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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Didn’t ‘Fast Terry’ McAuliff try to convert a Virginia paper mill to a fuel pellet facility using lots of Federal magic money? Since he is the consummate inside dealer in all things green, could the Brits be in cahoots with our lovable Gubernatorial candidate? Would be nice to be able to follow the money. Dan
This absolutely proves that these people have a mental disorder. Coal is what SAVED our forests from being used up as fuel back in the 1800’s and now they’re threatened again – by NITWITS. Shut them OFF and let them FREEZE if they’re too stupid to use fossil fuel.
Rick K says:
August 6, 2013 at 8:58 am
After the wood pellets run out, what do they burn next? People?
=======================================
Oh Noes!
Soylent wood pellets is (are) people!
Is anyone working on a method for transforming belly fat into fuel oil?
Alan Watt, there’s really no point taking up R.S. on his topic troll… face it, most people just don’t care.
It’s great to be “against” something, especially if there are good reasons. I’m personally against deploying bird slicer/clubbers in bird migration routes or covering acre after acre with PV arrays, but I wouldn’t be as against it if there was some kind of tangible return. Being against nuclear makes no sense, since there is abundant and definable benefit in exchange for the “risk”.
Our entire existence on the planet is a trade-off between risk and reward. Every time you get into a car you are at risk of getting run over by a truck, and judging by some of the Russian car crash videos, even sitting in your house or a building or walking you are at the same risk.
However, I still don’t understand what kind of risk, exactly, shipping wood from continent to continent to use as fuel is supposed to be mitigating, or what the benefit is supposed to be. Even the least number-savvy person can see that the fuel used to package and transport the materials alone is wasteful, and whether you believe in CO2 being harmful or not it makes little sense to be shipping industrial quantities of stuff around that doesn’t need to be.
WUWT certainly has some entertaining comments…. some unintentionally entertaining…
Someone mentioned the recent problems of one if the UK’s remaining coal producers. One of the challenges they are facing is competition from US imports at much lower prices than they need to maintain their investment/production cycle. The US coal is reaching world markets because it has been displaced at home by shale gas, but rather than close their own coal industry the US is exporting the problem and helping EU and UK greenfreaks to destroy ours.
If I’m not mistaken burning waste products counts as renewable energy in the UK so the answer is to create a lot of paths, surface them by tipping coal on them and then a fortnight later collect the old coal and resurface the paths with new. The old coal can then be burnt as an environmentally friendly fuel and the Circumlocution Office will be happy.
They’ll probably subsidise the process too.
I gave up on the place 32 years ago. This abso-effing-lutely stupid bevavior convinces me of my correct decision.
What happens when ideology trumps science – Lysenkoism.
Green deforestation!. Those that make money out of this deal most likely are investing it in planting those huge eucalyptus plantations in South America.
Tiredoc says:
August 6, 2013 at 2:06 pm
“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.”
All the way downstream from the USA to the UK.
This is a crazy day.
Earth has fallen deeper into the crazy sector of the Milky Way.
The truth is that most people don’t understand what “renewable energy” or “biofuel” mean even at the most fundamental level.
I hear that endangered species make for excellent biofuel.
Isn’t it interesting that they chose not to purchase wood from other places, like Brazil perhaps?
I hear they are cutting down lots of forests down there and likely have lots of wood to spare.
Power Grab says:
August 6, 2013 at 3:41 pm
Absolutely Brilliant — liposuction recycling! Obesity as a renewable resource! Public health improvement and energy independence in one package. I wish I’d thought of it. Plus we get to label Nanny Bloomberg as a lipoid energy denier — a win, win, win.
Think of it as urban whaling. This is definitely grant-worthy.
DirkH, actually the UK is downstream from Florida.
As a Floridian, I’m happy to see that he UK is buying the local pine product that used to be sold to paper mills that made newsprint. But no one buys newspapers anymore, so I guess we can go ahead and burn the newsprint. Next we’ll burn books, after which we’ll burn our clothes to keep warm.
The U.K. has no idea of the power plant misery in store for them when they convert to wood chips. I once ran three wood chip burning power plants. Wood chips are so abrasive they’ll eat the belly-pan off the Cats moving the woodpiles. They’ll eat up the feed belts. They’ll eat up the boiler tubes and develop clunkers the size of automobiles that must be blasted from, the fire box walls. Miserable fuel!
So, when coal is outlawed in the US, where will we get our wood chips from??
Claude,
There is no room for experience at the table of the Green Energy Revolution!
Thanks for the information.
–Tom
Reblogged this on loricamper.wordpress.com and commented:
Don’t think about this one too hard. It’s too painful.
The preconception that I refer to is the idea that there is some inherent ecogical damage in cutting down trees for wood pulp. There isn’t. Pulp is a completely different product than timber. Southern Alabama gets 150 cm of rainfall per year. The trees are adapted to a 30 year life cycle, about the time between severe hurricanes. As for the “rent seeking,” how is selling a product at market rates “rent seeking?” Will it work? Of course not. There isn’t enough timberland in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to make much of a dent in any country’s energy supply. But as a practical solution, it’s a hell of a lot more reasonable than windmills and solar power.
Chipping wood is the weirdest part. Rail cars, barges, log booms are efficient means of moving whole logs. I watched logs being moved at the local pulp mill several tons at a time.
Chipping reduces density, Canadian railways don’t even haul wood chips anymore.
What’s wrong with selling the U.K. wood pellets? Wood is a renewal resource, we have a ton of it in Canada, and we’d like the money. Thank you very much.
The Germans are burning lignite. The British are burning wood pellets. The Chinese are burning coal. The environmentalists are burning mad.
Sawdust used to be waste. Now it is a commodity.
http://www.canadianbiomassmagazine.ca/content/view/4234/133/