From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By P Gosselin
Wood pellets are often viewed as an alternative, climate-friendly energy source, especially for heating. But an analysis shows this is not the case at all.
CO2 emitted [kg]. Data source: German Ministry of the Environment
Though it is claimed that the CO2 from burning biomass like trees remains in the natural carbon cycle, the CO2-absorbing trees are often commercially chopped down, pelletized and burned, thus emitting years worth of CO2 sequestration in just a matter of hours. Live trees recapturing that same emitted CO2 and storing it in the form of biomass takes decades.
Wood emits the most
How much CO2 does the production of one megawatt-hour of energy emit by different fuels? This is answered at FB by the account Umwelt- und Klimathemen. They write:
Isn’t it almost the same whether I burn wood from a 150-year-old oak tree in pellet form in my heating system or whether I burn coal that has been in the ground for thousands of years? Both the wood and the coal release the carbon dioxide they once filtered out of the air when they burn.
According to the German Ministry of the Environment, burning wood produces even more carbon dioxide than fossil fuels such as coal and gas.
– 202 kg of carbon dioxide for natural gas
– 340 kg carbon dioxide for hard coal
– 403 kg carbon dioxide woodBut for the climate, it doesn’t matter where the carbon dioxide comes from!
That’s why heating with wood is not climate neutral!
Even if we make pellets from our wood, it is still wood that enriches our atmosphere with carbon dioxide when it is burned.”
Wood emits double the CO2 that natural gas does. Never mind the particulates burning wood entails.
Also related, see: Planet of the Humans
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How about buffalo chips?
Not enough bison to feed DRAX buffalo chips. Never were, even in the good old days when millions of bison roamed the plains. Amusing thought, tho.
Not only does burning wood release more CO2 and particulates than Gas or even Coal in the long term but it also delivers far less energy per ton or BTU equivalent. Considering the amount of energy required to harvest, transport, dry out, process, pelletize, transport, ship overseas, transport to DRAX before that CO2 and particulates are released during burning to release the remaining stored energy.
For example…
If burning wood provides 70% of the amount of energy that Gas or Coal does
And it takes an equivalent of 30% of the stored energy to transport..dry..process..ship…and transport again then your actually only getting 40% of the energy equivalent of Gas or Coal
In fairness, when the cargo ships are converted to battery power, all we need to do is harness the inevitable uncontrollable fire before the ship sinks
But there’s the problem. Just like all of that worse-than-useless “renewable energy,” you don’t get it on demand, or where and when you need it.
Yes, I was getting dizzy after reading that people were shipping wood from North America to Europe for fuel so Europeans could get greenie points.
That idea stinks, anyway. 🫢
Not enough politicians either…BUT…by the time you run out of politicians who cares???
Especially if you use the Eco-Nazis first. Once you run out of those, you can simply return to sane energy policies.
That’s what poor people in parts of the world use for cooking, pollutes inside their makeshift shelter/tipi.
Since the beginning, per the House of Lords, DRAX has received about £11 billion in ‘green’ subsidies for burning clear cut hardwood pellets from the US, rather than the coal sitting directly under DRAX. That has created 60kg more CO2 per MWh than if the coal had been used. £11 billion to make things ‘worse’. NOT smart.
And now DRAX will subsidy mine more to attempt carbon capture. The only working utility scale carbon capture is SaskPow’s Boundary Dam unit 4. It has a parasitic electrical load of 35%, meaning even more DRAX CO2 will be produced needing capture.
Is the CO2 obtained even worth anything? Can it be sold?
Well, you can buy CO2 as a shielding gas for welding, and for top pressure in casks, but nothing like the quantities you’re talking about.
It is also used in oil wells…
It’s used in commercial crop growing under glass. A lot.
I understand the notion is it can be injected deep into the ground for ‘permanent’ storage.
For the record, yes, Rud, there is indeed plenty of coal deep beneath the area surrounding Drax and it was exploited for over 20 years. Then they ran into a complex series of unforseen geological faults and extraction suddenly got more, much more, expensive. So they switched to imported coal with all the additional transport that that involved which, despite that, was cheaper. Economics rules.
Then coal became unfashionable and one of the plants switched to wood pellets experimentally. It’s only cheaper than imported coal because of vast taxpayer subsidies but, as I said before, economics rules as far as the generating companies are concerned.
I was at the U.S. Steel coal mine in Monongahela when they reported they had run into a fault on the long wall. Mine was shutdown not long afterwards.
Drax switched to burning US forest because us taxpayers paid for the conversion. They would have converted the rest of the plant but the government would not let the taxpayers pick up the bill this time.
The tree-hugging tree burners are not deep thinkers. Or thinkers at all.
If we could just find a way to pelletize the tree huggers with the trees.
Soylent Green anyone?
Then that could be the “feed” for all the “climate scientists” and crony capitalist grifters. Especially at the next COP.
Tree harvesting industrial equipment doesn’t … grow on trees.
News story:
I am not the only one who has been met with a summary Domain not found message when trying to access WUWT. Access seems to be intermittent. Checking at isitdown and whois produces the following reports:
Wonder what that all means ??
Yes, been having issues all morning
Check whois again and spell it like this: wattsupwiththat.com
Fair point. Will recheck if I see the site go out again. Latest report says last out 70 mins ago.
Today is Monday the 5th.
I got that same message several times yesterday (around 3 or 4 pm EST?).
The first was after WUWT opened and I then logged on to make a comment.
Instead of going back to WUWT, I got that message.
I tried several other ways to get to WUWT such as using the link on other sites, even via WordPress itself, but no change and I gave up.
I tried again a couple of hours later and no problem.
Perhaps major maintenance or a major cyber attack?
ANYBODY else do the “Distillation of Wood” experiment in Jr high? Some of the most putrid smells accumulated in that ‘receiving’ test tube …
Yes. And coal produces CO, which doesn’t smell at all. But by a miracle of engineering, it is all contained.
Ask China and India.
And the biosphere has evolved to thrive on CO2 sinking the Carbon and give us Oxygen in return
Why are you talking about smelling carbon monoxide? Carbon dioxide doesn’t smell either. What stupid point are you trying to make?
But CO will kill you
Yes. I did that “Distillation of Wood” experiment when I was a school boy. Very interesting. Who woulda thought wood contained all that putrid goo?
As I recall, it was a chemistry experiment about concentration. A distant whiff of wood smoke is romantic. Condense the smoke and congeal it into goo, and it’s foul, and difficult to deal with.
I do NOT recall if the goo contains usable byproducts. Turpentine, maybe? Some kind of usable tar? Adhesives?
Does anyone on this message board know those answers?
“Though it is claimed that the CO2 from burning biomass like trees remains in the natural carbon cycle, the CO2-absorbing trees are often commercially chopped down, pelletized and burned, thus emitting years worth of CO2 sequestration in just a matter of hours. Live trees recapturing that same emitted CO2 and storing it in the form of biomass takes decades.”
Yes. But still, all that C was recently taken from the air. It is a steady business, extracting from the air as fast as it emits. The problem with fossil fuels is that it injects new C into the cycle.
All the “C” from coal was once in the air too, dopey !
It is NOT new.
And there is absolutely ZERO downside to having a re- invigorate carbon cycle.
So Nick, do you take the same approach to “C” emitted by cows etc ??
Or do you consider cows to be “carbon neutral” (which is what they are)
“The problem with fossil fuels is that it injects new C into the cycle”.
The problem with ‘the problem’ is that it has not ever been shown to be a problem.
Climate models run provably hot.
None of the supposed to have happened by now bad stuff has happened in now 4 decades.
Earth is greening, and staple cereal production hit a new food record last year.
Or, to paraphrase Feynman, ‘No matter how pretty your theory is, if it doesn’t agree with experiment (observational reality) it is WRONG.’
And if you have to adjust your observations to make them fit your theory…
That is doubly WRONG… not just scientifically, but ethically.
For me it’s just part of the carbon cycle. 10 years is faster than 10 thousand years. All this is silly. Last property I had was over grown with trees, had to thin them out… wood makes great heat and lots of time free.
Sitting in my 2600 sq. ft. LOG cabin. It was 18 f this morning at 06:00 local time and now 24 f never getting above freezing today.
As soon as I got up I lit the wood fire in our Fireplace Extraordinaire manufactured fireplace with a 300 CFM fan blowing in outside air over the firebox. The Tstat was set at 67 (usually 65, wife has a chill yesterday) and the furnace was running when I got up. About 45 minutes later the furnace was off and never came on again all day, and it is 70 f NOW at after 20:00. It was cloudy and snowed off and on all day so we did not even get any help from old Sol. We DO get good passive solar gain in the home with large south facing windows there are no clouds.
I really like using almost free wood. Since the chainsaw and splitter are years old, only gas for them and the Ranger to run out to the forest to cut and carry rounds and the splitting. All good exercise that my l@zy @ss needs.
With Propane heat, saves a lot of money while we are here. When we are gone we set the Tstat at 50 f against any freeze.
Now as for the electricity to run the house, wood would be the 3rd from last way I could see generating that. The last is solar and the next to last is wind.
The Earth is still in a 2+ million-year ice age with 20% of the land frozen, either as permafrost or underneath glaciers.
About 4.6 million people die each year from cold-related causes compared with about 500,000 dying each year from heat-related causes.
Yes, and carbon present in both coal and wood cycled through the atmosphere.
Somebody please correct me if I am wrong, but the gentle, benevolent warming that CO2 gets “blamed” for is really or can really only bring up the minimum temps – holding in better the heat from the land and sea that was built up by visible and UV light during the day, overnight.
So, while the heat related deaths would presumably from the peak temperature during the day (not dependent on CO2 but the Sun and weather patterns) and the cold deaths definitely related to the minimum temps which are increased by CO2, then…
Continued CO2 increases, if the government Climotronic 9000 is accurate out to 100 years from now (when even a week is as good as a guess) would lead to reducing the cold related deaths and having nothing to do with the heat related deaths.
I know that is an exaggeration but considering the ratio of deaths is 10:1, temperatures can increase a great deal before we see a change in heat related deaths – which can be avoided if the government didn’t make electricity and everything else so expensive by their dumb-ass policies. Capitalism has brought down portable air-conditioners prices to where a good deal of city dwellers could afford it.
oh my gosh my tiny little brain hurts trying to understand whether or not that was supposed to be logical. it seems more contradictory than anything else.
Most of the world can see it clearly.
Most of the planet’s life survives ONLY BECAUSE OF CO2.
I know you feel like YOUR life is worthless…
… but most people are not so hating of their own existence.
Stop trying to bring the world down to your pitiful level.
“Most of the world can see it clearly” if they are burning fossil fuels in a modern furnace – wood burning produes a lot of soot, necessitating chimney sweeps to avoid fire risks.
New wood stoves are much cleaner. The smoke from my old wood stove was bluish white. The smoke from my EPA approved stove is pure white. Wokeachusetts is actually promoting switching to the newer wood stoves- even though it’s one of the most fanatic climate emergency believing places on the planet- because it knows that many people here like burning wood and will do so no matter what.
“Most of the world can see it clearly.”
No Nick, only your heart-throb Greta can see CO2 !
There is no problem with restoring CO2 to the atmosphere just because it had been sequestered for millions of years. Mild warming mostly at night, in winter, and at high latitudes is a benefit, not a crisis.
And there’s nothing wrong with burning wood if it’s done cleanly, especially when burning junk wood that is removed to improve the health of the forest and reduce the risk of wildfires.
Now I was under the impression that Coal was Old C (Millions of years old) not New C
So, take 2399 white balls of styrofoam at 0C, and add 1 hot black marble of the same size and throw them into a container where you can measure the change in temperature inside that container. That is the equivalent of the CO2 in our atmosphere. Of course gas laws dictate that gases cannot be of different ‘temperatures’ if at the same pressure and volume, so the experiment won’t work except as a mind exercise.
Not to mention that CO2 CAN NOT BE OF A DIFFERENT TEMPERATURE than the rest of the atmosphere around it. The gas laws are, uh, laws. The greenhouse hypothesis is, uh, a guess. A poor one that should be immediately dismissed because it violates existing laws of physics.
No person that understands the thermal laws AND the gas laws will ever believe that CO2 can have ANY effect on climate. None, whatsoever. But let’s spend trillions of dollars on it anyway, because the people that spend the money have not been educated in the laws of physics, and thus they envision jobs to ‘fix’ this problem using our tax dollars.
“No person that understands the thermal laws AND the gas laws will ever believe that CO2 can have ANY effect on climate. None, whatsoever. “
WELL SAID, sir !!! 🙂
As soon as these alarmists start averaging intensive properties like temperature, you know they a clueless about thermodynamics.
For some reason, when I type “are” I get just “a.” This version of Windows is really annoying.
I’m not surprised. Forget Windoze altogether, install some version of Linux and use the money you’ve saved for beer!
I like programming in Java. I don’t think the Sun/Oracle versions can run in Linux. Plus, Unix commands are more obscure than DOS/Windows commands–I have trouble remembering them. Although, I was the Unix build master in my last employment. I ran lots of scripts that did the remembering for me.
Look up the experiments that were done using CO2 as an insulating gas in multi-pane windows. Complete failure. The CO2 was a worse “insulator” than plain air. The people who tried it were testing CO2 as an alternative to filling windows with argon.
That is because it is a radiatively active gas, that transfers energy via radiation.
Sort of like using copper as an electrical insulator 😉
While I am sure that we both subscribe to the view that there is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY, your comment is not logical and not helpful.
The Ideal Gas Law is a model that imperfectly describes real gas behavior. It is a simplification. The ability of certain gases to absorb infrared photons is but one example of how real gases deviate from the ideal.
The natural greenhouse effect is observable and it is more than a hypothesis, it is an accepted theory, mostly describing the behavior of water vapor in the atmosphere. It’s fully accepted theory to the likes of Anthony Watts, Richard Lindzen, William Happer, Roy Spencer, and many other notable skeptics.
The idea that adding a marginal amount of CO2 will induce a substantial amount of additional water vapor to enter the atmosphere and thereby potentially cause dangerous warming is a hypothesis and one that ignores emergent phenomena that maintain homeostasis.
Making blanket claims that the greenhouse effect violates laws of physics is a self-discrediting act. It undermines the critical message that there is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY!
People who understand that the natural greenhouse effect certainly exists and therefore cannot violate any laws of physics, are possibly going to point to your comments as evidence that skeptics are wrong on the critical point that there is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY!
“The natural greenhouse effect is observable”
It is actually an atmospheric mass/energy effect. H2O makes a big difference and does actually carry a lot of energy, which it can radiate.
The GHE from CO2 has never been observed or measured anywhere on the planet.
The alleged CLIMATE EMERGENCY is not based on ideal gas laws, demonstrable risks of atmospheric carbon dioxide, water vapor, or on the notion that rising temperatures are death threats.
The climatistas base their doomsday scenarios not on “science” like physics, chemistry, or meteorology, Climatistas base their scary stories on political science as observed by H.L. Mencken a century ago. To wit:
Ah yes, but as the bumper sticker says:
“I believe in humbug, and I VOTE!”
Nope. Far from it.
The whole growing on tree.
Wood does grow on trees.
The machines to cut it?
The transport it?
To “refine” it?
No!
That’s great news Nick, CO2 levels are dangerously low anyway – plants prefer more than 1000ppm, and the current ~424ppm is way too close to the death level of 200-180ppm.
Go green, burn coal, the plants and plankton will love you!
“Yes. But still, all that C was recently taken from the air. It is a steady business, extracting from the air as fast as it emits.”
Hey Nick, you got that one right! All of these woody biomass haters fail to discuss the topic with foresters. I’ve tried on WUWT to explain the truth on the topic, but all I get is thumbs down. By the way, we’re not trying to save the planet with chips- we’re trying to get trees out of the forest we don’t like, to grow SUPERIOR trees so people can have fine wood to build homes, make nice furniture and produce vast amounts of paper.
I just spent almost $1,900 on the green oak prefinished with golden oak stain and satin finish at Menards. Enough to trim out five 52” x 48” slider windows, a 7’ sliding glass door, and crown molding for the 12’ x 19’ sunroom.
To console myself while paying the bill I thought of an Abraham Lincoln quote: “Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten.”
Still have to buy the baseboard which will be the same.
I googled that phrase and got back Aldo Gucci. No relation to Lincoln. 🙂
Exactly Joseph. And you have made progress on that! As I write this you have four thumbs up
No, he doesn’t have it right.
Last time I looked, trees burn a hell of a lot faster than they grow. So they certainly can’t “sequester” CO2 as fast as it is put in the air by burning the wood.
And it is hardly “sustainable” on an industrial scale, given that same reality.
Take a look at Haiti for an example of what our landscape would look like if wood were used for all the things we use coal, oil and gas for.
“Yes. But still, all that C was recently taken from the air. It is a steady business, extracting from the air as fast as it emits. The problem with fossil fuels is that it injects new C into the cycle.”
“C”, carbon, is only a problem if you believe carbon-based life forms are a problem. (Maybe that’s why you like windmills? They swat carbon-forms out the air?)
Assuming CO2 is really a problem, how does cutting down living things that have naturally removed CO2 for decades or centuries from the air burning them and releasing that CO2 in a much shorter time than they’ve been removing it make any sense?
Why doesn’t it make more sense to burn the very old, already dead things that used to remove CO2 from the air and leave the livings to do what they’ve always done, remove CO2 from the air?
Story Tip
Sounds like Germany is having a few “issues”
Germany’s Energy Sources Are Running Out As Biden Stops LNG Projects (notrickszone.com)
If only they had some nuclear power plants they could use……
CO2 from wood burning is angels on a pin head. Who cares. The real issues are plentiful cheap energy supply and people’s wellbeing.
good to know. guess i’ll just leave it on the forest floor to rot.
Nobody remembers acid rain, or how the switch from coal to fuel oil for domestic heat was supposed to “save” European countries.
-Biomass buinging for electricity is less than 2% of CO2 emissions
-Real pollutants, other than CO2, like sulphur dioxide, other metal oxides, radon, silicon-carbon, and carbon-carbon soot in air, and heavy metal/silicon cinder solid waste, are almost nonexistent in biomass
-Biomass is less energy dense than all so-called fossil fuels, and only makes sense where source streams are close by or cheap.
You are correct that shipping and processing of wood for fuel drives up the real cost and carbon footprint to the point of nonsense, and that foreign imports of these are a fraud.
By all means cut off subsidies, tax breaks, and political virture signaling for folderol like UK’s Drax, )and convert old coal plants to domestically produced natural gas) but don’t waste time or effort on the campaign by blaming wood chips for CO2.
I wonder how much paper waste in UK or EU is deemed unrecyclable and either dumped in landfills or exported to other countries.
If my attempt at an attchment works, the chart is from Our World in data
“Nobody remembers acid rain…” The people that do remember acid rain also know the issue was solved with scrubbers on the stacks. From 1975 to 2005 the U.S. doubled the use of coal for electricity while total emissions of real pollution dropped over 90%. There is no harmful pollution based reason to covert old coal plants, which is a big reason why CO2 started to become demonized by the groups that wanted to get rid of coal.
If not for the Drax subsidy, could make lumber out of those hardwood trees. Should go to the highest and best use. There will still be wood waste to deal with, but if it that was converted to biogas, could burn in it a CCGT turbine and get 60%+ efficiency instead of ~30% efficiency in a coal fired boiler. Perhaps a 15% hit to make the gas, but you would also get biochar as the residue, which is also valuable for agricultural inputs. Lot of wood waste to deal with globally, but it can’t be shipped very far with diesel power, otherwise just defeating the original purpose.
The Graphyte Company has figured out a way to keep biomass carbon out of the atmosphere. It should work just great.
From your link… “Graphyte plans to gather these substances, compress them into hard bricks, wrap them in an impervious layer and then bury them forever.”
I would argue that instead of compressing these lumps of ‘carbon’ into bricks, and burying them forever, would be better to make them into activated biochar, (pure carbon) and add it to farmland as a major supplement to hold nutrient and moisture supply. Pretty much the same as burying them forever, except utilizing this to make activated charcoal would be a further spin-off benefit to agriculture and forestry.
Every aspect of the Graphyte plan is nonsensical.
The best carbon sequestration project in the world is making dimensional lumber for home building!
My house is over 100 years old. All of the “evil carbon” in the wood is going to stay there another 100 years if the subsequent owners keep an eye out for termites and keep the roof in good repair.
This type of carbon sequestration project is totally voluntary, and the providers and the end-users both think they are getting a good deal!
Not only do countries not get credit for their forests locking up ‘carbon’, or their forest industries getting credit for re-planting forests, there isn’t even any acknowledgment for the massive amounts of carbon, i.e. lumber/plywood/wood products that get locked up for a very long time in civilization (cites) itself. It isn’t even accounted for in the human produced carbon accounting of ~37 Gigaton annual emissions. The forest industry is a multi billion+ tonne global industry that sequesters wood (carbon) in housing and commercial. About 25% of that is waste, so I would advocate making activated biochar out of that for agriculture soil enhancement locally, instead of competing with coal half way around the world for making subsidized electricity with pellets. The biochar charcoal basically gets sequestered too and adds immense value to the soil for growing food.
IF everyone went back to building log homes and heavy timber buildings we could sequester a lot MORE wood.
Dimensional lumber and OSB (oriented strand board) use way less wood than 2 X 6 tung and grove floor and roof sheathing, so use the BIG stuff as much as you can.
NOT.
The reason for dimensional lumber and OSB and glue lams and TJIs is to SAVE TREES. It turned out that after tree huggers blocked so much forestry that industry found a way to build houses using less wood, but more resins. So yet again their blocking one thing now works counter to their latest crusade. What a surprise!!
Excellent point, Earthling– manufacturing Syngas from biomass will be the most efficient & convenient alternative to fossil fuel when that is finally depleted.
Trees as a source for biomass, whether it be for direct use in heating or for Syngas, can be grown as crops harvested on a cycle of 10^1 – !0^2 years or by coppicing allowing continuous harvesting.
Carbon sequestered in wood is only sequestered for 10^1 – 10^2 yrs (not even a single heart beat in geologic time scales) as opposed to 10^6 – 10^8 yrs for fossil fuels, for those who still insist co2 in the air is important for climate.
Cost of production & transportation of wood vs fossil fuel would be on the same order of magnitude, so no need to consider them in this analysis.
Heating with wood via gasification boiler furnaces produces essentially no particulates in the exhaust. The ash, as noted by Earthling, can be valuable in soil rejuvenation.
One big drawback of large scale production of biomass as an energy source is the effect of carrying off the harvest, upsetting the natural habitat. Dead trees are an important part of the biome food network.
“If not for the Drax subsidy, could make lumber out of those hardwood trees.”
NONSENSE. The trees are small, often crooked, diseased, defective in other ways- or just way too many of them, cut in a thinning. If it’s a clearcut, all the better trees go to better markets. You must think the forestry industries are idiots to send a prime sawlog to the chipper.
Well, I did say “Should go to the highest and best use.” Those pictures are from 10-15 years ago of that original propaganda campaign in Michael Moore’s movie are similar to the pics that were taken by Greenpeace 45+ years of the clearcuts that are also still used today.
I grow millions of conifers on thousands of acres of private woodlot and the markets always decide the best use of a sawlog or peeler for veneer/plywood. There are NO whole trees in the PNW on the west coast that ever get hog fuelled for pellets. Or slash piles. Just the best planer shavings or the chips from canting a log make it for pellets and is sold by the sawmill to the pellet mill. The bark goes to the biomass burner for electrons. Maybe real low grade whole logs will make it to the pulp mill for pulp, and/or cogen for steam to run the mill.
The point of the article should be that artificial subsidies create imbalances in markets. I accept that argument. Not an attack on the forest industry or private land owners that grow forestry crops for any use or how the forest industry manages it wood waste issues. Using that logic, we should attack them for growing Christmas trees. But this subject has been hijacked for the sake of the climate argument, and not many people here have much idea how the forest industry works. Michale Moore won, as proven by all your down arrows here for years. I used to try logic too, by why bother.
Michael Moore knows nothing about the forestry thing. He brought in a guy- whose name I forget- that guy’s entire job is to rip down biomass and all forestry. I used to debate the buy- for years. He’s a full time lobbyist against forestry. I often went to his web site where he had open discussions- to try to correct him. At least he did have that. Because I often deconstructed what he was saying- he actually called me one day. I said “you show false photos- of gigantic clearcuts having little do with biomass and most of what you say simply isn’t true. Why don’t you try a balanced discussion about biomass.” His reply “I don’t have to because I’M AN ACTIVIST”. Right, that’s who Moore brought into his move- a fuc*ing forestry hating full time lobbyist/activist”. Moore never talked to any real forestry people. Just more lies like the rest of the climate scumbags. The worldwide queen of biomass and all forestry hating is Mary Booth who is near me- in Northampton, MA. Her web site is https://www.pfpi.net/ loaded from one end to the other with lies. I’ve debated with her for years. She’s like the worst climate alarmist you can imagine and she did once call me a “climate denier”. After debating with her- I pretty much figured out the climate alarmist scams even before coming here or reading any other site or books. Also in this state is Bill Moomaw, who once was an IPCC author- a huge bunch of them got some sort of commendation from the Noble people about 20 years ago or so – so he, like Mickey Mann, started identifying as a Noble Prize winner. He was once all for biomass- then he got seduced (intellectually) by Booth. He then invented “proforestation”- the idea that to save the planet we must lock up the forests. Back in ’17, I wrote him a very, very polite email pointing out what is wrong with his ideas. He never wrote back but I know he got it. He once gave an hour long talk at Smith College. It was on YouTube. I deconstructed it and wrote a very long commentary. It was deleted. Too bad I didn’t make a copy first. I shattered his idea. Of course, he’s got a PhD and I’m only a forester with 50 years experience who has probably read more science than most PhDs- so what could I possibly know about forests?
A piece on the last sugar mill/powerhouse in the Hawaiian Islands. I worked on one of the Big Island sugar mills in 80s and the sugar itself wasn’t as important as the bagasse, the vegetable matter left over from the sugar-making process. The bagasse was used to feed the boilers producing the steam that turned the turbine generators. Beside providing the electricity to run the mill it also kept the lights of the whole island glowing, among other things.
Great video from Rowan Dean
‘Idiocy and incompetence’: Rowan Dean slams ‘disgraceful’ Albanese government (youtube.com)
Labor providing funds to Hamas
French food supermarkets nearly bare.
At the end he shows a clip of a Mt Isa Woolies store..
Mt Isa is currently flooded-in and shelves are emptying fast.
Meat, vegies, pet food, all bare… watch to the end 😉
Except that burning wood pellets is not the same as burning wood:
“In British Columbia (BC), wood pellets are made primarily from the residuals left over from the sawmilling process when logs are converted into lumber and other high-value wood products. Increasingly, harvesting residuals in the forest and low-quality logs once left as waste are also a source of raw material for wood pellets. By making wood pellets from fibre that was once burned or left behind, the wood pellet sector is reducing waste and turning that debris into valuable, low carbon biofuel.”
What Are Wood Pellets & How Are They Made? | naturally:wood (naturallywood.com)
I’m on my 3rd ton of pellets this season. One more to go.
No mention of Drax. I don’t think Drax’s operation supplying wood pellets to the UK is anything like the process you refer to (??).
Reference please.
I don’t know why some people need to think deep about that one. It’s a true no-brainer.
You PAY for it.
If isn’t free, it isn’t renewable.
Carbon in the air? Free.
The rest? FOSSIL!
CO2 OF BURNING WOOD IS PARTIALLY ABSORBED OVER 40-100 YEARS
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/is-burning-wood-co-2-neutral
East Europe and the US Southeast still have significant areas with forests. Starting about 2005, major parts of these forests have been harvested by means of clear-cutting. In 2016, about 6.5 million metric ton of wood pellets will be shipped from the US Southeast to Europe for co-firing in coal-fired power plants.
The EU has declared these coal plants in compliance with EU CO2/kWh standards, because biomass is renewable and the CO2 of wood burning is not to be counted., and “Burning wood is CO2-neutral”.
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=20912
https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wood-pellet-biomass-pollution-FS.pdf
Manufacturing pellets requires input energy of about 115 units, and shipping pellets to European coal plants requires about 10 units, for a total of 125 units to have 100 units of pellet energy fed to a coal plant; the CO2 emissions of pellet burning is declared CO2-neutral, and the other 25% of CO2 emissions is not mentioned.
Most US states have significant areas covered with forests. As part of renewable energy programs, these forests are seen as useful for producing thermal and electrical energy. By using the mantra “Burning wood is CO2-neutral”, the CO2 from wood burning, and associated activities, is ignored, and thus not included in a state’s overall CO2 emissions.
Forests, other biomass and oceans, acting as CO2 sinks, absorb atmospheric CO2 from any source. Those sinks are working at full capacity. As a result, the CO2 they cannot deal with has been building up in the atmosphere for at least the past 100 years.
It is irrational to make the claim “burning wood is CO2-neutral, because biomass growth is absorbing the wood-burning CO2”. Such a claim ignores the sinks are working at full capacity. There is no spare forest area reserved for absorbing any increase in wood-burning CO2.
CLEAR-CUTTING OF FORESTS
Clear-cutting is extremely damaging to soils, because of leaching out of nutrients released by dead underground biomass. When most of the US northeast was clear-cut in the 1800s (Vermont lost 75% of its forests in a few decades), nutrients leached out and soils eroded into streams killing fish spawning habitats.
That environmental destruction was followed by acid rain starting around the 1950s, which had a similar effect as clear-cutting regarding nutrients leaching out, such as calcium, a vital nutrient for biomass growth. The regrown forest, with a significant percentage of spindly, sickly trees that have short lives, can be only a pale copy of what was before.
With continued logging, it is likely the forests will never be as robust as before, unless forest soils are continuously fertilized by cutting dead/misshapen trees, chipping them and spreading the chips on the forest floor for fertilizer, i.e., remediation.
Vermont state government allows clear-cutting “events” of up to 40 acres “without a permit”; there is no statewide annual limit of such events. Considering the various known historical damages of clear-cutting, one would think Vermont would not allow it at all.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/24/protected-forests-in-europe-felled-to-meet-eu-renewable-targets-report
NOTE: In the 1600s – 1700s, Vermont’s lakes and rivers were teeming with fish, according to settlers’ accounts. Eroded soils damaged/buried most of fish spawning grounds, due to the clear-cutting in the 1800s. A mere semblance of former fish populations is maintained by annual stocking of rivers by state fish hatcheries.
NOTE: Traditional biomass includes wood, agricultural by-products and dung. They usually are inefficiently burned for cooking and heating purposes. In developing countries, such as India, traditional biomass is harvested in an unsustainable manner and burned in a highly polluting way. It is mostly traded informally and non-commercially. It was about 8.9% of the world’s total energy consumption in 2014.
http://www.ren21.net/resources/publications/
SEQUESTERING COMBUSTION CO2 FROM WOOD BURNING PLANTS TAKES DECADES
Here is some information for those who have been led to believe, or persuaded themselves to believe, wood burning is environmentally friendly.
Open URL to read more….
Does anyone remember the good ol’ days when greenies were protesting the deforestation of the Amazon rain forest in Brazil? The Amazon was supposed to be the “lungs of the earth”, pulling CO2 out of the air and supplying the world with needed oxygen!
Back then, greenies were protesting the clear-cutting of forests for timber, and logging companies had to only cut mature trees, and plant a young tree for every mature tree cut down, so the forest could remain productive over the long term.
Now, deforestation to provide wood chips for home heating is supposedly a good thing for the climate. Let’s cut down the “lungs of the earth” and burn them to save the climate–sounds like a great idea (sarc)!
Help me here. Once wood supply and wood consumption is balanced, won’t CO2 in equal CO2 out?
Doing my part. Burning wood in my fireplace insert and my son gave me the a Pitboss smoker for Christmas that uses wood pellets.
Only a moron, in the pellet producing industry, would have ever started such a rumor.. And only someone lower than moron, would have ever bit off into the idea.
“Though it is claimed that the CO2 from burning biomass like trees remains in the natural carbon cycle,..”
Have they ever explained why “fossil-fuel” was never part of the natural carbon cycle?
Except for when it’s time to rake leaves in the fall, I prefer more trees.
Just curious. That comment got two downvotes. (as of now)
I know I sometimes run through comments and give a + or – vote without adding an explanation.
Why the down votes?
What did I say that you disagree with and why?
You like raking leaves in the fall?
You don’t like more trees?
You don’t thing “fossil fuels” are natural?
You don’t think “fossil fuels” burned now is “natural”?
Just just WHAT are you thinking!
PS No “ego” based response on my end.
Perhaps my phrasing of I meant to communicate was not clear?
I liked it,,,I’ll plus you back up one
The attribution link at the top of page is wrong, it’s from The No Tricks Zone.
(although it does take you to the correct site)
John
Whether or not wood (trees) are a renewable energy source depends on time and management. If it takes 20 years for a tree to grow from seed to useful size, start with a forest with 20 times the number of trees needed per year. Each year harvest 5% of the trees and plant an equal number of seedlings. The forest remains the same net size and the 95% of unharvested trees sequester and equivalent amount of CO2 to that emitted when burned as fuel. It only takes a couple of wooded acres to provide sustainable firewood for a residential home – often letting nature take care of the replanting and by judicious harvesting of older, dead, or damaged trees. Clearing brush and thinning trees also reduces wildfire risk while maintaining productivity.
I don’t doubt that the industrial scale burning wood chips or pellets as practiced may not involve sustainable practices, especially where big government subsidies are involved. But the lumber industry started sustainable forestry many decades ago and only ran into trouble when the enviro-whackos demanded regulations that made any practices – like building logging roads and fire breaks – illegal.
Now just consider how many “residential homes” have a well managed two wooded acres to supply said firewood, and also consider how impractical it is to heat solely with wood unless the occupant(s) are never away from home when it requires heat (fireplaces and woodstoves don’t feed and clean themselves). Still need a fossil fuel boiler or furnace in most if not all homes unless you live in say San Diego (and who would want to given the disaster that is California).
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad about a nice wood fire, but attempts to use wood on an industrial scale to replace coal, oil and gas is not sustainable – or practical.
And CO2 is a non-factor to the “climate” so the discussion is pretty well meaningless. Talk about “emissions” is still playing their stupid game.
And CO2 is not a pollutant, does not drive the Earth’s temperature, and feeds plants, so WHO —ING CARES?!
TEN TIMES today’s atmospheric CO2 levels couldn’t prevent a glaciation in the distant past, so stop trying to sell it as the driver of the Earth’s temperature now.
Our CO2 “emissions” ARE MEANINGLESS TO THE CLIMATE.