Originally posted in Western Journal
Which is more environmentally friendly — an energy source that uses one unit of land to produce one unit of electricity, or a source that uses 100 units of land to produce one unit of electricity?
The answer should be obvious.
Nevertheless, “green” energy advocates call for a huge expansion of wind, solar and other renewables that use vast amounts of land to replace traditional power plants that use comparatively small amounts of land.
Vaclav Smil, professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba in Canada, extensively analyzed the power density of alternative sources used to generate electricity. He defined power density as the average flow of electricity generated per square meter of horizontal surface (land or sea area).
Estimating power density is complex. Smil included plant area, storage yards, mining sites, agricultural fields, pipelines and transportation, and other associated land and sea areas in his analysis.
Smil’s work allows us to compare the energy density of electricity sources. If we set a nuclear plant to one unit of land required for one unit of electricity output, then a natural gas-powered plant requires about 0.8 units of land to produce one unit of output. A coal-fired plant uses about 1.4 units of land to deliver one unit of power.
But renewable sources require vastly more land. A standalone solar facility requires about 100 units of land to deliver the same average electricity output as a nuclear plant that uses one unit of land.
A wind facility uses about 35 units of land if only the concrete wind tower pads and service roads are counted, but over 800 units of land for the entire area spanned by a typical wind installation.
Production of electricity from biomass has the poorest energy density, requiring over 1,500 units of land to output one unit of electricity.
As a practical example, compare the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the eastern California desert to the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant near Avila Beach, California.
The Ivanpah facility produces about 793 gigawatt hours per year and covers an area of 3,500 acres. The Diablo Canyon facility generates about 16,165 gigawatt hours per year on a surface area of 750 acres. The nuclear plant delivers more than 20 times the average output on about one-fifth of the land, or 100 times the power density of the solar facility.
To approach even 50 percent renewable electricity using primarily wind and solar systems, the land requirements are gigantic.
“Net-Zero America,” a 2020 study published by Princeton University, calls for wind and solar to supply half of U.S. electricity by 2050, up from about 14 percent today. The study estimated that this expansion would require about 228,000 square miles of new land, not including the additional area needed for transmission lines.
That is larger than the combined area of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, West Virginia and Wisconsin. This area would be more than 100 times as large as the physical footprint of the coal and natural gas power systems that would be replaced.
Taking land for wind and solar can seriously impact the environment.
Standalone solar systems blanket fields and deserts, blocking sunlight and driving out plants and animals. Since 2000, almost 16 million trees have been cut down in Scotland to make way for wind turbines, a total of more than 1,700 trees felled per day. This environmental devastation will increase the longer net-zero goals are pursued.
Wind and solar require vast amounts of land to generate the electricity required by modern society. Without fears about human-caused climate change, these systems would be considered environmentally damaging.
Net-zero plans for 2050, powered by wind and solar, will encounter obstacles with transmission, zoning, local opposition and just plain space that are probably impossible to overcome.
For more on energy and Net Zero, go to WUWT’s ClimateTV page.
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And wind and solar are weather dependent, so they require either conventional backup, or mythical “grid scale storage”.
I once did a ‘back of the envelope’ calculation about how much land would be required for solar to replace one of our nuclear power plants (1300MW) under almost worst case conditions (winter, and average weather conditions, but without any snow) and assuming enough storage capacity. Solar/storage would have to be able to source 1300MW 24/7.
The one sq. mile of land needed for the nuclear plant (includes ‘safety’ setbacks, security, etc) would require just under 120 sq miles of land. (Our theoretical solar would be located at 44 deg North latitude.) Again, this was a rough estimation based upon ~3.3sq meters of solar panel for 1kW of electrical power, standard spacing between panel arrays (I forget the specific spacing I used), assuming 8 hours of sunlight of which maybe 4 hours provides peak output and little if any reasonable output for 2 of those 8 hours due to the low sun angle.
Seeing that my state – New Hampshire – is about 80% forested, we would likely need to make that 120 sq miles available by cutting down 120 sq miles of forests. That’s 120 sq miles of trees that would have been sinking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Better to build more nuclear.
Indeed. If you do any kind of back of the envelope calculations for the materials needed to store say, 1% of US electricity consumption – it gets really ugly, really fast.
I looked at using lead acid batteries just for kicks – it turns out you would need pretty much the entire world’s lead production for a year to do so.
Using lithium or whatnot is pure LOL – especially since Europe, for example, has experienced 2 different very long periods of wind underproduction just in the past handful of years. One was 7 months, the other was for the entire year.
Or in other words, you would need even more than the 2x capacity vs. dispatchable just to account for this variability along with comparable backup/storage requirements.
The US has plenty of empty land – but materials requirements are a very different matter.
“green” energy from wind and solar is ONLY ELECTRICITY!
Wind turbines and solar panels CANNOT manufacture any products for humanity.
The energy conundrum is that ridding the world of oil will eliminate wind turbines, solar panels, and EV’s as ALL their parts and components are made from oil!
Hence my quote above…pure idiocy.
You can take it up a notch. If oil is ONLY eliminate as a fuel, and we continued to use it for synthesizing or creating other products, the lighter components of oil – gasoline, diesel, jet fuel – become WASTE BYPRODUCTS. How do you get rid of millions of gallons of undesired fossil fuels? Pump it underground? Dump it in oceans? Burn it (LOL. Rather defeats the whole thing)?
Does the area outlined in the 50% by 2050 map include…
Electrification of current other FF energy sources at a 50% level
…Cooking
…Heating
…Hot Water
…Trucking
…Bussing
…Automotive
…Railroad
…Shipping
…Flights
…Nighttime Back-up battery recharging during Solar Peak Production time (10am-2pm)
I feel the area requirements for a 50% cutover would be significantly larger that indicated
Beware…
“”A rogue businessman appears to have cheated a council in Essex out of as much as £130m and spent the money on a life of luxury in potentially the largest fraud ever committed against a UK local authority.
Liam Kavanagh and his companies convinced Thurrock council to hand over the equivalent of almost its entire annual budget while inflating the value of a group of solar farms it had invested in, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found.
Never-before-seen financial records show the money was then spent on a country estate, private jet, luxury yacht and many other multimillion-pound purchases for Kavanagh, 46. He decked out one of his properties in gaudy crystals, drove a £2.3m Bugatti supercar and bought a million-dollar diamond-encrusted Hublot watch. The watch alone cost twice as much as the average house in Grays, the Essex town where Thurrock council is based.
In the middle of his spending spree Kavanagh ordered one of his directors to provide Thurrock with further exaggerated information to get his hands on £40m. Kavanagh told him it “won’t be a problem” if the council lost money.
Sean Clark, Thurrock’s chief financial officer, who arranged the payments in secret, ignored legal concerns with the proposed investment and transferred the £40m. That sum, along with the rest of the £130m, will almost certainly never be repaid.
Now the people of Thurrock, who unknowingly funded Kavanagh’s lifestyle, have been told their bankrupt council will have to hike taxes and cut services to the bone for years to come.””
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-07-31/the-sunshine-millionaire-how-one-man-took-130m-from-british-taxpayers
Yes, another scam
It gets worse, although the council will seemingly get £200mill back from selling the farms.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66340991
No word on the jet, the yacht, the Bugatti or the £1,000,000 wristwatch….
Liam Kavanagh is ‘no longer in the country‘ we’re told.
He’ll have gone back to Ireland I expect, same place that Brandon and Kerry come from and are so very proud of
He took Thurrock, or at least Sean Clark, right down the eco-friendly garden path
It’s hardly a surprise. It seems that every crook in Britain is now into renewable energy. After all, there is “free” money to be had from all the subsidies that renewable energy requires. I regard every wind farm in Britain as a blatant scam run by criminals. Some of these criminals wear suits and appear on television claiming that they are saving the planet and incredibly some morons fall for it.
Arthur Daley would have been all over a nice little earner like that.
I’ve been saying this a while, the energy business in the UK is a racket, fully endorsed and approved by successive governments. The Mafia would be proud of the scheme.
Excuse me. As an American of Siciilan heritage (everybody knows we’re all in The Mafia), I am insulted at your statement…The Mafia only provides goods and services people want and are willing to pay for.
It doesn’t say much for the way the council was run if the CFO was able to make such payments ‘in secret’. Although it isn’t clear from whom these payments were kept secret. If from the council then that would suggest the CFO could have committed an offence. If the council knew but kept it secret from the local population then I’d have thought that potentially the councillors could be personally surcharged. Not that that would likely make much of a dent in £130M; more would probably be spent on lawyers’ fees than recouped.
Tories gonna Tory.
I’m sure he was amply rewarded, personally.
The problem with measuring Solar requirements using Ivanpah Solar Thermal is that it still requires Gas Fired heat to maintain Molten Salts overnight, especially in winter. A better solar measurement would be Solar PV like Topaz Solar Farm, a 550MW generator with a 26% capacity factor (like having a 143MW gienerator), which covers 4700 acres and produces 1282 GWh yearly (running 4-6 hours on favorable days). Unfortunately Wind and Solar are still only available when the wind blows Just Right and the sun shines near optimum angle
Another problem with Ivanpah Solar Thermal is that it requires and deploys 173,500 heliostats, each with two mirrors, which require at least 5 watt hours 12/7/365 to adjust and maintain the position of the mirrors. This comes from the GRID like all power used at all electrical generating stations.
[Power estimated based upon the power requirements for a small Amateur Radio Antenna. Perhaps a mechanical engineer can determine the size, weight and torque so that the horsepower of the motor can be determined. My estimate assumes the power used by the controller and positioning motor and brake of the Ham Radio Rotor for an antenna with less than 6 square ft. wind load and 50 pounds weight.]
Ivanpah solar uses a steam boiler. Water, not molten salt. Yes, Ivanpah uses natural gas to keep the water at temperature all night long. The natural gas is also for cloud cover. Ivanpah is a complete failure as a solar plant. California considered labeling it as a fossil fuel plant because of the natural gas usage which is more than they engineered for.
Even though Ivanpah failed to produce the electrical output per design, and uses natural gas to compensate for the design flaw, California considers Ivanpah Green, Renewable energy and reports theelectricity output as designed, not as delivered.
You are correct, I was thinking about Tonopah (Crescent Dunes)
Is the area for nameplate capacity or actual output?
In the discussion it’s just gwhr delivered in a year
As opposed to delivered WHEN NEEDED, which means EVEN MORE land needed/even less power density.
By the time we’re done attempting to build “enough” of this worse-than-useless crap, we’ll be invading Mexico for living space.
“Production of electricity from biomass has the poorest energy density, requiring over 1,500 units of land to output one unit of electricity.”
But wait- that’s not really correct unless you’re talking about agriculturally produced biomass. If it’s woody biomass- let’s get this clear- most of the wood going to chips for energy is a waste product of good forestry. Nobody is going to grow a forest just to clearcut it to chip it for the likes of DRAX. NOT GONNA HAPPEN. Virtually all forest management results in growing trees that we don’t want- that are the wrong species of no value or the trees are defective so they can’t be converted into sawlogs for lumber or furniture or paper or even firewood. it might be good enough for paper or firewood but those markets might not be nearby. Softwood isn’t good for firewood and much of the paper making industries have left the country, what’s remaining doesn’t need all the potential source of wood fiber.
When a forest is thinned in order to grow the remaining, superior trees faster- thus earning a higher rate of return on investment (thinking like any business)- the trees removed in that thinning often have no market other than chipping and sending to a biomass burner. Thus, the objective isn’t really to produce chips from that land- it’s to produce far higher value timber.
So, the amount of land necessary to produce an equivalent energy as a nuclear power plant isn’t being “used” for that purpose. And, the absolute fact of the matter- which few people here seem to grasp despite my constantly repeating it is- that woody biomass is NOT something beloved by the greenies. They hate it because they’re mostly tree huggers. The people who like the woody biomass industry are the forestry people who like having a low profit market for wood that otherwise would offer no profit and most likely a cost- because without this market, what would happen in the American south, where this industry is large- is that they would burn the “junk wood” out in the open before planting a new forest- if it was the final cut in an even age silvicultural system. It’s very intense forest management. To burn that wood they need big machines to put it into big piles and the fires release not only CO2 but also vast amounts of real pollution. Better to burn that wood in a biomass power plant with smokestacks designed to remove much of the particulate matter.
Furthermore, the forestry industry uses lots of fossil fuels. They love fossil fuels. So, this is another reason the greenies hate not only woody biomass but they hate ALL forestry- given that they already own nice wood homes full of nice wood furniture and tons of paper products. Let the next generation live in cement or straw homes! And forget that cement has a high carbon footprint.
In conclusion, woody biomass is NOT considered by the greens as a renewable energy- though of course it really is renewable and it actually is green- if you don’t agree, go look at a forest, they’re all very, very green! 🙂
When a company has a contract to produce x amount of wood chips, and waste wood runs short, guess what happens?
They have been caught doing exactly what you are saying no one would ever do.
Of course, they did not “grow the forest”, most likely. They bought wooded land.
If they do grow it, then the trees are likely small and young, and thus no big deal, since they are incentivized to replant the trees for next time.
But these are not young trees, and it is surely not some “undesirable” or unusable kind of wood:
But in fact whole entire forests that are large trees perfectly suited for lumber are known to have been used, here in Florida, in North Carolina, and Canada, and who knows where else.
One result is an increase in the price of lumber by hundreds of percent, and increased volatility in the market price for lumber.
Just like using corn for ethanol increases the cost of all food, using trees for electricity increases the cost of anything made of wood.
Whole trees being logged for biofuel, report reveals | Canada’s National Observer: News & Analysis
That seldom happens. It doesn’t happen because you READ that it happens by people who hate forestry. If they did run short, the price would go up and then the supply would increase bringing the price down again- but they’re NOT going to cut wood worth more for other purposes- that would be moronic, and believe me, the wood industry is very intelligent.
You don’t have a clue about the useability of that wood. It’s clearly low grade wood. If it had higher value for an other purpose, you can be sure it would go there. You can fantasize otherwise because you READ something some lame enviro, greenie, forestry hater wrote but that doesn’t make it true.
Bullshit. Would you mine for gold then sell it as tin?
Nonsense- you have no understanding of the wood markets of North America. The price of lumber often shoots up but not for THAT reason. The market is very sensitive to the forces of supply and demand. During covid, much of the wood industry shut down. Then when covid ended and the market became strong quickly- the production capability was low- it takes time to ramp up again- so prices shoot up. Something you’d understand if you ever took Economics 101. Other reason it shoots up- rising costs for fossil fuels since the industry uses a lot of that fine fuel. Also effecting price is ever higher taxes and ever more regulation.
Apparently you naively believe everything you read online or anywhere. OMG, it says “whole trees”- that’s of course one of the things that drives pagan, forestry haters crazy. Who cares of its “whole trees”- that is f*****g utterly irrelevant. I won’t waste any more time on you as you have zero understanding of this issue depending entirely on idiot forestry hating climate alarmists who would like to lock up all the forests- this new plank (no pun intended) in the climate alarmist rhetoric is called “proforestation”- lock up all the forests do serve no purpose other than carbon sequestration. It’s beyond crazy- like the idea that we stupidly chop up trees we could sell for a higher price to another market. Your condescension is rank.
PS: as I look at those photos, it’s obvious that all of that wood is JUNK, useful for pulp or biomass – which pays the most but absolutely NOT for sawlogs. You ought to go work in a sawmill for a day and see what a sawlog looks like- a sawlog that gets turned into lumber or furniture.
I would
suggest to you that the National Observer is a poor place to get objective news about Canadas forests, they have an agenda, “Canada’s National Observer is an online daily news publication launched in 2015 as an offshoot of the Vancouver Observer. The national site focuses on investigative reporting and news on energy, climate, politics and social issues. They self-describe as a progressive news organization.”The mill depicted appears to be a small wood mill cutting 2×4 and similar, by-products being wood chips for pulping. The logs shown in the lower pictures are what is referred to around here as pecker poles. That is, wood from the interior not coastal.
Logs similar to those shown in the first picture are used in a local mill to produce 2×4/6/8/10 and fencing, the waste, chips and sawdust is sold for pulp chips or to local farms for bedding. Very little actually goes to waste.
Look, people can do whatever they want with trees they own.
But the idea that no one would be doing it if it was not a great idea, just ignores reality.
Individuals have only their own economic interests to worry about. If they can make money, that is what they will do.
But that does not make schemes like Wind Energy, large scale solar, ethanol mandates for gasoline, palm oil from clearcut rainforests, and yes wood chips from half a world away, a good idea.
These are bad ideas.
But all I was responding to was a single assertion: That no one would or was using whole trees to make into wood chips.
If you still think that, or ever did, and want more proof from better sources, say so.
Shitheads with an agenda I disagree are not necessarily wrong because of their ideology. We have been over this subject many times over the years, so I just grabbed the first few examples I saw.
People who have been following this for years know perfectly well that they are not only using scraps and waste. It is too low density, and low volume.
The problem with biofuels in general is they do not come from small, concentrated areas, generally speaking, but spread out far and wide. The energy to gather it all up and transport it, not to mention the time and equipment required, make many potential sources of bioenergy non-starters. Things like switchgrass.
But corn ethanol, and trees…those are things that can be produced quickly and in large quantity. And when a country across the ocean is subsiding those wood chips so they do not use any of the coal they have under their own feet, or the US mandates all gas has ethanol in it, it makes it a money maker for some people, but it costs everyone else far more than it earns for anyone.
Subsidies and government mandates distort markets.
We all know that.
I do not give a tiny rat’s ass about burning wood for energy.
It is far better to use trees for firewood that to leave them to be destroyed by all the things that destroy forests eventually.
But that does not mean it is not galling when some place makes it illegal for people to burn wood to warm their own house, using locally grown lumber, but has no restrictions on making wood chips to send abroad.
There are a bunch of reasons why energy is becoming hugely more expensive, along with everything else.
These bullshit ideas are a big bunch of those reasons.
But no one will ever convince me that cutting down trees here to let them burn wood chips over there, instead of coal, is a good idea.
People do it and make money, so it must be a great idea, is a ridiculous argument, given what we talk about here every day for years on end.
Green except that the wood has to be…
Harvested CO2
Transported CO2
Dried CO2
Processed CO2
Pelletized CO2
Packaged CO2
Palletized CO2
transported to docks CO2
Loaded on ships CO2
Transported across Oceans CO2
Offloaded CO2
Transported to DRAX CO2
Then burnt releasing a century of sunk CO2
Every step producing and releasing CO2 before energy is ever produced
so what? most of us here really don’t worry about CO2 emissions- apparently you do- but, the thing you ignorantly leave out is the tremendous benefit to managing forests- and that results in productng superior timber and higher value for the forest owners- producing all that lumber which has a low carbon footprint compared to any other building material- not to mention fine furniture- and, when done right, high quality forestry ENHANCES biodiversity- and over the long term, such work will result in MORE carbon in the forest as a by-product, not that it’s a goal
I don’t worry about CO2 but those that do are supporting energy that produces more CO2 for energy output than traditional FF sources
All that above intoned CO2 is merely to point out their hypocrisy
and that’s also totally false- first of all, when you cut a tree- another tree will grow- but as to the ignorant “carbon debt theory”- it’s absurd- OF COURSE the spot where the stump is isn’t going to restore the CO2 for several decades- but the rest of the forest is currently growing and doing the carbon sequestration- so that overall, if say, you’re managing a 10,000 acre forest, you can harvest good timber and firewood and pulp and biomass every year, while the forest as whole is adding carbon- thus the carbon debt theory is dead wrong, like Mickey Mann’s hockey stick- all you need to do regarding the wood issue is ask a forester who actually understands the issues- and that more often than not doesn’t include academics who constantly say stupid things about forests and forestry- I’m basing what I say on massive reading for half a century and working in forests for half a century
But it takes 100 years for that tree to replace the hundred year old tree. And that trees’ 100 years worth of carbon growth is released in a single day. 36,525 days worth of carbon growth released in a single day and requiring 36,525 days to regrow. Not exactly carbon friendly is it.
Joseph you’re overly sensitive to any criticizing biomass power, it’s like you are assuming that they want all forestry to stop – no, they just want subsidized or mandated – forced use of biomass power to stop, for all the reasons mentioned by Bryan A -and notice how he is talking about the Drax situation in particular not wood burning in general.
How about we agree that the various governments get their greedy snouts out of the energy situation and only regulate things enough to get power plentiful, reliable and reasonably cheap – I’m not a fan of the Enron-esque energy market that let cheap unreliables push reliable sources out of the market – but then let prices skyrocket when the wind and sun weren’t available.
I’m sure there will be places for biomass power, especially to run lumber and paper mills, etc, close to the source.
You are wrong. The greens would like to stop forestry. I fight these idiots every day of the week so I know what they want. Their propganda is so good they even have pro fossil fuel people disliking woody biomass. The subsidies are minor. Every source of energy is subsidized in one way or another. As for forcing DRAX to use wood instead of coal- sure, that’s a bad idea. But there is a powerful movement in North American to stop all woody biomass. You folks here don’t know about it because you don’t fight them every day like I do. So it’s not really just about DRAX. I have managed hundreds of timber sales- with and without a biomass market. The harvests with a biomass market are vastly superior. The forests look better and the future growth of value in the forest is much greater- and, this produces energy from local sources- not importing from thousands of miles away. Of course it’ll always be a very small amount compared to all other energy sources but that’s no reason to not use it. When somebody here lists all the propaganda news outlets to diss biomass- it’s obvious he’s not getting the best source of information- those same propaganda outlets also happen to hate fossil fuels. As for being oversensitive- no- there has been quite a war over this issue in New England. Forestry and forest owners lost- while the greens won and now wind and solar farms are going to cover the landscape.
While the CO2 is unlikely to be a problem, the smoke in the air and the general destruction from large forest fires are more than a little irritating. I recently wrote a comment on this in another thread, it was completely ignored there but maybe you have some reasonable contrary point of view.
It took a few minutes to find and scan a number of different studies on the 2020 California season. Having been in CA at the time I know the air quality was rather poor for an extended time and the sky was quite abnormal over large areas even where less smoke reached ground level.
CO2 production estimates in those studies varied quite a bit from each other. The lowest I found was from the CA Department of Forestry. Their CO2 ‘emissions’ from the fires was well above the official CA CO2 reduction quantity for the sum of the previous 18 years of “climate control’ programs (billions of $ spent thereon). The highest estimate studies were for twice that much CO2.
Well managed forests don’t produce such large fires and likely result in much smaller CO2 production from the fires that do occur because the fires have less fuel to burn. Burning the waste from managed forest in power plants does produce something useful and the smoke, with all it contains, can be largely controlled. Unmanaged forests in most areas will eventually burn and burn more extensively for all the fuel that is available there. In what way is that better than using that fuel for electrical generation?
Managed forests in the south seldom have forest fires that weren’t set by the foresters in controlled burns. Forestry in CA has been drastically cut back in recent decades thanks to forestry haters- and the result is massive forest fires
companies that own forests don’t want them to burn
government owned forests are generally across America, poorly managed by vastly overpaid burreacrats
+100 – I wish I could give you.
It’s absolutely insane that the virtue signaling tree huggers are actually causing more damage to wildlife in general than letting proper forestry management and logging happen.
there have always been tree huggers trying to reduce forestry- but now that movement is on steroids with a new movement called proforestation- it’s leaders are here in Woke-achusetts, of course
Do you really think scraps of wood gathered up in the US is enough to make 11% of all the power used in the UK?
No way.
Besides, they know how to use those scraps for things like oriented strand board, paper, cardboard, particle board, and a million other things.
The last time I visited South Dakota, there were large piles of trees and brush throughout the Black Hills that had been cut in the national forest and were presumably waiting for the right conditions to be burned. It would seem to me that it would be better to pelletize these burn piles than to just burn them in place with the risk of one of them getting out of control.
It is a decades-old idea that was tried and found uneconomical.
it’s economical under certain conditions- it’s certainly economical in the American south- it’s now a huge industry, not just selling chips to DRAX
as for the subsidy complaint, if you look close, almost every industry in the world is subsidized in one way or another, in the open, or in some way not easily noticed – certainly oil from the Middle East is subsidized with trillions to fight wars there- if it wasn’t for oil, Amercia could care less if the Middle East just sank into the sea (most Americans)
As for professions, many are subsidized by restrictions to get into them and how about teacher unions? Most teachers really couldn’t earn that much in the private sector. The taxes for their salaries then include subsidies to cover for the benefits of the union.
So give up the subsidy angle- it doesn’t fly. What counts is the long term benefit of the forest- which you get with good mgt. and that includes, in many places cutting “junk wood” for biomass. Well managed forests are good for the ownership which is more likely to keep the forest as forest.
Joseph, the issue was using forest/logging waste commercially, usually to produce electric power. As a manager of electric power supply, I was aware of those unsuccessful efforts. Nobody, above, was suggesting that we subsidize that otherwise uneconomical practice. Additionally, the wood pellets going to Drax come from cutting down mature, healthy trees.
I have no expertise in forest management and have no opinion as to its economics. My only experience in the industry was planting trees, setting “choker” cables on logs to haul out of the woods and working in a sawmill, from which I was, thankfully, drafted into the Army in 1968.
“Additionally, the wood pellets going to Drax come from cutting down mature, healthy trees.”
How do you know? It comes from thinnings and defective trees. So, you don’t have a clue. Why on Earth would they cut down mature trees that could be used for timber that would be many orders of magnitude more valuable and chip it for DRAX? The fact that they MIGHT be healthy is also irrelevant. Many healthy trees are removed in thinnings- just like many healthy weeds are removed from a garden. Your point is utterly irrelevant to good forestry. They may be healthy and they may not be because many trees in any forests are NOT healthy- or they are of species we don’t want growing because they CAN’T be used for timber. What goes into chipping is valueless trees- healthy or not. So, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Some of the trees MAY be mature but most are not- especially in the American south where they plant trees so dense that these stands must be thinned or they stagnate and grow into thin pencil like trees. They may be alive but they are surely not all healthy. Forest stands grow in layers- dominate, intermediate and suppressed. Most of the trees cut in thinnings are the suppressed and some intermediate- not the dominate trees which will grow some more than go to a sawmill. Hopefully your other comments about the climate will be more carefully researched so you aren’t just blowing hot air. All you need to do regarding forestry is to talk to a forester with experience. Reading forestry hating journals/magazines written by people who don’t have a clue won’t give you any truth.
Wood from B.C. forests is being burned for electricity billed as green — but critics say that’s deceptive | CBC News
Hardwood forests cut down to feed Drax Power plant, Channel 4 Dispatches claims (theecologist.org)
Drax: The Green Energy Scandal exposed – BBC News
Drax: UK power station owner cuts down primary forests in Canada – BBC News
Four Ways We Know Drax’s Appetite for Trees Is Still Growing (nrdc.org)
BBC Reveals Drax Logging Old-Growth Forests for Biomass (nrdc.org)
American Tree Farm – Drax Global
Shall I continue?
They’re all lies. You don’t believe in the million lies about the climate emergency, do you? Yet you foolishly believe these lies. The amazing thing about green propaganda is that they’ve even convinced those who don’t believe their BS about wind and solar that biomass is a terrible thing- because THEY hate biomass because they want to lock up all the forests. If you PAID ATTENTION to what I’ve said, you might open your eyes on this topic- but no, believe all that MAINSTREAM MEDIA.
Joseph, after rereading my comments I realize I should not have implied that all the pellets going to Drax were from mature trees. Anyway, you are allowing your zealotry to cloud your judgement; I never said I was opposed to biomass for electric power generation. And I have absolutely no problem with cultivating forests for such purposes. Additionally, as somebody with over 30 years of progressively responsible positions in electrical power generation and distribution I know as a certainty that wind and solar generation is a technological and economic disaster.
Notwithstanding your ridiculous examples, above, I am unalterably opposed to government subsidies of different electric power generation methods, including subsidies to forest companies.
Sounds fair to me- to end subsidies for biomass. And we’ll also end all subsidies for all other forms of energy production and they are abundant. And, we’ll end powerful labor unions that allow both working class and professionals to earn more than they might get paid otherwise.
BS – the military industrial complex needs something to justify its existence, regardless of the need for oil. Defending Saudi Arabia is only protecting a foreign oil company, and I am sure ExxonMobil, Gulf, etc., aren’t pushing the US gov to spend all the tax and royalty money and their shareholders tax money on defending their competitors.
Exactly! The enviros and climate whack jobs have convinced almost everyone that woody biomass is a terrible thing- they are wrong- it’s a fantastic thing highly beneficial to the well being of the forests, the economic potential of the forests and to the financial benefit of the owner and secondarily to others in the value chain.
I don’t know and I don’t care what the % is. Why should I? Don’t you think that if it was more profitable to send that wood to THOSE markets, they’d do so? You must think that forestry people are Neanderthals. (no insult meant to any Neanderthals reading this). Maybe you should become the marketing czar for a big forestry company since you know so much about it.
I can see Nicholas showed up and decided to give me a dunce in lieu of any logic. 🙂
Well, that is a very compelling point you make.
Logical and well argued.
I am a strong advocate of forestry as a part of any economy being from New Zealand.
The problem with wood chips for fuel is that due to the CO2 price and political pressure people compete for lower grade wood resource thus making engineered wood products less competitive, it is only this distortion that I take real issue with.
The absurdity of wood chips substituting coal is bizarre. If the companies had to pay the residence time for the CO2 in the atmosphere it may bring some sanity to the process but suspect that it would destroy industry and make combined cycle natural gas generation far more competitive.
It is claimed that wood chips emit more CO2 than coal and the residence time before recapture is likely at least decades many claim longer. So given that CCG would be paying a third of the CO2 credits and maybe the discounted cash flow of the residence time may make gas a better option.
So engineered wood products and a shale gas industry are in my mind the solution.
“people compete for lower grade wood resource thus making engineered wood products less competitive”
not a problem here in America- which has vast forests- there is a vast over supply of lower grade wood- billions of tons
I have personally managed many timber harvests that include some wood going to chipping. Now that the greens have destroyed the biomass market in my area- that wood isn’t going anywhere- it’s staying in the forests- trees of unmerchantable species- trees that are highly defective- that wood isn’t going into engineered wood products, pulp, firewood or anything else- because when those markets exist, they pay more than chipping the wood- wood only goes to chipping when those other markets don’t exist- that’s the reality of it. Chipping wood is a LAST RESORT- at least here in the American northeast . In the American south, the forests are so vast, that they produce lumber, pulp, firewood AND have enough for chipping. It’s tens of millions of acres of forests intensily managed. Yet, amazingly, some people think the foresters are going to chip wood that could go into sawlogs worth hundreds of times more per ton. Even pulp and firewood pay more than chipping. But when you have such a vast supply you develop DIVERSE markets to use all the resource.
the carbon debt fantasy is just that- a fantasy- I’ve explained it here many times and won’t bother again if people don’t pay attention- that theory is a victory for the wind/solar industrial complex and people who want to lock up forests forever
“A wind facility uses about 35 units of land if only the concrete wind tower pads and service roads are counted, but over 800 units of land for the entire area spanned by a typical wind installation.”
And often, because of siting preferences, a large wind facility is a visual blight for many more miles around and may create troubling sound pollution for nearly as far. On the other hand, a modern nuclear facility may be tucked silently away in a valley and never noticed at all by most of the area residents. With proper planning the nuclear facility may be scaled-up in capacity with no additional space consumed, while wind and solar will always require about a 1-1 ratio of space to capacity.
I will again bring up the elephant no one seems to be addressing. Fossil fuel power generating facilities can withstand storms without significant damage. That means that after major storms getting power back to the users only requires repairs to transmission lines which can take days to weeks. If storms damage electricity generating windmills and solar arrays, it will be months, even years before power can be restored. With larger swaths of land devoted to windmills and solar, the chances of those electricity generating device being knocked out of use by storms becomes greater and greater.
Storm damage , like hail, is terminal for solar
For sure, not ours but we do have a similar trailer with one panel
Yup.
There have already been some huge problems caused by the vulnerability of wind and solar to weather events, but I am certain that what is coming will make such problems worse and more common.
Power generation is critical infrastructure. And these things are delicate, as well as having a sort lifespan, and they are not even lasting as long as advertised.
The nuclear plants at Turkey Pointe have recently been relicensed to keep operating for 80 years from the date they were started up. So any estimates of the cost of power from these units has to be recalculated. They just got cheaper.
But when wind and solar installations get destroyed or wear out, besides for the downtime, they will have to be replaced with newly bought ones. I suspect that when all the money these things cost will be much less palatable when we need to build them like crazy just to keep making the same amount of power as we already had from them.
I think Germany will be the first to feel the pain.
But the big reckoning will occur when large numbers of people realize that windmills do not prevent bad weather, and the entire fiasco had nothing to do with climate, or the environment.
Unfortunately, it seems that people are much easier to fool than I would have ever guessed.
Nicholas, students of history know people are very easy to fool.
Solar panels vulnerable to weather events? I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about..
https://stopthesethings.com/2023/08/01/high-winds-hailstones-destroy-solar-panels-hot-weather-destroys-their-output/
Would solar panels withstand a sonic boom from a low flying jet fighter at Mach 3?
Luckily for solar panels UAPs don’t make sonic booms despite flying much faster than Mach 3. 🙂
The 10 year old solar “farm” next to my neighborhood, a few years ago got hit by lightning blowing out about 10% of it which had to be replaced. I’m sure it was not cheap.
story tip – Leftist Senators Call on Garland to Sue the Oil Industry – PJ Media
More “Exxon Knew” garbage.
They must be soooo smart to know THE TRUTH several decades ago. How many Noble prizes did they earn or should have earned being so brilliant?
“They must be soooo smart to know THE TRUTH several decades ago.”
Hell, they don’t even know the truth now.
The knowledge about CO2 and its interaction with the Earth’s atmosphere is no more understood today, than it was back in the good ole days, other than some new knowledge about CO2 from Dr. Happer, knowledge which does not promote the human-caused climate change narrative.
Exxon didn’t know anything back then, or now, about CO2’s effects, or lack thereof, on the Earth’s atmosphere. Nobody knows these answers. Nobody. Exxon is being sued for knowing something that nobody, to this day, actually knows.
If I was an Exxon lawyer, the first thing I would do is demand that those suing my client prove that CO2 does anything to the Earth’s weather or climate. Game over.
Yup. Furthermore, I believe the EXXONMOBIL climate speculations were published, so they didn’t “hide” it.
Maybe Garland needs to be looking over his shoulder after his Justice dept tried to get Hunter and Joe off the hook for all future crime revelations. Of which many are coming.
Garland was out there crowing about new indictments for Trump over the January 6, riots.
I’ve been listening to smart lawyers tear the indictments apart.
This is just another example of bad law being used to attack Joe Biden’s political opponent, Donald Trump.
Trump called Biden a “Third-world Dictator” yesterday. Yes, this is what Third-world Dictators do, just what Joe Biden is doing. Biden wants to turn our Republic into a Democrat-run Dictatorship.
The US needs a change of government urgently. 2024 can’t come soon enough.
It seems to me that heads should roll at Thurrock Council for stupidly putting all their investment eggs in one basket. First rule of investing is DIVERSIFY…
If only Thurrock were the only bankrupt authority, but it isn’t
Regarding the photograph at the top of this article:
Coming soon to a scenic vista near you! . . . if the “green” climate alarmists have their way.
P.S. It kinda reminds of the phrase, originated in the Vietnam War IIRC, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”
That’s the Alta Wind Energy Center as seen from Mojave CA. It spreads through Tehachapi pass and I believe it is the largest wind farm in the US. What you see in the picture might be 10% of the total area covered by windmills. It’s impossible to capture in a photograph the feeling of actually standing there amongst the thousands of windmills stretching for miles.
Well, I did take note of the fact that the referenced photo has been “photoshopped” to cut-and-paste in overlapping, duplicate windmills to make the density of turbines appear higher than it actually is . . . maybe this artistic “packing in” was done to convey the point you raise?
Are you sure? It could also be done using telephoto for the same or similar effect and easier.
I’m sure . . . the specific blade clocking, generator housing orientation, shadowing on blades, and in/out-of-focus features of several of the turbines toward the foreground and in mid-ground are too identical to be coincidental.
I some cases, the photo “artist’ tried to get clever by varying the scale of the pasted-in duplicates. Nevertheless, the artifacts of photo tampering are evident if you know what to look for.
Well, maybe some good propaganda like a faked photo is only fair considering how the alarmists love to show a ff power plant with hideous black smoke coming out when it’s mostly steam- easy to do with lighting tricks.
I think the fatal assumption in this analysis is thinking that logic or data can alter the course of the discussion. Logic (and scientific integrity) have long since left the CAGW discussion, so why would asking one or a series of “devastatingly” logical questions change the narrative? Why would any amount of contrary scientific data refute the CAGW propaganda? The current situation is the result when science yields to politics, and, as such, I believe no amount of logic or data is going to change the politically-driven “climate.”
The past month so proves that the press can make up pure lies about the weather, tell people that the oceans are boiling and the land is baking, even as nothing unusual is going on whatsoever, and huge numbers of people will somehow just accept it as fact, despite nothing unusual going on at their house.
The truth is,a large percentage of people are spectacularly unobservant and entirely gullible.
“I believe no amount of logic or data is going to change the politically-driven “climate.””
Maybe economic results which brutally follow logic not politics.
See my comment above about the 2020 fires in California. They completely wiped out the “gains” of CO2 reduction made from billions of $ of “green energy investments made over the previous 18 years. The economic results are that some window dressing forest management is being made, much too little to make any difference in the next half century.
Yes, it will be window dressing- when they should be moving towards far more intense forestry as is common in northern Europe- where woody biomass is part and parcel of forestry. The EU still considers biomass to be carbon neutral. Notice not many forest fires in northern Europe. Southern Europe could do much better with controled burns on a large scale- it has to be every year and a lot of it. It won’t be cheap but it’ll be cheaper than vast out of controlled fires in these heavily populated countries.
However, the climate whack jobs now hate not only woody biomass but all forestry. Their new mantra is “proforestation” where the goal is to lock up all the forests- to do nothing but sequester carbon. Bad idea for CA.
The article quotes the EIA figure of 14% wind and solar contribution to electrical energy production in the US. I remember another article on here which showed that this 14% number was incorrect by almost 100%, or 7% total contribution. Anybody remember the link to the article?
The answer should be obvious.
Well you are dealing with the dooming silly-
‘Crazy idea’: Independent senator wants climate ‘duty of care’ (msn.com)
(he’s essentially a Senator for Canberra public servants so you can see the problem)
It is pure idiocy, this wind and solar crap. You know it, I know it, the American people know it. (Thanks Bob Dole 😉)
Wonderful article!
In addition, CO2 from fossil fuels and the increase in atmospheric levels by 130parts per million is increasing plants growth and world food production by around 26% via the key role this beneficial gas plays in photosynthesis.
All animals eat plants or something that ate plants.
Wind turbines, on the other hand are killing birds, bats and whales as well as insects…..in addition to destructive use of land. They last 2 decades then go into landfills.
The raw materials needed to make them, solar panels and batteries rips up another large area of the earth.
The authentic green energy sources are the ones that have been massively greening up the planet.
The Net-Zero plan is to replace that with diffuse, intermittent energy sources that help destroy the planet…..to save it!
The things that you can get people to believe ….when they want to believe in it are mind boggling. When they want to believe in something, they give it a free pass and don’t scrutinize or fact check.
Death by Greening:
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/69258/
Has anyone calculated the Heat Island Effect of taking 228,000 square miles and removing all trees and vegetation and replacing it with heat absorbing concrete, steel, and solar panels? Bet that would crank up the temps a bit!
It’s good to see somebody putting hard figures to the energy density question. I’ve also yet to see some quotable numbers on the emissions (both CO2 and genuine pollution) from wind generation from mining right through the lifetime to demolition and land reclamation compared to the same output from gas.
It’s all very well saying wind is “clean” conveniently forgetting the emissions it has already created.
And conveniently forgetting that you have to keep the fossil fuel plants to manage grid frequency, ramp up and down for wild variations in output, and provide backup for when ” breezes and sunshine” don’t cooperate.
The more I see of wind farms like this in the head pic, the more I think that HG Wells was actually putting forward a parable when he wrote War of the Worlds.
The environmentally friendly Scottish government are cutting down tens of thousands of trees every year to plant wind turbines! Oh, the bitter irony.
This must be out of date.
Out of date and impossible. You can’t support grid power with something that by definition works less than half the time, and seldom at its “capacity.”
The solar/wind is a house of cards built on a foundation of dog poop. If you want some cheap wood….call Vlad Pootin in Moscow….he has a deal with Kimmy Jong for slave labor to harvest trees in Siberia….no roads – just a railroad thru the place…cheap cheap cheap.
Is Thurrock Council looking to buy any new bridges in the near future? [Asking for a friend!]
Here again is a Googlepic of the Collinsville 175 MW power station, with a 42 MW solar array shown just to the NE. Now it’s true that not all the coal mined was used by the power station, but still…
Now show us all the mines where the materials for the solar panels came from. !
And of course, those panels won’t be producing anything for a large proportion of the time.
Yes it would be nigh impossible to calculate the enormous worldwide civil and industrial productivity that has been brought to fruition by the coal from Collinsville over the years.
The 42 MW solar array shown just to the NE? – maybe charged a few local EVs on a sunny day now and then . . .
Here is a quartz (silica) mine needed to make silicon for solar panels
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-164b7454107752f1cf20d94a06a38c01-lq
Don’t forget to quadruple (+) the solar facility for the same “capacity.” And since the solar requires 100% backup, ADD the coal plant’s footprint to the required solar land use.
You can reuse that same image to show A portion of mining necessary to purify silica into silicon to make solar panels…
And to make Steel for those impressively tall masts supporting massive wind turbine nacelles…
And the steel to make the strong frames to support those massive EV battery packs…
Coal has many uses beyond simply burning for thermal generation so a picture of a coal mine applies to Ruinable Energy Generation as well
OK, lets take steel for onshore wind. It takes about 180 tons/MW. Australia has nearly 10 GW capacity, so say 2 Mt iron used. The Roy Hill mine, say, can produce about 40 Mt iron content/year. It could produce the iron for Australia’s accumulated wind fleet in less than three weeks.
The amount of steel a turbine uses is not the point. The point is the turbine would not exist if there was no steel.
Plus worldwide steel use has grown from c.189m tonnes in 1950 to 1951m tonnes in 2021. That steel is produced by using coking coal and although attempts are being made to produce steel using hydrogen only a very small amount has so far been produced and the leading Hybrit manufacturer is still in the process of ramping up production to a measly 1m tonnes a year.
Coal is essential for steel and will be for many years to come and the world is reliant on steel for so many things as you can see from the way production has grown since 1950.
Data from world steel.org
And all that Iron requires a nearly equivalent quantity of coal to turn it into steel (It takes around 770 kilograms of coal to make one ton of steel) so you still need to mine coal and the coal mine photo still applies to wind turbine manufacture.
Similarly, for silicon production (necessary for Solar PV) to produce 1 ton of silicon requires 2.7 tons of Quartz and 1.5 tons of coal (carbon) and a constant 2000° arc furnace with a reliable source of electricity
The Collinsville mine started up in 1919, and shipped coal all over the world. During World War II, it supplied US coal-fired warships based at the Port of Townsville. Its coal-fired power station wasn’t commissioned until 1968. Originally, it had a capacity of 120 MW. In 1976, it was upgraded to 180 MW, and in 1999 it was upgraded to 190 MW. It was finally decommissioned in 2018, and “replaced” with a 42 MW solar installation. Assuming it ran at 100% capacity for its entire 50 year life, the plant would have consumed no more than 31.8 million tons of coal (632,000 tons/year, average). The mine’s output capacity is 6 million tonnes per year. Much of its output is used for coke, and its coking coal reserve of 196 million tonnes is one of the largest in the world.
“Now it’s true that not all the coal mined was used by the power station, but still…”
But still, what? The power station would have used, at most, 5 years of the mine’s output, or a very tiny percentage of the excavation shown in the figure. By “not all”, you actually meant “almost none.”