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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I believe that there are companies here in the states that are importing from South America wood chips for making toilet paper.
It is cheaper than locally grown chips.
And properly dried and stored chips / pellets do not spontaneously combust.
“I believe that there are companies here in the states that are importing from South America wood chips for making toilet paper.”
It’s the other way around. The bleaching process for getting the lignin out of wood smells awful. Most of the paper production is in Brazil for this reason. In addition, eucalyptus, a low-lignin fast growing wood, grows in Brazil and won’t in Alabama because it’s too cold.
American swamp wood pulp is cheaper than Brazilian eucalyptus pulp because of the lignin content. It makes perfect sense, if you’re going to use wood pulp for fuel, to buy the cheap stuff.
Tiredoc:
Your series of posts attempts to rationalise idiocy by conflating two different issues.
1.
Burning waste wood pulp and waste wood chippings as fuel makes sense: it reduces fuel costs and avoids waste disposal costs. Indeed, that is why timber mills often burn their waste as fuel. The fuel has low calorific value but has disposal cost.
2.
There is no sense in transporting wood chippings across a quarter of the planet to displace coal from use in a power station designed to burn coal and situated in a coal field.
Also, there is nothing new in sustainable wood farming for fuel: coppicing was practiced for centuries. A suggestion that return to such practices could be beneficial is a display of willful ignorance.
I am interested to know if you have any connection to the wood pulp supply industry which you say will benefit in your locality.
Richard
Just another example of mad dogs and Englishmen spending too much time out in the hot sun. (Note: PowerGrab, I will gladly donate ALL of my belly fat towards the cause of solving the UK’s energy problems. Lol!)
Snake Oil Baron says:
August 6, 2013 at 5:20 pm
I hear that endangered species make for excellent biofuel.
Many endangered species perform a useful function, even if only in being nice to look at or having entertaining habits. I suggest we use lawyers for biofuel – they fail on all the above attributes.
BarryW says:
August 6, 2013 at 6:41 am
Of course the bureaucrats don’t factor in the diesel used to grow, fell, manufacture the pellets and transport them. All they care about is that they are using a “renewable” resource.
Maybe someone should demand that the ships transporting them be driven by sail?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..
OH what a great idea! I am sure we can get the Econuts behind that. Anyone want to start an NGO for sail power for transport of biofuel to the UK? And while you are at it those locomotives should also be running on wood chips.
(Where is James Delingpole when you need him?)
I have a useful sideline using the pellets.
THE DRAX HUG-A-TREE AT HOME KIT
You know what it’s like: after a hard week at the demo: after two or three consecutive nights chanting outside a power station you need to hug a tree.
But you can’t. You live in town. No trees.
NOW YOU CAN HUG A TREE. ANYTIME. ANYWHERE. WITH THE NEW DRAX HUG-A-TREE-AT-HOME KIT.
Just for you entire forests are lightly clear-felled in North America and shipped across the Atlantic in sustainable barges. Reduced to healthy and non-toxic pellets using renewable energy, they are supplied with a zip-up case in luxurious sustainable felt, soft as the fur on a baby bunny’s tummy, and dyed a healthy green. Just add the pellets to the case, zip it up and you have a DRAX HUGGY TREE.
Your DRAX HUGGY TREE is always there. Always huggable. Always ready for you. Get that smug feeling. Be as sanctimonious as you want. All day. Everyday. With your DRAX HUGGY TREE..
ORDER ONE TODAY.
donotexposetodampasmayspontaneouslycombustflammablewhendrymaycontainorattractnutswillcontainporcupineandorsquirreldoesnotcontainorangutangthatispalmoil
JF
The UK government and the higher levels of the UK Civil Service are populated by PPE and Classics graduates (all in the same bubble) and really really believe all of the AGW/ renewables crap.
Power from wood from the USA indeed, what madness.
I am surprised that no one has tried to sell them the extremely effective green energy alternative of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers (Jonathan Swift details the technology in Gullivers Travels)
The UK is sitting on some of the best shale potential in the world, but exploitation of this is being delayed by a bunch of “aromatically challenged” benefits claimants. Hence our need to deforest the USA; sorry guys!
What next, the burning down of forests in order to push up the price of wood pellets ? “Ship B golgafrinchams”, anybody ?
Wood pellets are good business in Mississippi (I have no interest in them — I just live here). They are made of byproducts like sawdust. No one is going to clear cut forests to make pellets. Wood used for building is too valuable to do that.
Why doesn’t WUWT use the same commenting tool as Facebook! There are so many posts here that I want to “like” and can’t.
Several have repeated the canard about “deforesting the US,” most recently John Law above. Once again, with feeling, harvesting trees in North America long ago ceased to result in “deforestation,” which is the PERMANENT removal of forest cover. Trees are truly the only infinitely renewable natural resource.
Tiredoc is mostly right, although I agree with most that transporting woodchips across the globe to generate electricity in the hope of saving the planet is madness. He is incorrect, however, to say that most paper production is in Brazil – NA remains a heavy producer of P&P, although many mills have been shuttered and torn down as paper usage declines. The reason eucalyptus fiber is imported has nothing to do with lignin, which is burned to produce energy at NA mills, but more to do with the fact that eucalyptus fiber is in many ways very superior to pine fiber. But, it all depends on what kind of paper is being produced. The future in P&P is in the so-called “fluff” grades, used to produce sanitary products, baby and adult diapers (take note, baby boomers!)
Finally, making wood pellets to use as an alternative to burning firewood in domestic residences close to the source of the wood makes some sense, but shipping wood chips across the ocean to generate electricity is madness.
A few points:
1) Drax made a commercial decision to switch to wood chips because there is a subsidy to do so while the idiot government has introduced a carbon tax that makes coal more expensive. Coal is currently cheap to buy since the US is using its shale gas. I believe the subsidy – ie money stolen from us in taxes – for wood chip is about to be reduced. Any wonder our energy planning is a mess and private companies are not keen to commit to building new generating capacity as the goalposts float around?
2) Contrary to the ‘lights go out in a couple of years’, National Grid has learnt from others – ie Germany, Denmark – about the problems of intermittent wind power as an increasing part of UK power generation. A network of diesel powered generating sets is being prepared as private investors realise there is money to be made since the ‘Short Term Operating Reserve’ will pay them a fee whether the generators run or not. The advantage of diesel power is that they can be turned on immediately power is needed with not thermal warm up needed. When they do generate, they will be paid anything from 8 to 300 times the current market rate per Mwh. Given the cooling planet and the prospect of longer colder winters with spells of static windless high pressure, one can just guess at how much our electricity prices will increase. One can but wonder at what point buying your own diesel generator and running it on tax-free ‘red’ diesel will undercut mains electricity.
3) Note for point 2 above, with Spain taxing personal solar panels and that there is diesel emissions legislation from our occupying power in Brussels, the government could find a way to stop personal diesel generation if it was cheaper.
4) While the idiot government drones on about the creation of ‘green jobs’ and a ‘renewable industry’, currently every ‘green job’ – ie economically unsustainable without the subsidy of taxes stolen from the people – destroys 3.7 real jobs that add value to the economy and make people richer.
As has been mentioned before, the coal burning Drax power station sits on top of a coalfield. This was no accident. The site for Drax (and other power stations in the area) was chosen deliberately to place them on top of their energy source and save on transportation. What a great idea.
Now the greens are unhappy at bringing wood chips all the way from the USA. The question is, what will make them happy? The answer, probably nothing.
Ignore these anti-human, anti-progress idiots and let’s get on with allowing proper science and engineering to better the human condition.
richardscourtney says:
If wind power were sensible then oil tankers would be sailing ships.
AFAIK there are no commercial ocean going freighters currently in operation which are wind powered.
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.
IIRC the first factories of the “Industrial Revolution” used water power. The ability to match power supply with demand is vitally important. Nobody has been able to do this with wind, even given several thousand years.
It’s not only the UK, it’s every coal plant in the EU: http://climategate.nl/2013/04/09/bijstook-hout-in-kolencentrales-nu-belangrijkste-brandstof-europa/
Time to stop this with billions of euro’s subsidized ponzi scheme.
***
Tiredoc says:
August 6, 2013 at 8:37 am
A long leaf pine can be harvested for pulp in 7-10 years. They grow like weeds.
***
A tiny $2 bare-root tuliptree I planted 9 yrs ago is now near 50′ tall. And I have 2 longleafs here in west MD, way north of its range. One is 25′.
Go CO2!
Where is John Galt when you need him?
Had something similar brewing at the University of Wisconsin – Madison a few years back. The Sierra Club and other misguided Luddite types succeeded in forcing the closure of the small coal fired plant that powered the UW-Madison campus.
Then Gov. Doyle (since retired by the electorate) decided to convert it to a ‘renewable biofuel’ power plant, ostensibly to be fueled by crop residues, wood chips, and old wood pallets trucked in from area farms and businesses. The citizens were assured this would only cost $251 Million and would establish Wisconsin as the leader in ‘coal to biofuel’ conversions. …. Or not. It would have required at least 2.3 times more tonnage of ‘biomass fuel’ to achieve the equivalent BTU yield of coal. This would have required a much larger plant footprint to accommodate storage of the larger pile of ‘biomass’ fuel as well as for local and regional trucking access to deliver the new fuel. The plant would have had to burn 20% natural gas along with the biofuel, to assure reliable combustion. As the story link below highlights, citizens of greater wisdom began to question the true viability of the plant.
http://dailyreporter.com/2009/05/20/more-cheaper-biofuels-needed-for-power-plant/
This spawned several new examples of the Law of Unintended Consequences. The irrational environmentalism that was the driving force behind closing the coal fired plant and conversion to a ‘biofuel’ power plant became a small but significant negative for Gov. Doyle in the WI gubernatorial race of 2010. He was defeated by Scott Walker, who immediately scuttled the ‘biofuel’ conversion and made it a 100% natural gas fired power plant, with minimal conversion costs to the taxpayers and the next lowest fuel cost to coal. Gov. Walker also ushered in balanced budgeting for the state, much needed reforms to public employee union contracts, defunded the construction plans for the 90 mph max. ‘high speed train’, and ended many other inefficient and out right stupid state spending projects.
Sometimes the Law of Unintended Consequences has real, positive results!
MtK
Sam Harris – The fireplace delusion
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-fireplace-delusion
Gerry – England says:
August 7, 2013 at 6:17 am
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Think natural gas instead of diesel. I have a 14 kw generator that runs on either propane or natural gas. Since I don’t have access to natural gas, it uses propane and so is a little less efficient and it has run for days when the power is off (rural area). Reasonably efficient but Grid Power is cheaper. But if it keeps going up … Course this is not practical in the city (noise).
GrzeTor says:
August 7, 2013 at 4:55 pm
Sam Harris – The fireplace delusion
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-fireplace-delusion
________________________________________________________________________
Everything Sam says may be true – especially for city dwellers. But I live 40 km from the nearest community, over 100 kilometres from a shopping centre, I have no natural gas. What I do have is a high efficiency wood fireplace and wood on my land from which I cut 6 or more cords of wood each year (and burn up even more from deadfall) and I heat over 2000 square feet of building space primarily with a central fireplace with outside air and sealed glass fire pit with a mass of several tons that can keep the house warm at 20 below C with two to three good fires a day. I do supplement with geothermal from my wells to heat my basement and garage/work shop. And I get warmed by the wood several times – when I cut it, when I spit it, when I stack it, when I carry it in, and when I burn it. I will never run out of wood since it grows faster than I can use it so I let my grand kids come and have out door fires in the summer. But I can’t imagine that my “carbon” footprint is any worse than some folks fireworks displays. 😉
The UK imports most of the coal that is burnt for power, principally from the US and Russia. Exactly how is this different?
Eli Rabett:
At August 7, 2013 at 6:42 pm you ask
Drax is a PF power station designed to burn coal not wood.
The energy intensity of coal is much greater than the energy intensity of wood.
It is an expensive and environmentally damaging waste to reduce the efficiency of Drax by displacing its intended fuel with wood.
In common with your other posts on the web, your question demonstrates there is gulf between the understandings of science and technology possessed by bunnies and by humans. So, I suggest that you return to your warren and there continue to do what rabbits do while humans deal with the matters which so puzzle you.
Richard