just can’t vote.
Quiet! Don’t give them any ideas!
Gee guys, c’mon, get with the program! We’re trying to Save The Planet over here and you’re nit-picking over details? Pffft!
What are we going to burn when all the wood in the world has gone? Coal?
The batting average of AGW inspired policies and regulations continues at .000.
The madness of enviro-extremists and climate kooks is unabated, even as the evidence of their ill conceived- if not worse- demands, laws and regulations contiues to pile up.
This is a repost because its original has not appeared after an hour. If the original also appears then I apologise for the duplication.
I consider it worth reposting because others have not rebutted the item it addresses and which requires rebuttal to avoid onlookers being misled.
====================
Mike Roddy:
Your post at August 6, 2013 at 11:26 am provides a very fine example of concern trolling.
It says in total
This post is about the stupidity of burning imported wood chips in Drax.
It is not about the stupidities of wind and solar.
If wind power were sensible then oil tankers would be sailing ships.
Some people want to switch their lights on – not off – when the Sun goes down.
Both wind and solar were abandoned (along with muscle power from slaves and animals) when the greater energy intensity fossil fuels became available by use of the steam engine.
Wind and solar are inefficient, intermittent, unreliable, and expensive. It is not possible for them to power an industrialised economy.
In the unlikely event that you want some factual information concerning your daft advocacy of the impossible (i.e. wind and solar powering the UK) then you may care to read this
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/courtney_2006_lecture.pdf
Richard
So they are going to take sequestered carbon and burn it. Won’t it also give off black soot? I think the climate refugees we’ve all being waiting for are going to come from Europe to North America to get away from the stupid virus. In Canada, we have had the OECD and other UN heads come over to give speeches about how horrible Canada is (under a conservative government, of course) – how we are lagging in environmental matters and producing dirty oil, how mean we are to our native people and all. Europe was also ticked off when Harper lectured them at the G8 on what they had to do to get their economies back from the brink. I think all these attacks are really because we are one of the few non-socialist governments left in the world. I was despairing that we couldn’t hold out for ever, but this type of idiocy from outside does give me hope.
The most manipulated market in the world must be currency. What in hell is the Euro (almost a dead currency) doing being more valuable than the dollar with the intractable mess the EU economies are in and the stupid that seems to break out daily. Soros made all his money betting on the Euro but he must be investing it all back in again to keep it artificially propped up. I think their only hope over there is Germany to show them the way out- they’ve already had enough and are building coal plants.
I hope they’re also creating nuclear-powered trucks and ships.
Not that I care for this project. I just want to see the nuclear-powered trucks.
Let’s go the next logical steps: cut the trees with axes, ship it to port on wood burning steam engines, run across the Atlantic on wood-burning paddlewheels, etc. Ugh.
Rolling Stones Pianist Chuck Leavell makes the argument for wood chip exporting in the wsj:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324798904578529690411491374.html
What is the carbon footprint of $1? The subsidies that make these fiascos possible all cost energy to create. Not only that, but the interest on the debt used for the subsidies all cost energy too.
{ Peter Ward says:
August 6, 2013 at 8:02 am
However, you need to be aware that, due to the deregulated nature of the UK energy industry, Drax is now a listed company. And it owns a US subsidiary… Drax Biomass International Inc. And of course Drax power station will be obtaining its pellets from… Drax Biomass International Inc. }
(Bastrop, LA) Congratulations to Morehouse Parish for winning a $120-million economic development project, which will create 63 new direct jobs. The state began discussions with Drax in January 2012 about its plans for wood pellet facility. To secure the project, the state offered Drax a custom incentive package that will include a $1.7 million Economic Development Loan Program commitment that will not require repayment if the company meets payroll performance obligations. Drax will receive the services of the nation’s No. 1 state workforce training program, LED FastStart™, at no cost. The company also is expected to utilize Louisiana’s Quality Jobs and Industrial Tax Exemption program incentives.
Gloster, Miss. (December 13, 2012) – Governor Phil Bryant and officials from Drax Biomass International Inc. have announced the company is planning to construct a 450,000 metric ton per year wood pellet production facility in Gloster, Mississippi, in Amite County.
The facility, to be known as Amite BioEnergy, represents a substantial multi-million dollar investment by the company and will create 45 direct jobs, as well as additional indirect jobs during construction and in the transportation and forestry sectors once the plant is operational.
From 3×2 on August 6, 2013 at 12:24 pm:
But as opposed to pensioners, ‘future generations’ may become future taxpayers that can be milked for many decades, making them valuable.
However as it takes about two decades from birth to get them to the proper taxpaying stage, this may be too long to wait for those who need to fund immediate and near-term social change, or to maintain the status quo to retain power, whatever.
Wouldn’t it be much better for government if they could avoid the wait with native-born future taxpayers, and instead “import” those who could immediately or very soon become willing taxpayers, perhaps even grateful and obedient taxpayers? Such would be much more valuable to government than mewling children ever could be.
@jim Clarke
Monty Python was originally a documentary series. But when it hit America, they didn’t know what to make of it, so they added a laugh track, and, the rest is history. True story!
@Allan Watt (August 6, 2013 at 10:47 am),
Roger is just pissed that the UK is an island with 16 nuclear generating plants and they were built before the lawyers could stop them.
Charles th Moderator – Great post. To my mind, it needs one correction: “Law of Predictable Consequences” instead of Law of Unintended Consequences. And as CodeTech pointed out in an earlier comment, it is a LAW.
3×2 on August 6, 2013 at 12:24 pm
said:
The dead, as with ‘future generations’, just can’t vote.
In Chicago, Illinois they can.
Again, I wish the skeptical bloggers would have a little skepticism about their own preconceptions.
Wood pulp is a crop, like corn. It’s grown on private lands, cut with private money, and shipped by floating downstream. It’s ecologically sound even from a warmist perspective as trees fix carbon most effectively in their first years of growth.
The only reason Alabama pulp is losing to Brazilian pulp is the higher lignin percentage in Alabama wood. That doesn’t matter if you burn it.
From an Alabama point of view, burn our trash trees, please. It’ll drive up the price of our pulp. We can use the money.
Stupid is as stupid does, unfortunately in this case stupid is pretty damn stupid
Tiredoc:
At August 6, 2013 at 2:06 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/06/law-of-unintended-consequences-number-eleventy-zillion/#comment-1382756
you say
Your post may have made some sense if it had stated the “preconceptions” you think you have observed.
Burning imported wood chips instead of coal in a power station situated in a coal field and designed to burn coal makes no logical sense, no environmental sense, and no economic sense.
The stupidity of burning imported wood chips in Drax is not mitigated by the fact that – as you say – rent-seekers local to you are cashing-in on the stupidity.
Richard
Deforesting the USA is just the Brits’ way of getting even for that infamous act of treachery back in 1770 something.
For those who do not understand the UK political parties’ attitude towards the country’s policy it is this:
Conservative: Pseudo-green and goofy
Labour: Pseudo-green and goofy.
Lib Dems: Manic green and goofy squared.
UKIP: Green sceptic and sane.
The politicians have not yet realised one of the big issues in the next UK election is going to be about energy supplies, or rather the lack of future reliable energy supplies.
“Replacement of 10 percent of the coal in China by cofiring would approximately require a staggering 500 million tons of wood pellets annually.”
http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/8837/asian-markets-for-wood-pellets/
To replace 70% of China’s coal with wood pellets would thus require all the wood harvested in the entire planet. Non sustainable.
http://www.paperimpact.org/how-much-wood-is-harvested-each-year-worldwide-and-what-is-it-used-for-1941.html
So biomass should work as long as we can terraform Venus and Mars, cover them with trees and ship the chips back to Earth.
Tom Andersen:
In your excellent post at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/06/law-of-unintended-consequences-number-eleventy-zillion/#comment-1382782
you say
‘Sustainable biomass’ is solar energy collected by photosynthesis over one growing season and obtained in a wet (so needs drying) and uncompressed form.
Coal is solar energy collected by photosynthesis over geological ages and obtained in a dry and compressed form.
The idea that ‘sustainable biomass’ can significantly displace the present use of coal displays willful ignorance. Indeed, the greater energy intensity of coal is why coal displaced the use of biomass.
Richard