From the NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY and the “wood stove police will soon come knocking” department comes this claim:
Your wood stove affects the climate more than you might think
Black carbon is the biggest problem, but other factors may have a mitigating effect
Norwegians love to heat with wood. That’s easy to see when driving around the Norwegian countryside in the winter. Stacks of wood line the walls of houses and smoke rises from the chimneys, especially on cold days.
There was even a national “wood night program” on NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, which ran for 12 hours and attracted international attention because of its unusual theme.
According to figures from Statistics Norway (SSB), 1.2 million Norwegian households heat with wood. They burned 1.1 million tonnes of firewood in 2016, which provided 5.34 TWh of direct heat — and that might have affected the climate more than you might think.
“Our findings show a complex picture. This form of heating has a significant warming effect on the climate, which is cause for concern. But at the same time, burning wood also causes significant cooling, which is encouraging,” says Anders Arvesen, a researcher in the Industrial Ecology Programme at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Arvesen and his colleague Francesco Cherubini were among the co-authors of a major study on climate impacts in Norway just published in Scientific Reports.
The study analyzed so-called stationary bioenergy systems based on heat from wood-burning stoves and from wood biomass-based district heating.
“A lot of research has been done on this topic, but until now we’ve never had such a comprehensive study of various effects on a national level. This is the first time we’ve considered all the different factors in a single study,” says Cherubini, who is a professor at NTNU’s Industrial Ecology Programme.
A research project called CenBio, which focused on innovations in bioenergy, carried out the study, which was supported by NTNU in cooperation with SINTEF Energy, the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO) and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU).
The 35 members of the OECD decided in 1991 that CO2 emissions from biomass combustion would not count in CO2 emission accounting. The theory was that nature would reabsorb the carbon dioxide released by burning, yielding a net balance of zero. Unfortunately it’s not quite that simple.
“Bioenergy from forests is carbon neutral in the sense that forests are a renewable resource. The trees will absorb CO2 as they grow, but temporarily there will be a greater amount of CO2 in the atmosphere,” explains Arvesen.
Logging can adversely affect the climate, including from emissions from heavy logging machinery. But the logged areas themselves can actually have a cooling effect, because open areas reflect more of the incoming sunlight back into the atmosphere than wooded areas.
“The cooling effect varies depending on where in the country the logging takes place, since different parts of the country have varying snow conditions and forest density,” says Arvesen.
The CenBio study took these factors into consideration. It also analysed how other emissions from burning wood affect the climate. Methane gas and assorted particles also flow out of Norwegian chimneys.
These particles can both absorb and reflect solar radiation. Whereas organic carbon particles have a cooling effect, black carbon – also known as soot – has a warming effect on the climate.
Black carbon also destroys some of the snow’s ability to reflect sunlight because it changes the colour of the snow landscape and contributes to increased snowmelt.
Black carbon from biomass combustion accounts for 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 in Norway, according to the study.
“Our analysis indicates that black carbon is the main reason for climate warming. I was surprised how important the effect of soot was, although it wasn’t completely unexpected. Burning wood creates a lot of dust emissions,” says Arvesen.
Cherubini thinks more research is needed in this area. He points out that reducing black carbon emissions will also have a positive health effect due to improved air quality.
Nevertheless, “it’s still better to heat with wood than to burn fossil fuels,” says Cherubini. He emphasizes that more technological possibilities are being developed that will result in new and better wood stoves and furnaces. Until they come on the market, people can reduce particle emissions by replacing their old stoves.
Many Norwegians have already replaced their old woodstoves with newer and cleaner-burning stoves, which has more than halved soot emissions since the early 2000s.
By 2016, 730 000 wood-burning households were using new technology. Overall, heating with wood in Norway has decreased slightly. The amount of wood burned in furnaces with old technology has decreased by more than 75 per cent in the past 20 years, according to Statistics Norway.
Old woodstoves emit more black carbon than new ones. And if the positive development continues, woodstove emissions should drop to the same level as pellet stoves in the near future. The challenge lies in the smallest particles, according to SINTEF scientist Morten Seljeskog.
“Soot is made up of particles as small as nanosize. These emissions are the most difficult ones to get rid of. Researchers are working to figure out what physical measures need to be taken in the combustion chamber to minimize soot emissions in all furnaces,” he says.
###
The paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21559-8
My favorite line from the OP:
“Cherubini thinks more research is needed in this area.”
Feed me!
Another area of attack for the eugenicists that run the world. We all know they loathe humanity, especially the poor, just behind an educated middle class… Can’t afford to buy coal or oil because of the pricing? Fine, I’ll burn wood and then over the forest.
Nope! Evil poor! You will not have any energy! Gaia does not want your kind here, only our Ecomoral elites! We know, she told us so.
This is garbage straight out of biblical times. Just as ridiculous, just as centralized, just as corrupt, and just as false. The more things change…
Turn over (meaning practical regeneration of the forest for health and viability, we know how to do that)
Does this mean that the wood stove police will be intercepting the wood-pellet carrying ships from the United States before they can dock own the UK and supply our converted coal-burning power stations?
Another confirmation bias model fantasy; “Cooling aerosols and changes in albedo counteract warming from CO2 and black carbon from forest bioenergy in Norway”
Start with a confirmation bias model mapping.
Ensure that complexity masks and obscures explicit simple details
Build a card castle of models:
Take advantage of weak official data sources to infill preferential data for desired results:
There are twelve uses of “model” within the paper’s abstract and another eight references to “model” in the references.
A fine multilayer model cake built on bias and models.
In Fairbanks Alaska we are not permitted to burn wood, coal, or wood pellets for heat whenever it gets cold enough for a temperature inversion (which is during most cold spells). This means most have to burn fuel oil, and for our house, a 2100 sq ft five star plus energy rated home fuel bills are about $600 per month in winter.
Wood heating is sustainable and should be carbon dioxide neutral. Suppose you have a one acre wood lot. You can grow 100 trees spaced 20 feet apart. If two new trees are planted every year and the two oldest trees are cut up for fire wood, the net biomass will remain essentially constant. One year later you will again have two 50 year old trees to cut and you will plant two new seedlings. This process can be sustained indefinitely. Of course to ensure you will always have sufficient fuel, you’d want to plant more than 2 trees each year as some will not survive. But this will lead to a need to thin the wood lot every 5-10 years and result in addition wood fuel.
I am fortunate enough to live on a fairly large wooded parcel with a mix of hardwoods. Every year for over 35 years we’ve obtained more than enough wood to heat our home simply by cutting up trees that die naturally or come down in storms. We heat with a modern EPA emission certified wood stove that produces less than 3 grams of particulate emissions per hour. That’s almost nothing compared to the wood stoves produced during the oil embargo years of the late 70s early 80s which produced 80 – >100 grams per hour. A properly operated EPA certified wood stove produces virtually no visible smoke or odor. Even carbon monoxide emissions are very low. And heating efficiency is around 80% – much better than burning wood for electricity which results in about 40% efficiency at the point of use.
Am struggling here. Really struggling.
To search through my records, documents and back-ups to find out when my sweet little spaceship crash-landed on Planet Dumb.
eg Its taken as granted that wood-stoves make smoke.
Yeeeeeeees, but only treally when they’re not being operated properly (eg by Dumbos) or when they’re burning damp or wet wood. Again, another (happy?) past-time for Dumbos.
From the engineering toolbox:
Then we might add in (deffo calls for a Computer Model here) the energy of the unburned fuel – the Black Carbon soot.
If they are going to grow those trees and burn them, might they not show a modicum of respect to the hapless plants and do the job properly?
The joy of being a Dumbo means you simply never know. Sweet innocence.
Then the dumbness goes up 2 orders of magnitude when it’s asserted that ‘a computer’ told them so-and-so and THEN they brag about it on the interweb. The sweet sort of thing children do innit?
Next.
SERIOUSLY Enquiring Minds might like to know where the ash from these fires finishes up.
Because, if its not taken back to the forest where it effectively came from, the process is NOT sustainable.
This becomes even worse when the bare dirt they describe following the tree-cutting is washed away by melting snow and rain. As happens on any bare dirt on a hillside slope of greater than 5 degrees.
Ask maize growers almost anywhere in the world. Sugar beet and potatoes also.
(Also witness the mudslide alerts going out across So-Cal after the wildfires)
Because when you see brown coloured water swishing away down streams, creeks, brooks and rivers after a rain event, what you’re seeing is effectively a dust-storm. Fine particles of soil being removed by a moving fluid. The plants need those fine particles, its where they get their trace-element nutrition.
Shades of Liebig Limiters here of course
Are dust storms good thing to have in your environment? Any environment?
At least in a conventional air-borne dust storm, most of the dust comes back down onto (dry) land but when the fine particles are in a water borne storm, they are sent out into the ocean from where they NEVER come back.
Were those Rapanui people really as dumb as the proverbial dumb thing when they ground up rocks to fertilise their crops?
Or were they centuries ahead of their time?
I’d assert the latter, and counting.
One must sacrifice comrade for the UK boilers to burn the same wood. Ask not what you can burn for yourself but what you can ship to others to burn for their climate schemes.
I’m heating with wood right now. I spread the soot around to get the snow to melt faster.
I’ve used fireplace ash to help the car get traction when trying to get up the driveway.
When I was in high school the wood stove was THE big eco-boon – I had a friend who’s ex-hippie parents proudly boasted about theirs.
Fast forward…
+1
I notice that they used the word significant several times. Is this a translation error? So a few Norwegians are significantly affecting the planet by burning wood to keep warm? Oh please! ROFLMAO!
Hypocrisy fills the air …sort of…If they really were concerned, they’d “close” shop in Norway and all move to the tropics. Ooops…
I remember something recently where some environmentalists were souring on wood burning stoves in Alaska because of the negative environmental effects as well as the negative health effects of the byproducts of burning wood. The idea of attempting to prevent Alaskans from heating their homes with wood is ludicrous. As someone who grew up poor and out in the middle of nowhere, I can say we survived by heating our home with wood. My dad and I would fell a tree, cut it up, and then bring it back home. From there, as a teenager, it was my job to split the wood to usable portions for our wood stove. Yes, we were on an electrical grid, but when money is tight to almost non-existent, heating with wood is the only option for survival. The last option for a government trying to take away our ability to survive winter is the 2nd Amendment.
Also, I’ve been in areas of Siberia where entire towns used coal fired stoves for warmth in the middle of their single room homes. When it’s 40C below without a windchill factor, it’s coal or a quick death.
I can see this heading the same way as the diesel car nonsense. The clue is in NEW wood burning stoves. No doubt they’ve found another manufacturer to subsidise them to create a mass scrapping and replacement of perfectly serviceable items. It’s basically the 1960’s wastemaking all over again.
Do your part for global warming. Just stop breathing. No more carbon dioxide from you.
Thank you kindly.
Even we in Germany have guys we call the Chimney Blockwarts, remembering the Nazi Blockwarts who controlled even the political thinking in the neighborhood in the Third Reich.
Our blockwarts are even allowed to visit our dwellings, destroying the freedom of inviolability of the apartment – a German Basic Law.
In reality, they are not so bad. If you can involve them into technical discussions, they are quite flexible…
As far as I remember, you may not burn wood in Oslo, because of all the smoke that gives…
Last days we had a “small particulate” (smog) alarm in our country as open air Eastern fires were burnt in The Netherlands and Germany and the wind did drive all that smoke to us.
As as extra: while we had the world record of dioxin contamination of the world (due to not so clean waste incinerators), most was cleaned up and the largest source of dioxins in our country nowadays is the burning of wood in wood stoves and open fire places…
You may burn wood in Oslo, but oil burning heating devices will be banned from 2020!
The modern wood burning stove burns the wood in a lower chamber with limited oxygen (reduced air supply) resulting in pyrolysis: production of a complex gas mixture which is fed into an upper chamber with high oxygen (high air flow). Combustion of these upper chamber gases produce high (70% or more) fuel efficiency. This is in contrast to a fireplace where 95% of heat energy goes up the chimney. Newer wood burning stoves use outside air and a damper regulator for the two chambers air supply. Too little air results in low combustion temperatures with the accumulation of gases condensing on the venting flu creating creosote build up and eventually a chimney fire. Too much air results in very high burn temperatures but significant heat loss up the chimney. Generally, set and forget is not an option. Rather, continuing tinkering is required.
A major problem occurs when refueling the lower chamber with all its accumulated gases and particulate matter. Open the firebox and…within seconds: ie, five, the room in which the wood burning stove is located equalizes the pressure gradient for gases and particulates concentrations. The gases are highly toxic including benzopyrene (cancer causing) and many aldehydes like acroliine which causes respiratory membrane mucus to coagulated; white blood cells to die; phagocytic macrophages that rush from the blood to the airway mucosa to capture the particulate burden to cease to function. Instructions to mitigate this form of indoor air pollution includes opening the lower chamber air supply to draw the gases and particulates up the chimney and out into the fresh air.
The harm from the indoor air pollutions impacts children (who seem to be the “canary in the coal mine”) and are early and often made ill by the gases and particulates. There are both short and long term consequences of indoor air pollution, from burning dung in a yurt hut in the Hindu Kush to those found in New Guinea. In the Northern European and North American regions, fortunately, at least for the children although not necessary for the nostalgic adults, gas and oil winter heating predominates. There are outdoor wood burning furnaces which pipe the resulting hot water inside the home, just don’t go outside when there is an “air inversion” with its outdoor air pollution, smelling sweet, is damaging one’s entire respiratory system. Grandma got rid of her wood burning stove as soon as other options came along…for some very good reasons.
Soot, at least from coal, contains reflective particles…but people did not like soot on their cars so they passed a law and put bag houses (filters) on coal fired smoke stacks so then you got (probably for the first time in the history of the planet) smoke without reflective soot. I heat with wood and feel no remorse, the smoke smells good and the trees died natural deaths before being “harvested” for heat…sad is the world of too many monkeys and not enough sense…wood is good…over population not.
Meigs, irrespective of your opinion of the role that CO2 may or may not play in our climate, when a tree dies a natural death, it will emit CO2 if it rots, or it will emit CO2 if you burn it for heat. So congratulations for extracting the heat energy for your home. Much better to use it for that, than to let it rot on the floor of the forest.
If it rots on the forest floor, it provides nutrients for the next generation of trees.
When it rots on the forest floor, it emits the same amount of CO2 that is emitted by the stove it would have been burnt in. Oh…and the ash from the stove provides the same nutrients for the next generation of trees.
.
Moral of the story?……dump your wood stove ash where the trees grew.
We are no where close to over population.
Right. Over population is a myth from the elitist left who [hate] humanity except when they look in the mirror. The entire biomass of humans can stand on Road Island and not tough each other.
Surprised there has been no mention of Finnish Tulikivi (soapstone) fireplaces – combustion so efficient you vaporize the creosote and produce nothing but some fly ash, and you can do it with SOFT wood – you can burn 2×4 scraps in them. They are designed so that the stone soaks up the heat of the fire, thereby providing heat long after the fire is out.
I can attest to the pollution from the old fashioned pot belly stoves. We tried it for one winter. Me, my wife, and two kids all had “colds”, flu, coughing, and sundry other problems. There was no obvious smoke in the house, or ash, but lots of noxious fumes that weren’t particularly noticeable.
More recently a friend installed an automated pellet stove in their living room. It supplied lots of easily controllable heat and no problems with indoor pollution. Even several hours in the same room had no effect on breathing. No obvious smoke outside either. Cost was relatively cheap, even compared to coal in Pennsylvania.
The Norwegians have to get with the ballgame for clean stoves, and wood furnaces. Now the US requires afterburners or filters and has pollution limits they have to meet. No problem with CO2 though.
«The Norwegians have to get with the ballgame for clean stoves, and wood furnaces. «
We do. Old style wood burning stoves has been banned for 25 years
They are just picking on what they see as an easy target. Widely dispersed ownership of companies supplying burners, etc. Pick on the little guys.
On stoves and the like….
I recall as a sixth-former (no idea what ‘grade’ that is in the US) in a British grammar school – us hooligans were housed in ‘temporary’ timber-framed huts which had tortoise stoves in the corner, which we fed enthusiastically with coke…
On REALLY cold days, when the water in open tanks outside the windows froze, we discovered that feeding lumps of ice directly into a fierce coke furnace produced massive flames of water gas…
Its a wonder we survived to become responsible adults…..!
Here in Sweden the Miljöpartiet eco nuts minority government partner to the Social Democrats are leading the drive to ban all old wood stoves. This is just as old ones are not classified as they were produced long time ago. Not related to actual emissions.
I have a Husqvarna kitchen stove and a heating stove both working perfectly with good dry fuel and proper start. This is in the country so a bit of distance to the neighbors.No disturbance.
This is all part of schemes to increase taxes and to force us to buy new equipment. And to ban independent energy generation.
This Easter was one of the coldest I can remember. 10 cm of snow and down to -5 C every night. Nowhere near any “warming”. Kids running sleighs and searching Easter eggs at the same time. We do need good energy sources. My bet and hope is that the “green” Miljöpartiet are ousted in the 2018 elections.
Why the bloody hell are these Ecos kicking up such a fuss about what the French call “quantité négligéable”???
How can a sane person say that carbon dioxide from new wood burning is different from burning old wood. Carbon dioxide is carbon dioxide, period. Europeans gave themselves a get out of jail card and now contribute huge amounts of carbon dioxide under the guise of being green. Shameful!