Reposted from the No Trick Zone
By P Gosselin on 6. September 2020Share this…
Wood pellets.
Swiss meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann calls it “the dumbest energy and environmental policy ever”. Now, finally, after years of being warned, Germany’s mainstream media are finally showing signs of waking up to it.
Idiots and energy policy: Burning of “CO2-friendly” wood pellets driving mass European deforestation. Illustrative photo by P. Gosselin
Germany’s flagship ARD public broadcasting recently presented a report earlier today about how “CO2 neutral” wood burning is leading to widespread deforestation across northern Europe – a rather embarrassing development for the Europeans, who recently expressed their condemnation over Brazilian forest policy.
Deforestation up 49%
The ARD’s “Das Erste” reports how satellite images show deforestation has risen 49% since 2016 in Sweden, Finland and the Baltic countries. The reason: “Because of the CO2 targets. That sounds totally crazy but precisely because of the trend to renewable energies is in part responsible for deforestation in Estonia,” says the Das Erste moderator.
Having spent some time working for the EU, Liiana Steinberg explains in the report how she recently returned to her native Estonia and was shocked to see how much deforestation had taken place over the recent years (2:25). “I discovered how the forests no longer exists here left and right.”
For “CO2-neutral” wood pellets
Where once massive hardwoods once stood now grows tiny fir trees. The harvested trees, the report says, were used for wood pellets – a form of renewable green energy. The trees, the pellet industry says, will grow back.
Not only are the forests taking a hit, but so is the wildlife that once inhabited in them. According to Ms. Steinberg, bird life has fallen some 25%. “It’s wasted. Now we have to start all over again.”
Idiots “follow the science”
Climate activists, including the media like ARD, have long insisted that burning trees was good for the climate and environment because the emitted CO2 would simply be recycled back into nature – “follow the science” they insisted again and again. But they failed to understand that trees, depending on their age, acted as sinks and that some 100 years of stored carbon would be unloaded into the atmosphere in just a matter of hours if burned for heat.
It’s sad that they are just waking up to this (maybe).
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Here in Czechia the deforestation is mainly due to bark beetle outbreak. The outbreak also exists in Estonia
https://bnn-news.com/need-to-cut-up-to-1-000-ha-of-forest-seen-in-estonia-over-bark-beetles-212339
Now this is a situation where cutting and using for energy or strandboard production is called for. Insect and disease outbreaks kill a lot of trees, getting them under control should be a priority.
That hurts. So much of our wood is pine and it’s difficult to get hardwoods around here. They are burning wood that would draw a premium price around here. I just hope there isn’t any walnut in there as the price for that is off the scale.
“releasing 100 years of CO2” is not relevant.
Relevant is the deforestation itself.
It changes the landscape, the albedo and finally the climate.
Plus the burning trees release a lot of Russ.
The policy of burning trees for energy generation, is completely stupid, how appropriate it’s advocated and advanced by, the energy of the completely stupid generation.
Just remember, AOC is waiting in the wings, vote wisely America.
Where I live in central Canada there is a LOT of public forest that is ready to be harvested, scheduled for such as part of a sustainable forest management plan, but there is no viable market for it. It is too low value to pay for the cost of cutting it and/or trucking it to the processing facility, which can be 300 km (~200 miles) or more away.
Although these areas are not economically viable on the whole, they often have a mix of products, including low percentages of high quality veneer logs, spruce sawlogs, etc. Government policy does not allow forest managers to go in an cherry pick just the good stuff, for good reason. These areas are often older “decadent” forests, in some cases the result of past high-grade harvests (i.e. 50-100 yrs ago), and will take a very long time to improve on their own if left uncut. Sending some of the low value trees to burn in a biomass facility, even if at a small loss (i.e. expensive to transport), would provide access to the other higher value products in the stand, which would result in not only a net profit, but more fiber and more secure jobs at traditional wood processing facilities.
In this scenario, which is quite common, burning trees or parts of trees for energy can indeed make sense.
These are commercial forestry plantations… they are harvested and replanted.
Certainly in Scotland there are many forestry areas planted in the last 50 years… (some of which actually caused a fall in local birdlife). I suspect the case many be the same in Scandinavia.
Most of Germany’s biomass isn’t from wood pellets anyway (the UK continues the shameful practice of importing wood pellets from USA, which all UK green organisations oppose)
In short, another nonsense story.
Germany has 700 plants using what is claimed to be waste unrecyclable wood. Which begs the question what happened to it previously. The majority is from biogas which is growing crops for energy, which does raise questions about how sensible that is heat v food being just one question.
You have, as usual, no clue sbout what you are writing in concern of Germany.
The number of wood heating is increasing by millions, so do the values for NO2 and pm 2.5.
In a lot of regions, they stopped publishing hourly values using day means instead, because everybody knows, you have no rush hours during weekends, evenings and nights in living zones outside of the cities.
One comment lost in moderation.
No, you are 100% wrong griff and I am not even going to explain this to you if you can’t understand the concept of scaling up. In the Netherlands we wanted to do the same and now there is also backfire by the population and the media. It is even calculated that more Co2 is released then from normal coal burning.
If everybody is going to use forests as energy source, do you think there is going to be any left? And how much land area do you think it will use up?
Once again:
Griff, as usual, you have no clue about what you are writing, talking about Germany at least.
The number of wood stoves and heaters increases by millions, NO2 and PM 2.5 follows so strong, that the officials more and more stopped publishing hourly values, but only daily means, because everybody knows seeing these hourly numbers, you have no rush hour the late afternoons, the evenings, the nights and the weekends outside of the citycenters in living zones.
And these heaters and stoves are funded with a lot of money,, because of “Climate”. Unfortunately you don’t reduce CO2 with wood heating, in cantrast, you produce more, because oil and gas produce less. Used are pellest and wood, much enoyed are more and more chimneys.
So, what you are telling about German Biomass is nonsense, even if the number may be right, the air quality in Germany degenerates to that in the 60th of the last century.
Pinheads on the rise in policy and the “Green” movement.
These are commercial forestry plantations… they are harvested and replanted
Right. And they were almost certainly at the correct harvest-growth balance BEFORE the greenie wood-pellet fad. There’s such a thing as over-harvesting and/or vastly expanding land-use intensive wood plantations. Mining coal, uranium or drilling for gas/oil has alot LESS environmental effects/consequences than stripping/replanting vast land areas for wood.
Jeesh, what a maroon.
Griff
If your concern is adding additional CO2 to the current concentration then what exactly is the difference between using Carbon sequestered for millions of years vs Carbon sequestered for hundreds of years. At least the older Carbon doesn’t affect the forests ability to resink it after it’s released.
Do not forget the large forested areas cleared for windmills in Scotland.
But from the Green point of view, that clearing is a 100% good one
For Finland, there is simply no deforestation going on. Period. Anyone claiming otherwise is providing incorrect information.
Based on latest information the forest growth in Finland is significantly exceeding the cuts.
Good to know. Also the case here in the central Appalachian Mnts of USA. Mostly hardwood (some conifers) forests here are well-managed & have been for decades. Mountainous west Maryland county I live in is 85% forested w/both private & public-owned slopes carefully select-cut at proper time-intervals.
Might I suggest “Multi-Use Management of the Medieval Anglo-Norman Forest”?
Modern public perceptions of man’s interaction with the environment are heavily rooted
in our post-industrial setting. The environment comes to the forefront each year,
especially for school children, via Earth Day celebrations. The first Earth Day in 1970
was organized as a ‘teach-in’ with both an educational and a protest flavour.1
In tone, it was negative: a forum to express American concerns about degradation of the land,
rivers, lakes, and air.2
In this Earth Day setting, man is viewed as the destroyer, the
polluter of the environment. This has a serious impact on the perception of man’s
historical interaction with the environment: if man has done such a bad job of keeping our
environment healthy in spite of all of our modern scientific knowledge, how much more
damage must he have done in the past in his ignorance?
Yet a critical look at legal documents of the first three Anglo-Norman kings, who reigned
over England and Normandy from 1066 to 1135 AD, reveals that medieval landholders in this
kingdom practiced conscious forestry management to balance all of the demands on
woodland resources; and their practices were not that different from those implemented
in the modern forestry systems of the United Kingdom and United States.
https://dolly.jorgensenweb.net/files/Multiuse_Forest_JOUHS.pdf
This article is wrong in many ways. In Finland we don’t cut woods for energy in industrial scale, only waste is burned. And then there is this from our highly respected forest authority:
https://www.luke.fi/en/natural-resources/forest/forest-resources-and-forest-planning/
“The annual growth of trees in Finland exceeds the volume of felling and natural loss by over 20 million cubic metres. The age of our forests is developing in a manner that makes the sustainable removals exceed 85 million cubic years of stem wood in the next few decades, when annual removals have been 60–65 million cubic metres in recent years”.
I myself can verify our landscapes have become greener and forests thicker during my lifetime of 55 years.
Of course the Greens would want to kill forestry all together.
Just check with Greta, she might say its OK
Living in Finland I don’t recognize the 49%. Here ca 1.5 % of the forrest is logged annually and the mean logged area is 1.5 hectares. There are strict laws requiring re planting.
I think the main change in Finland is that roots and branches today are used for energy production and not left to rot in the woods. Wood is too valuable in a country with large scale wood industry to simply burn.
Notice that I think that use of wood for energy production is stupid. At the end of the nineteenth century there were no large forrest areas close to large towns because wood was used for heating. New energy sources led to re growt of destroyed forrests. Today we see deforrestation due to the same reasons in for example Africa.
In the USA electric utilities were once fairly independent. State Regulators were tasked to monitor the corps fro a safe and economical supply. Now they operate at the benignity of Federal and State environmental diktats. Reason is gone to the wind – mills. This is how far we have slipped into Facism.
Burning biomass, whether it is trees or biofuel crops, suffers from the same problems as wind and solar. Energy density. Land can only produce so much energy per hectare, diminishing with latitude. Selective thinning or harvesting for forest management may be sensible, but setting out to provide a substantial amount of industrial scale electricity generation from biomass rather than using high density fossil fuels or nuclear is a fool’s errand. Large scale biomass-to-power generating stations are hungry beasts. Much penetration into the generating portfolio would of necessity require forest clearing at rates far beyond replacement rates. At least the wood can be stored and burned as needed, eliminating the intermittency problem of wind and solar.
California has a small handful of wood to energy plants. I am very familiar with them because my former employer, Duke Energy, conducted due diligence into possibly purchasing a few for its required renewable energy credits in its portfolio of generating assets. I did the environmental part of the evaluation. Aside from difficulties with air pollution controls due to fuel variability, “feeding the beast” was the biggest problem. For only a relatively tiny power plant (about 60 MW), fuel buyers had to reach out beyond a 100 mile radius to obtain the >100,000 tons/year of wood and wood waste needed to fire the boilers due to California’s progressive restrictions on the once-thriving timber industry. In the end, the numbers just didn’t add up, and Duke abandoned the venture.
Meanwhile, the greenies were busily banning Duke’s main assets in California, gas-fired power plants, which Duke had planned to modernize by replacing old, conventional plants with combined-cycle gas plants. Wasn’t going to happen, not in California. Duke, originally an East Coast electric utility with gas, coal and nuclear assets in North and South Carolina (HQ in Charlotte, NC) wasn’t ready to deal with the West Coast loonies. As of this date, Duke has had to sell off its CA plants and abandon the state, except for a new 150 MW solar plant in Kern County (Bakersfield), CA.
Large power generating companies such as Duke, after deregulation, have focused their growth on generation rather than local distribution (fires, not wires). Looking at such companies’ websites, one might mistakenly believe that they take so-called renewable energy seriously as if it represents the future. They don’t. Were it not for state-mandated renewable portfolio standards and production tax credits, they would not own even one wind or solar installation. They do it because they must, by law. Just as regularly discussed here on the pages of WUWT, the power companies are no dummies regarding renewables. They understand energy density, base load, dispatchable generation, capacity factors, etc. and know that renewables other than hydro are parasitic and unsustainable past a certain point of penetration in the mix of generating assets.
Pflash, As you say, “The power companies aren’t dummies” but the voters are “willfully uninformed” (or stupid if you prefer). Liberal democrats advertise themselves as “The Force” protecting “everyday American families” from being exploited by mean-spirited corporations that “only care about profits”, especially big oil and big electric (Exxon and PG&E seem the most popular targets here in Cali), The reality is just the opposite, the lib representatives and their minion regulators over-regulate and over-tax the oil and electric corporations and lavish the wind and solar companies with subsidies and tax breaks. The end result is the highest priced gasoline and electricity in the lower 48. California, the land of fruits and nuts.
“Environmental Disaster: Northern Europe Deforestation Up 49% Due To Effort To Meet “CO2 Targets”!”
It’s not deforestation if the forest isn’t destroyed for another land use. They’ve been clear-cutting in Europe for 1,000 years. But, they don’t just clear-cut- they also thin the forests. Much of the wood for pellets in Europe comes from thinning.
To call this forest management work deforestation is ignorant propaganda.
As for pellets going to Drax from the American south- Greg said it’s all oak. That’s nonsense. I’d like to see him try to prove it.
There certainly should be a mix of age classes and species. For the past few centuries Europeans have mostly used just a few species for planting forests but they now are trying more species along with “natural regeneration”. The remaining old growth forests in Europe should be protected.
Funny, but almost all the people who hate forestry love their wood homes, wood furniture and paper products. It’s like the children who when asked where milk comes from say it comes from the supermarket. Anyone who doesn’t like forestry work is a *&^%$ hypocrite if they live in a wood home with wood furniture and paper products.
I don’t need to continually feed my house with wood.
Just the wood burner during winter.
The Brits took it one step farther in stupidity from shipping wood pellets from clear cut forests on other continents in order to burn it locally.
It may seem stupid to you but the economics of it works. Also, it’s not all from clearcut forests- some is from thinnings. Also, the forests in the US South wiill be clearcut regarldess- that’s the way they manage much of the forest there. I think it’s much stupider to cover your landscape with solar and wind “farms”.
What did you expect from diesel fuel economy cheaters and arms dealers and bankers to the dictatorships?
It took them all this time tutt tutting over deforestation in places like the Amazon and Africa and now they suddenly wake up to what they’re doing in their own backyard? Blind Freddy could see it. Did they think our ancestors were as stupid as them for jumping onboard coal for steam and then oil for the internal combustion engine and then nukes for electricity? Luddites pure and simple.
clearcutting is NOT deforestation unless that land is being converted to other uses- like urban development, a golf course, agriculture, and worse of all- a solar “farm”
That acreage cleared for long term forest management will either be replanted or left to replant itself- and it will, though dummies don’t know that.
Once again the domestic, special-interest angle to renewable energy policy rears its head. This goes along with domestic content solar cells (Ontario and India).
There just ain’t no free lunch. As Clint Eastwood said in Dirty Harry, man’s got to know his limitations.
From the article:
“Where once massive hardwoods once stood now grows tiny fir trees.”
uh, no- look at the photo- those logs are NOT hardwoods
In Europe, they grow many species- pines, spruce, even fir- and some hardwoods.
Sure, there were “massive hardwoods” many centuries ago- and they should grow more hardwoods and they probably will as there is a movement in Europe to grow more species.
Too bad nobody has figured out how to split atoms.
That might produce some energy.
It might be tough to corral all the freed particles, but isn’t that why engineers are taught engineering ?
It is only a matter of time.
Reminds me of the whole plastic bag issue – “save the trees” campaign got rid of paper bags in favor of plastic, if you used plastic bags you were doing your part to save the earth. But now, I hear that plastic bags are evil and destroying the planet.
Short term solutions, no foresight.
Except that Single Use Plastic bags are more healthy to use than Reusable bags WRT infectious diseases & bacteria and sturdier for potential wet loads from certain grocery items
Keep on burning the trees-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/uknews/britain-blocks-plans-for-new-coal-mine-in-northeast-england/ar-BB18QA3l
“…leading to widespread deforestation across northern Europe…”
This not true for Finland. I don’t know how and why this misinformation is delivered. Deforestation here is practically zero. Normally there is clearcutting, but after that tree seedlings are planted in the opening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearcutting
Maybe this clearcutting is source of error?
Forest is growing in Finland:
“The additional growth of the forest in the 21st century is estimated at 86.7 million cubic meters per year.” Google translation from https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomen_mets%C3%A4t