Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart / James Delingpole – Greens have discovered to their horror that producing renewable wood pellet biomass requires a large supply of dead trees.
Hardwood forests cut down to feed Drax Power plant, Channel 4 Dispatches claims
Brendan Montague | 16th April 2018
A Dispatches investigation has uncovered evidence of hardwood forests being chopped down to provide ‘green energy’ for the UK. Experts say unique habitats rich in wildlife are under threat as Britain’s power stations switch from burning coal to wood, writes BRENDAN MONTAGUE
Huge areas of hardwood forest in the state of Virginia are being chainsawed to create ‘biomass’ energy in Britain as the government attempts to reach targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in efforts to tackle climate change, an investigation by Channel 4 Dispatches has found.
A key part of government efforts to hit its green energy targets is to switch from generating electricity from burning coal to burning wood – or so-called biomass. It’s a policy that is costing taxpayers more than £700 million per year through a levy on their electricity bills.
The biomass industry and government argue that because wood is a renewable source of energy and trees can be replanted to reabsorb carbon dioxide this policy is good for the environment.
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The power station giant claims that burning pellets instead of coal reduces carbon emissions by more than 80 percent.
However, Dispatches conducted a simple experiment at a laboratory at the University of Nottingham to compare the carbon dioxide emitted when burning wood pellets, similar to those used by Drax, instead of coal.
Dozens of scientists
It found that to burn an amount of wood pellets that would generate the same amount of electricity as coal it would actually produce roughly eight percent more carbon.
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Lets hope the next Dispatches investigation is a wind turbine special titled “where have all our birds gone?“.
So… the word ‘murder’ is now attributable to plants.
This is beyond farce.
A forest normally is carbon neutral. Some trees get rotten. And the growth will stop because of density.
The trick is to maintain a forest with the same amount of biomass and to harvest the surplus. The best way is to cut only old trees. Younger trees in the shadows of those will suddenly “explode” in growth and replace the old ones.
Firs can get hundred years old and have only 2″ in diameter, if they are grown in the shadow of an old one.
Generally, young forests are producing more mass per year and area. There are willow plantations you harvest every five years, being up to 10 meters high. They will grow again out of the root.
If on likes to sequester CO2 he should use fast-growing trees and use them for long-living houses, furniture and boats. The remains could be used for wood chips or firewood.
Destroying the environment to save the environment is so daft that it leaves me with no respect at all for the loonies that make and promote the laws that allow this travesty to happen.