Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Wayne Delbeke – the Guardian has just noticed that a rise in demand for wood chips, for “green” biomass power schemes, has led an increase in logging, including legally dubious clearances of large swathes of protected forests.
Protected forests in Europe felled to meet EU renewable targets – report
Europe’s bioenergy plants are burning trees felled from protected conservation areas rather than using forest waste, new report shows.
Protected forests are being indiscriminately felled across Europe to meet the EU’s renewable energy targets, according to an investigation by the conservation group Birdlife.
Up to 65% of Europe’s renewable output currently comes from bioenergy, involving fuels such as wood pellets and chips, rather than wind and solar power.
Bioenergy fuel is supposed to be harvested from residue such as forest waste but, under current legislation, European bioenergy plants do not have to produce evidence that their wood products have been sustainably sourced.
Birdlife found logging taking place in conservation zones such as Poloniny national park in eastern Slovakia and in Italian riverside forests around Emilia-Romagna, where it said it had been falsely presented as flood-risk mitigation.
…
The referenced report, which details forest destruction around the world, not just in Europe, is available here.
I’m shocked – who would have thought that providing billions of dollars of government subsidies for greedy corporatists to generate impractical amounts of electricity from “renewable” biomass, no questions asked, would lead to corruption, kickbacks, and large scale destruction of the world’s protected woodlands?
Still like the story of the British power plant that was converted from coal to ‘wood pellets’ even though it sits on top of one of the richest coal veins in Britain. They now import their wood pellets from the US. Said pellets have to be shipped via container vessels and hauled via diesel powered trucks that may put more ‘pollutants’ into the atmosphere than the coal plant ever did or would. But, the British are ‘reducing’ their CO2 contribution.
I for one can’t believe that green energy corporatists clear felling protected forests for biomass would actually think that they could sucker us into thinking green energy corporatists clear felling protected forests for biomass actually exist. The cheek of them.
Anyone who saw the destruction wreaked on the landscape and wildlife by wind turbine installers?
They are clearcutting large areas here in Southwest Virginia.
So what? Clearcutting is a widely accepted practice of forest regeneration. As well, in most of the developed world and especially the US, we practice excellent forest management. In 2 years time, I defy you to walk across a clearcut without ripping your clothes and scratching yourself up on side and down the other. These areas will be solid with new seedling growth.
@shawn
I think you are also a big fat liar. We will be going back to Virginia in few weeks to visit friends and family and I will look for those ‘large areas’.
Most of Virginia (90%) is forested. I lived in a place called Forest. Trees in Virginia is like corn in Indiana or Iowa.
Well I live 45 minutes from Forest, which is a suburb of Lynchburg, and travel along Hardy Road near Smith Mountain Lake and see for yourself. As for the other idiot poster, The clear cutting muddies the lake with massive runoff. They plant back pines and after two years one may easily walk over the grounds with all the little trees. As a result of your erroneous assumption, I would point out that I made no criticism of harvesting trees. Runoff should be controlled IMHO. I have read elsewhere that NC trees are also being harvested for European wood pellets. Forgive me if I think German energy policy is mucho stupido.
@shawn Marshall
“Forgive me if I think German energy policy is mucho stupido”
I don’t disagree with that sentiment [1] but it is not really relevant. German renewable energy mostly comes from wind & solar. Drax is the biggest consumer of US wood pellet exports, taking something like 50% of that trade.
1. Germany & Denmark have the highest %age of electricity from renewable sources in Europe and the highest electricity prices in Europe.
Germany has abandoned nuclear power and so is building a load (12? 20?) of coal fired power stations. German coal is mostly lignite (brown coal, rich in sulphur), so they have to burn more to produce the same amount of electricity and then use a decent chunk of that power in extract the sulphur from the flue gases.
Germany has abandoned nuclear power and so has increased the amount of power it buys from France, where 90% of the power comes from nuclear.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul, again.
What’s so wrong with that?
– Paul
The other side of the story is that we desperately need DRAX’s contribution from biomass power here in UK at the moment .
It is freezing , there is only 0.6GW from metered windpower to contribute to the 40GW demand , but biomass is contributing 2GW . It is a bright day so , until sunset even solar is giving more than wind .
All those years building wind farms , all that money taken from consumers and taxpayers and what do we get : 0.6GW .
At least if you burn “stuff” , what ever “stuff” it is, you get power.
BTW, central London had a taste last night of the blackouts to come. Only a cable failure but a chance for Londoners to practice their survival skills .
Ah, for the good old days, when concern about the environment meant concen about the environment, not concern about the Earth’s life-sustaining chemical and a future climate that remains feared by some but unknown by all.
“We have to destroy the environment in order to save the planet”. GreenLogic™.
Clearcutting does not “destroy the environment.” There, fixed it for you. So tired of this leftist canard.
Re: Told you so, 14 years ago…
In the UK and the Commonwealth, sue the government leaders and their minions for Negligence and Misfeasance in a Public Office.
In the USA, sue them under Civil RICO statutes and Malfeasance in Office.
Sue them before the two-year Statue of Limitations runs out.
Just do it, before these slime-green scoundrels and imbeciles do any more damage to the environment..
Best, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/12/renewable-energy-would-be-great-if-it-worked/comment-page-1/#comment-2340651
“Told you so, 14 years ago…” 😉
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/26/britain-faces-energy-crisis-engineers-warn-green-isnt-working/comment-page-1/#comment-2130269
Sent to a few friends in the UK this morning:
Re: “Energy bills will soar as green policies shut coal-fired power stations and cause an “electricity supply crisis”, experts say. Prices will be forced up as the UK has to import more power, according to a report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers today. –Craig Woodhouse, The Sun, 26 January 2016”.
Congratulations to the IME for their conclusion – the IME is correct, but rather late in the game.
As stated previously, we predicted this severe energy shortfall in our 2002 written debate with the warmist Pembina Institute. We wrote in 2002:
(until recently posted on the APEGA website, now at) http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/KyotoAPEGA2002REV1.pdf
8. “The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
I wrote the UK Stern Commission in 2005 that the UK’s approach to alleged manmade global warming and green energy was ill-founded and would greatly increase energy costs, with no benefit to the environment.
In 2013 I wrote an open letter to Baroness Verma, then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. making similar points.
I suggest we are now proven correct.
Governments that adopted “green energy” schemes such as wind and solar power are finding these schemes are not green and produce little useful energy. Their energy costs are soaring and these governments are in retreat, dropping their green energy subsidies as fast as they politically can.
I suggest there is a two-year time limit to launch a lawsuit for Negligence and Misfeasance in a Public Office* against the parties who foisted this costly green-energy fraud on society.
Regards to all, Allan
* Addendum:
In the USA, lawsuits under Civil RICO have finally been initiated, as I suggested on wattsup in 2014:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/27/the-first-climate-change-rico-lawsuit-is-filed-by-defyccc-com-editor/#comment-2307586
Post Script:
“The test of science is its ability to predict.’
– Richard Feynman
The word Corporatists is a slur! Corporations are the engines of democracy. They bring us real, useful affordable things from Auto to Xerox machines in great perfusion. The term you should be using is Green Quack Cronies!
How about using my new term:: SLIME-GREENS
You heard it here first, folks! 🙂
Alan: I prefer my term “gang green”
If you really wanted to reduce CO2 (but why would you, plants are starving for it) you’d promote landfills. This is the way nature does it, by burying carbon compounds.
Landfills are a source of waste biomass. Tab maybe you have limited skill but I am engineer that can promote numerous ways to make power.
The idea that you could produce power from wood waste on a sustainable, long-term basis is laughable on its face. Demand is always going to exceed the local supply, meaning you need to truck it from further and further afield, raising costs considerably, and ironically, raising “carbon emissions”. So of course you’re going to cheat, getting the wood as locally as possible, in whatever way possible, meaning you clear-cut, meaning you are no longer using just “wood waste”. But even then, you’re going to be using up the local resource, and have to keep going further away. Generating electricity from “biofuel” is dumb beyond belief.
And the same people that promote burning biomass that is shipped thousands of miles from the US to Drax will oppose building an electricity plant fuelled by waste [1] in large part because the waste is not local but has to be shipped in from councils tens of miles away.
1. Under EU rules, councils are fined for every tonne of waste that goes into landfill and the rate has been increasing. The idea is that everything s/b recycled. Of course that is nonsense, many items, especially those made of a a mixture of materials, cannot be economically recycled. Most of those items, especially if they contain plastics, can economically be burnt to generate electricity.
Bruce what do you do for a living? I can tell you are stupid beyond belief for commenting on thing you are ignorant about.
There is enough biomass waste in a 25 mile radius to supply a 25 MWe power plant any place that is not a desert. Supply of biomass greatly exceeds demand.
Do you have a problem with those who want to make a living shipping biomass other places? I will be happy to explian to creeps like you why you should be denied a living.
@ur momisugly retired: Bruce mentioned “wood waste” not biomass. I wonder if there is enough wood waste in a 25 mile radius of London on a continuous basis to run a 25 MWe plant. Can you find out without calling me “stupid beyond belief”? Thanks.
@Retired Kit P
Civility helps a discussion enlighten both parties. Abuse enlightens neither.
As well as @asybot’s point about cities, there is also the fact that you are not really talking about a real power plant that makes a noticeable contribution to the grid. Real power plants are measured in hundreds of MW, often with multiple units on each site.
Drax has six 660 MW units, three of which are fired by biomass. According to Wikipedia those three units consume 7.5 million tonnes of biomass per year, all of which comes from the US as the demand exceeds what can be supplied in Europe.
Drax is a huge power station (second largest in Europe IIRC) but even so it only supplies c. 7% of the UK’s electricity, so each 660MW supplies c. 1% of the UK’s needs. based on 25MW units the UK would need at least 2,263 plants. In practise it would be more as large plants benefit from economies of scale.
Green Dominican Republic vs Bare Haiti
Biomass vs fossil fuel energy policies have caused dramatic deforestation/forest protection.
The Charcoal War
Haiti is trying to reforest. About 1/3rd of Haiti is now covered in trees, still down from > 80%.
Haiti is covered with trees
Europe is now experiencing the consequences of foolishly mandating “green” biomass energy that is “browning” its forests!
CO2 is CO2 whether it comes from biomass or fossil fuel. In harvesting the biomass they should not make use of fossil fuels or of any equipment whose creation involved the use of fossil fuels. People should endeavor to exhale less. The biggest form of so called greenhouse gas polution is not CO2 but rather DHMO which is also a product of combustion of most fuels. Molecule per molecule, DHMO is a stronger IR absorber than the CO2 molecule. One of the biggest sources of DHMO polution are places that have been poluted with liquid DHMO. All such sources of liquid DHMO polution, at the least, need to be covered with plastic In the city where I live, at times, DHMO becomes so concentrated in the atmosphere that it condenses out as a liquid. The city knows about this problem and has installed an underground network of pipes to collect the liquid. Rather than dispose of the DHMO in an environmently friendly manner the city just dumps the liquid DHMO in a large pool that extends beyond the city limits. The pool is now so enormous that it can be seen from space. The FDA needs to act and force the city to despose of all the DHMO in the pool they have created in an environmentally friendly manner so that the liquid DHMO is not allowed to reinter the atmosphere.
Then there is the issue of getting rid of the poluting gas in the atmosphere that traps the most heat energy. This particular poluting gas absorbs heat energy via conduction and convection but because it is such a poor LWIR radiator does not readily radiate it to space the way the so called greenhouse gases do. Some claim a climate sensivity of CO2 of from 1 to 4 degrees C. Well this particular gas has a climate sensivity of more than 20 degrees C. In terms of global warming. this gas is the elephant in the room that no one is talking about and to combat global warming it must be gotten rid of. As far as atmophereic gases go, this gas is the one that is primarily responsible for warming at the Earth’s surface. Getting completely rid of this gas in the atmosphere will definitely reverse global warming. Chemically the gas I am talking about is N2.
There is currently an outcry about sequestering used DHMO deep underground. There would probably be a similar outcry about pumping N2 underground!
Unfortunated there is already huge amounts of DHMO underground. In the county where I live, underground is considered to be a storage area for DHMO where it is both injected underground and extraced from underground storage. DHMO can be converted into fuel cell fuel by electrolisis but that takes a lot of energy. N2 can be used to make nitrate fertilizer and ohter coupounds that involve Nitrogen. In my home I make use of a gas mixture containing about 80% N2 as a convective heat transport mechanism. The outside air where I live is hightly contaminated with the heat trapping gas, N2, and the EPA is currently doing nothing about it. Then there are other heat trapping gases such as O2 and Argon that no one is talking about interms of how much heat eneregy they hold onto in our atmosphere. They are polutants too and their presence affects climate. The EPA should take action to remove all gasses from our atmosphere that affect climate.
Where’s Green Griff to assure us that chopping down tens – hundreds? – of thousands of square kilometres of the Earth’s forests – with the concomitant destruction of habitat and extinction of rare species – is quite acceptable – necessary even – in the cause of “Saving the World™”?
Cat is there something wrong with harvesting wood?
“Cat is there something wrong with harvesting wood?”
Not if it is done responsibly.
Which at the moment, it most certainly isn’t.
Cat – show me where in North America, except perhaps on the occasional NIPF who is trying to make a quick buck, forests are being harvested irresponsibly. I’m a retired forester, so I’d like to know.
Catweazle666….
Imagine my house, it sits on a hillside covered with fir, pine, hemlock, etc etc..
I get a kick out of pretending to side with your sentiments about ‘concomitant destruction of habitat’ by biding my time, appearing to moo, then throwing out a bit of bait by asking a question. I gaze lovingly at the mountains surrounding Vancouver bc and ask.. Which of those mountains are old growth forests? We must protect them.
Of course, the answer is NONE for two reasons. The first is that they are all what today we call second growth for the most part. The big and older trees were cut ( by hand saw ) by the inhabitants from 1800s onward. Today most of it is watershed reserve but second growth nonetheless. Today it looks from a distance like what it is… a pristine and very vigorous temperate rainforest filled with all kinds species including wild semi-urban bears, cougars, racoons, coyotes, owls, etc. etc.
That is… it all grew back.
The second reason is that ALL of the trees, animals, plants, snails, …you name it, (and ALL of what the enviro-scary priests say are PRIMEVAL) are pretty much INVASIVE SPECIES. How can this be? Well in recent geologic history, say until about 6000 years ago, my house and the surrounding hillsides were deep beneath a mile and a half of ICE. The habitat that existed under all this ice was clearly not supporting anything at all and if it ever did it was destroyed by the ice with the ‘concomitant destruction of ….rare species’.
Yet the ‘pristine forest’ thrives today.
Nature will do what nature will do and it’s pretty resilient.
BZ – well said.
The green blight. That said, the environmentalists’ propaganda was a double-edge scalpel. Now that their choice has been exposed to public scrutiny, their selectivity no longer offers them sanctuary in the privacy of their chambers.
Here in Thunder Bay in NW Ontario, Canada the socially progressive Provincial Liberal morons shut down our electrical generating plant fueled by cheap coal from Saskatchewan. Rather than upgrade the plant to modern coal burning standards the only two choices presented were to shut down the plant or convert it to bio-mass.
plans for big new mine developments in this area, the so-called “Ring of Fire” raised concerns about adequate electrical capacity. No problem, said the Liberals, we will build a new high voltage connector line from Southern Ontario. This would use some of the “over-generation” afforded by the disappearance of Ontario’s industry to other countries over the last few decades. What could go wrong with a tower based power line around the Great Lakes (hint, look up Great Ice Storm of 1998).
Local concerns won out but the plant was converted to bio-mass. Keep reading, it gets weird: NW Ontario, with more wood falling over in the boreal forests than we can haul away, is importing specially treated bio-mass wood pellets from Holland! I am not making this up, I just watched them unload a ship load at the terminal here on Lake Superior.
Why the specially treated pellets? So they can be stored outside in our weather, which some would say is not benign year round. I guess it would have been seen as an even sillier choice if they had to spend the money and build the very visually obvious storage sheds at the power plant, right in town. This way, no one notices one more ship unloading at the terminal and the pellets are very dark in colour, almost, one could say, coal-like, in appearance and function.
I would love to know the numbers for the conversion and ongoing operation, pellets versus coal upgrade. Another example of expensive green virtue signalling.
schadenfreude
“I’m shocked – … greedy corporatists …would lead to corruption, kickbacks, and large scale destruction of the world’s protected woodlands?”
Not very civil discourse. What are the chances that journalists can get anything right? Zero!
Based on 40 years in the power industry, Eric is a big fat liar. I have worked for no greedy corporations, I have experienced corruption, I have seen no destruction of forest to make power.
“I have seen no destruction of forest to make power.”
In that case, you aren’t paying attention!
There is a great deal of interest in the subject at the moment, even in the Guardian.
Protected forests in Europe felled to meet EU renewable targets – report
Europe’s bioenergy plants are burning trees felled from protected conservation areas rather than using forest waste, new report shows
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/24/protected-forests-in-europe-felled-to-meet-eu-renewable-targets-report
The obvious solution is to burn energy dense, easily transportable coal and oil, and THEN plant the equivalent amount of trees. (In terms of CO2 emissions).
Cutting, chipping, transporting and replanting trees is terribly energy inefficient, with great environmental disturbance, and with long lag times waiting for forests to grow.
The boreal forest (taiga) in Russia is almost 50% greater in area that all the forests of Brazil. Canada’s boreal forest is the third largest forest area in the world, after Russia and Brazil. Next largest in area are the forests of the USA, China, Indonesia, Zaire, and the Nordic countries.
Fully 1/3 of the total area of our planet is still covered by forests, despite some really bad practices in recent years, especially those caused by idiot greens who encouraged the clear-cutting of tropical forests to grow sugar cane and palm oil for biofuels.
Below is some more information on the boreal forest. You can fly all day over Russia or Canada and see nothing but forest – it’s not like we are running short. Nevertheless the slime-greens act like very single tree is so precious that we are not allowed to cut trees near towns. The result is that we have had disastrous fires in Slave Lake and Fort McMurray where the towns had to be evacuated and many structures were destroyed as the fires spread through the municipalities. These disasters were entirely avoidable.
It is easy to find examples where the slime-greens have been responsible for huge loss of life and enormous property damage. What is difficult in recent decades is finding any examples of the greens doing good.
Regards, Allan
http://www.borealforest.org/index.php?category=world_boreal_forest&page=overview
In the uppermost Northern Hemisphere, North America, Europe, and Asia have significant expanses of land. The boreal forests ring the regions immediately south of the Arctic Circle in a vast expanse that easily rivals the rainforest regions of the world. The northern boreal ecoregion accounts for about one third of this planet’s total forest area. This broad circumpolar band runs through most of Canada, Russia and Scandinavia.
The circumpolar range of the boreal forest. About two-thirds of the area is in Eurasia. The sector in Eastern Canada lies farthest from the North Pole. Map source, Hare and Ritchie (1972).
In North America, the boreal eco-region extends from Alaska to Newfoundland, bordering the tundra to the north and touching the Great Lakes to the south.
Known in Russia as the taiga, the boreal forest constitutes one of the largest biome in the world, covering some 12 million square kilometres. Overlying formerly glaciated areas and areas of patchy permafrost on both continents, the forest is mosaic of successional and subclimax plant communities sensitive to varying environmental conditions. It has relatively few species, being composed mainly of spruces, firs, and conifers, with a smattering of deciduous trees, mostly along waterways. The boreal forest seems associated with the location of the summertime arctic airmass – it begins generally where it reaches its southern limit, and it extends to the southern most extension during the winter. Thus, it lies between the summer and winter positions of the arctic front.
The boreal forest corresponds with regions of subarctic and cold continental climate. Long, severe winters (up to six months with mean temperatures below freezing) and short summers (50 to 100 frost-free days) are characteristic, as is a wide range of temperatures between the lows of winter and highs of summer. For example, Verkhoyansk, Russia, has recorded extremes of minus 90 F and plus 90 F. Mean annual precipitation is 15 to 20 inches, but low evaporation rates make this a humid climate.
Also characteristic of the boreal forest are innumerable water bodies: bogs, fens, marshes, shallow lakes, rivers and wetlands, mixed in among the forest and holding a vast amount of water. The winters are long and severe while summers are short though often warm.
Forests cover approximately 19.2 million square miles (49.8 million square kilometres) – (33%) of the world’s land surface area. They are broken down as follows:
Total Area mil. sq. km.
Boreal Forests 16.6
Other Forests 33.2
“greens who encouraged the clear-cutting of tropical forests to grow sugar cane and palm oil for biofuels”
“It is easy to find examples where the slime-greens have been responsible for huge loss of life and enormous property damage”
Hilarious, Alan you has us all going there.
Tony, who do you think insisted that biofuels and biofuel mandates and huge subsidies were necessary to “fight global warming”?
One hint: It sure was not the oil companies or the “climate deniers”.
Dear Allan,
The proponents of biofuel subsidies and mandates are surely those who would benefit from them: midwest farmers. Most probably supported Trump at the recent election. Eric’s pin everything on the “greens” shtick is ludicrous but it gets ya’ clickin’ don’t it?
Unexpectedly
It’s time for a surcharge tax in the U.S. on trees exported as wood pellets to the UK and EU. They are subsidizing the consumption and something has got to be done to stop the clear cutting by policy decree.
Quite an idea, Resourceguy. We could similarly put a surcharge tax on exported grain to stop clear cutting in wheat fields.
I think we need a new reference page for the tonnage measure of wood pellets exported for green policy directives. The graph would look like a hockey stick.
The Green Industrial Complex farms millions of acres of corn for biofuel that is forced on the consumer and millions more acres of clear cut forests for exported wood pellets.
A few years from now we are burning camel shit!