By Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
Is wood the best fuel to generate electricity? Despite wood’s low energy density and high cost, utilities in the US and abroad are switching from coal to wood to produce electrical power. The switch to wood is driven by regulations from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other international organizations. These regulations are based on the false assumption that burning wood reduces carbon dioxide emissions.
Wood has never been a major fuel source for electrical power. In 1882, when Thomas Edison built the first power plant in New York at Pearl Street Station, he used coal to fire the plant. A switch to wood is not going back in time; it’s adopting a fuel that was regarded as inferior at the dawn of the electrical age.
Pound for pound, wood contains less energy and is more expensive than other fuels. A 2008 study conducted at the Rapids Energy Center plant in Minnesota found that, compared to coal, more than twice the mass of wood was required to produce the same electrical output. A 2008 study by the UK House of Lords concluded that electricity from biomass was more than twice the cost of electricity from coal or natural gas. Nevertheless, an increasing number of electrical power plants are switching from coal to low-energy-density and high-cost wood fuel.
This irrational behavior is driven by the EPA, the US Department of Energy, the European Union, the California Air Resources Board, and other world organizations that assume that biomass fuel is “carbon neutral.” Biomass-fired plants receive carbon credits, tax exemptions, and subsidies from promoting governments.
When burned, biomass emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere like any other combustion. A 2012 paper by Synapse Energy Economics estimated that burning biomass emits 50 to 85 percent more CO2 than burning coal since the energy content of biomass is lower than coal relative to its carbon content.
The “carbon neutral” concept originated in a 1996 Greenhouse Gas Inventory paper from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations. The IPCC assumed that, as biofuel plants grow, they absorb CO2 equal to the amount released when burned. If correct, substitution of wood for coal would reduce net emissions.
But a 2011 opinion by the European Environment Agency pointed to a “serious error” in greenhouse gas accounting. The carbon neutral assumption does not account for CO2 that would be absorbed by the natural vegetation that grows on land not used for biofuel production. Substitution of wood for coal in electrical power plants is actually increasing carbon dioxide emissions.
Nevertheless, governments have adopted the “carbon neutral” assumption and continue to promote biomass as a substitute for coal. As a result, nations and utilities are not required to count their CO2 emissions from biomass combustion.
In July, Dominion Virginia Power completed conversion of its Altavista Power Station to biomass fuel, the first of three planned facility conversions at a total cost of $165 million. The change was lauded as a method to “help to meet Virginia’s renewable energy goal.” Virginia citizens paid for the conversion and will pay higher electricity bills in the future.
The Altavista station and other biomass plants claim to be using “waste” fuel that would otherwise be going into landfills. But according to the DOE, 65 percent of US biomass-generated electricity comes from wood and 35 percent from waste.
Finding sources of wood to feed ravenous power plants is not easy. The small wood-fired EJ Stoneman power plant in Cassville, Wisconsin is rated at 40 megawatts. Each day it burns 1,000 tons of wood delivered by 30 different suppliers. The 100-megawatt Picway power plant in southern Ohio considered a conversion to biomass, but could not secure a good wood supply. Picway will be shut down in 2015 when tougher EPA emission regulations take effect.
Following President Obama’s direction, the EPA plans to impose CO2 emission limits on existing power plants, requiring the shuttering of US coal-fired power stations. In 2012, 37 percent of US electricity was produced from coal, with only 1.4 percent produced from biomass. Without some common sense about CO2 emissions, look for expanded efforts to cut down US forests to feed a growing number of biomass plants.
The height of eco-madness is the conversion of the Drax Power Station in the United Kingdom from coal to wood fuel. Drax is the largest power plant in Europe, generating up to 3,960 megawatts of power from 36,000 tons of coal per day, delivered by 140 trains every week. In order to “reduce emissions” at Drax, more than 70,000 tons of wood will be harvested every day from forests in the US and shipped 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to Britain.
Conversion of the Drax facility will cost British citizens £700 million ($1.1 Billion) and the new wood-fired electricity will cost double or triple the cost from coal. Drax Group plc will receive a subsidy of over £1 billion ($1.6 billion) per year for this green miracle.
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
phillipbratby says: @ur momisugly November 9, 2013 at 1:40 am
….Due to policies of the three “main” political parties, the UK is going down the pan at a tremendous rate. The Industrial Revolution is being undone by a single generation of idiotic politicians, who have all come from the same mold. Or is that mould?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I would think it is Slime Mold
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Yellow_slime_mold.jpg
Picture of Fuligo septica, the “dog vomit” slime mold care of Wiki
Look familiar?
I think my dislike of
parasitespoliticians is showing.This activity is so beyond stupid, it’s painful.
If anyone but the climate mob did it (or even suggested it), they’d be vilified for being anti-green. Why are these people getting away with such nonsense? Add to that hundreds of thousands of birds and bats killed each year in the windmills…
Seriously, the same rules have to apply to them as they would to anyone else. I believe the going fine for killing each bird is something like $250,000 – what is it for tearing down forests at such a rate?
Here in Australia a year or so ago, we had the local greens promising to put a stop to a man selling wood that he collected from his own land. They didn’t succeed as the local council supported him (thankfully), but all the same. According to the greens and their fellow zealots, we shouldn’t be allowed to harvest or burn wood in our homes, but it’s okay to harvest 70,000 tons of wood every day for electricity production?
HOW can ripping up living forests be better for the planet than digging out dead coal?
Environmentalists used to chain themselves to trees to Save the Forests – anyone remember that? Now they’re driving the bulldozers. How can any Greenie not be deeply ashamed of the damage they are doing?
It is beyond time to stop these people. This sickness has gone too far.
@ur momisugly Jquip says:
November 9, 2013 at 1:49 pm
GunnyGene: “Which is approx 171 sq miles. Atlanta, Ga is only 132 sq miles.”
By memory, and probably faulty at that, the turn over rate in softwood tree farms is 20 years. So about 3,420 square miles to keep those numbers going at a constant clip. Or a bit more than half again as large as Delaware.
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Sounds about right. I have 20 acres planted in loblolly pine that’s 30 yrs old. By my calculations that would feed the British plant for about 1 hr. It’s a totally ridiculous scheme. Especially considering the multitude of adverse outcomes. I have deer on my land that helps feed my family for the last 15 years; they would disappear if I clear cut to feed some power plant.
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@ur momisugly Gail Combs, it’s nice to know that someone else really understands what this is all about. 🙂 The Ipod generation really doesn’t seem to get it.
This planet has gone nuts!.
PS: It should also be noted that about 30% of the weight of green timber is water. Which has to be gotten rid of before the wood is suitable for burning. So add some more processing cost for that.
Gary Hladik said @ur momisugly November 9, 2013 at 10:00 am
ROFLMAO! Made my day…
GunnyGene said @ur momisugly November 9, 2013 at 3:13 pm
Moisture content varies with species. Green balsa holds 4 times its own weight of water and thus its saturated moisture content (SMC) is said to be 400%. Ironbark is a particularly dense Australian timber. (I have self-insulating electric fence droppers made from it.) The SMC of ironbark is 40% when green.
The goal with firewood is to achieve 20% SMC or better. Final moisture content is a function of atmospheric humidity so achieving a final moisture content much lower than this is difficult.
The same goofy folk won’t allow the burned trees on federal land from the recent Rim fire in California to be harvested. There’s about a 2 year window where the trees will be useful. After that, it’s a beetle fest. Why not burn it for electricity instead?
Fortunately private land owners are not under those same restraints.
What’s been said here about Drax is only part of the problem. Drax was built to burn coal, and a particular grade of coal at that. You cannot simply put another carbon fuel into it, hence the conversion costs. But however much is done, it cannot compensate fully for the fact that Drax will now be burning wood pellets. Under combustion, these are burned at different temperatures with different combustion gases being produced. All of these will be at temperatures and conditions for which the plant was not designed.
Hence, Drax will inevitably have higher operating and maintenance costs, and accelerated breakdowns.
The insanity of wood-burning in an industrial age was established centuries ago. The mediaeval forests largely disappeared by the end of the 15th century, burned down by the charcoal burners to make steel. Even by the 13th century, despite being illegal, coal was in everyday use in European cities. Quite literally in 1250 you couldn’t bring enough wood in through the city gates every day to meet the day’s baking and heating needs.
What does it say when modern policymakers are more ignorant than mediaeval barons?
“catweazle666 says:
November 9, 2013 at 10:56 am”
Thanks for confirming my suspicions, I knew a politician would be involved in this madness somewhere. The UK clearly needs another Guy Fawkes.
Another post was made up thread about ash. A by product of coal fired power stations is fly ash. Some of it goes into land fill, almost half is recycled and is used in concrete construction. I wonder what use wood ash would be put to?
Patrick said @ur momisugly November 9, 2013 at 8:15 pm
It’s an excellent source of potassium and sodium hydroxide used in soap-making. It also contains a significant amount of other nutrients that are useful in gardening and farming.
Ah, sometimes called potash. Yes, makes sense now. So a tree stands all it’s life absorbing plant food, CO2, is burnt to provide a useful source of energy and then to potentially become plant food (And other useful products).
On another note, one thing that has been bugging me with CO2 driven alarmism in Australia is the use of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-e). What it seems to mean, from what I have read in Govn’t documents, is that any source of a greenhouse gas is classed as “carbon” and is calculated as the effect, equivalent to a tonne of CO2, has on climate (Which is laughable beyond reason), multiplied by 3.76. I have no idea where the number 3.76 comes from if we consider that 1 tonne of coal burnt generates ~2.8 tonnes of CO2 (I have seen some commenters state that 1 tonne of coal CONTAINS 2.8 tonnes of CO2) and 1 tonne of dry wood burnt generates ~1.8 tonnes CO2. So if the figures in the article are correct that twice as much wood as coal (~70,000 tonnes as apposed to ~35,000) needs to be burnt to maintain it’s current power output suggests MORE CO2 is emitted, in fact closer to the multiplier the Australian Govn’t uses to calculate CO2-e figures.
@ur momisugly Patrick
The use of 3.76 in combustion chemistry refers to the Nitrogen component. See:
http://wwwme.nchu.edu.tw/~ICE/Courses/conbustion/chap_2_basic_combustion_chemistry_1020218.pdf
I’m as perplexed as you are!
Even though I have no interest in chemistry, never have, I found that a really interesting read, especially the sections relating to the heating values of coal and wood. Clearly, converting Drax to burn wood, which it was not designed to do so, is insane! Coal is king. It is concentrated sun light after all!
@ur momisugly Patrick
The Git was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, UKLand where he lived until 1965. While coal mining began in the area in the 14th C, it boomed in the 17th C transforming the local economy. Not only did the coal bring much needed wealth to the community directly, it also fuelled a major brick and tile industry. I miss living there like I’d miss having an extra large hole in the back of my head 🙂
@ur momisugly The Pompous Git says:
November 9, 2013 at 4:31 pm
GunnyGene said @ur momisugly November 9, 2013 at 3:13 pm
PS: It should also be noted that about 30% of the weight of green timber is water. Which has to be gotten rid of before the wood is suitable for burning. So add some more processing cost for that.
Moisture content varies with species. Green balsa holds 4 times its own weight of water and thus its saturated moisture content (SMC) is said to be 400%. Ironbark is a particularly dense Australian timber. (I have self-insulating electric fence droppers made from it.) The SMC of ironbark is 40% when green.
The goal with firewood is to achieve 20% SMC or better. Final moisture content is a function of atmospheric humidity so achieving a final moisture content much lower than this is difficult.
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I’m aware of the MC variation by species and such. Didn’t think it necessary to belabor that, since the point was that it must be dried before using, thereby increasing cost.
However, this very variation would also drive the harvest for power plants to take more expensive (and slower growing) hardwoods, than fast growing softwood species such as pine, especially since hardwoods generally also burn hotter than softwoods.
This practice would also lead to a conflict (and ripple effect higher costs ) with other more traditional uses of hardwoods, such as fine furniture manufacturing. Oaks, walnut, cherry, etc. are expensive as it is, and burning these and other hardwoods for electricity production would be just plain stupid.
By the time Drax is ready there will be masses of fracking in the UK, new nuclear stations already built & commerical fusion power on the horizon.
BUT instead of taking fracking gas for free we are going to pay money to Americans and transport 76KT/day of wood past US power stations and across the Atlantic resulting in electricity costing 4 times that of electricity from coal. Really you think it’s going to happen ?
.. It is possible that its a scam cooked up between mad greens and greenhedgefundsubsidymafia to close down Drax
EPA Bans Most Wood-Burning Stoves
Wood-burning stoves offer warmth and enhance off-grid living options during cold weather months, but the tried-and-true heating devices now are under attack by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA has banned the production and sale of the types of stoves used by about 80 percent of those with such stoves. The regulations limit the amount of “airborne fine-particle matter” to 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The current EPA regulations allow for 15 micrograms in the same amount of air space.
http://www.offthegridnews.com/2013/10/02/epa-bans-most-wood-burning-stoves/
Old stoves “traded in” must be scrapped.
@ur momisugly Speed says:
November 10, 2013 at 4:32 am
EPA Bans Most Wood-Burning Stoves
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I guess that means no more burning off of farm fields, timber waste, fall leaves and brush, etc. in your back yard either. All of which are very common in rural parts of the country. Might be real tough to enforce this rule where I live. EPA people are not welcome around here.
Steve Goreham:
Thankyou for your fine essay.
DRAX burning wood chips illustrates the underlying problem of low energy intensity in biomass.
Waste materials including wood and wood chips have disposal costs. Burning them and obtaining the resulting energy for use is a sensible and profitable action in many cases. But growing forests to burn them is a very different issue. Coppicing was a form of growing trees for use as fuel for centuries but was abandoned when fossil fuels became readily available.
Biomass is solar energy collected by photosynthesis by plants which grow over a small area and a few growing seasons and are not compressed and not dried. Fossil fuels are solar energy collected by photosynthesis in plants grown over large area and several centuries that is in a compressed and dried form. Hence, energy intensity is much greater in fossil fuels than in biomass.
Energy is consumed by farming, harvesting and transporting biomass to its point of use. There is a net loss of energy if the farming, harvest and transport consume as much energy as the use of the biomass provides. This sets a limit on the area of biomass which can be grown for profitable use in any one place because ‘renewable’ biomass contains little collected solar energy compared to the solar energy stored in fossil fuels.
Indeed, there is a net consumption of energy if the total energy required to produce ‘renewable’ biomass per year is greater than the solar energy collected each year by the ‘renewable’ biomass (and, of course, an increase to emissions from that increased energy use). Indeed, the use of firewood as fuel is not ‘renewable’ in the Third World because more wood is burned than is grown with resulting depletion of forests.
This sets a limit on the distance between how far ‘renewable’ biomass transported from where it is farmed to where it is used. And it requires the use of much land. For example, the European Commission admits that achieving its target of 5.75% of its transport fuels by use of biomass will require substantial imports of biomass despite turning more than 14% of EU agriculture over to biomass production. Clearly, much of the import will not be from ‘renewable’ sources.
The import of wood chips to DRAX is the start of a policy which is economic madness based on ignorance of the laws of physics.
Richard
Wood and wind power? What century did I wake up in?
GunnyGene said @ur momisugly November 10, 2013 at 3:05 am
Not all hardwoods are slow growing. My own woodlot consists of Eucalyptus globulus (Tasmanian Bluegum). I commenced harvesting at 15 years, but it’s 80 years to full maturity. Mind you, there’s plenty of places on the planet that regret importing the species — California for example. Bluegum has a tendency to become a weed and the oil content of the leaves make wildfires in plantations particularly fierce. The leaves also contain a herbicide that reduces competition from other plant species.
Transporting wood fuels almost any distance at all purely for electricity production makes no sense whatsoever. That it was contemplated at all shows how far removed from reality some people are.
While spontaneous combustion of stockpiles was mentioned above, there is another potential danger. Legionella the gram-negative bacillus that causes Legionellosis (Legionnaires’ disease) and Pontiac fever is known to proliferate in woodchip stockpiles here in Tasmania. I have no idea of the true risk factor and am deeply suspicious when such fears are promoted by greenies. However, a successful campaign against Drax could well be modelled on the obviously effective fear campaigns the greenies are famous for. Heck, you could even promote the fear among the greenies and let them do the hard yards of preventing this madness taking place 🙂
@ur momisugly The Pompous Git says:
November 10, 2013 at 9:43 am
GunnyGene said @ur momisugly November 10, 2013 at 3:05 am
However, this very variation would also drive the harvest for power plants to take more expensive (and slower growing) hardwoods, than fast growing softwood species such as pine, especially since hardwoods generally also burn hotter than softwoods.
Not all hardwoods are slow growing. My own woodlot consists of Eucalyptus globulus (Tasmanian Bluegum).
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I’m not all that familiar with Aussie trees, so I’ll yield on that. Here in Mississippi tho, and other parts of N. America, our hardwood forests are under a lot of stress as is. White oak is one such, which you may or may not know is essential to the aging of fine bourbons in hand made casks, which are subsequently shipped to Europe for aging of fine wines. In fact, I have a 400+ year old white oak on my land, which if harvested for furniture, etc. would fetch several thousand dollars, but if taken for some power plant would only be worth a few hundred at most, since trees for that purpose are paid by the ton, rather than the board foot.
Makes ethanol look like the all time Nobel Prize winner for geniuses.
Slightly off-topic – but I love the description I’ve seen elsewhere for wind turbines…
‘Prayer wheels…’