From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
May 15, 2024
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
British power company Drax has drawn up plans for the world’s first wood-powered cargo ship, claiming that the controversial power source can help to cut greenhouse gas emissions from sea freight.
Drax, which operates a tree-burning power station in the UK, has signed a deal with three Japanese shipping companies to develop a “bioship” fuelled by wood chips instead of marine diesel. It hopes to see the first wood-fuelled cargo ship set sail by 2029.
The vessel would itself be used to ferry woodchips harvested by Drax from North American forests to new markets in Japan.
Drax and its Japanese partners said such ships would open the way to zero-emission shipping for many other cargoes.
However, the plan will infuriate many environmental groups who argue that cutting down forests for fuel is the wrong way to reach net zero.
Drax is best-known in the UK for its giant power station in Yorkshire, which last year generated around 6pc of the country’s electricity by burning 6.4m tonnes of wood – equivalent to 27 million trees – mostly imported from North America.
For comparison, the New Forest in Hampshire has around 46 million trees.
Drax and its supporters argue that wood is a sustainable energy source as trees can be grown to replace those cut down for fuel and the plants capture carbon while they are developing.
However, critics point out that trees grow much more slowly than the time it takes to use them for fuel, raising questions as to how sustainable they really are.
The UK Government supports the use of wood as a fuel and has given Drax subsidies for producing green energy, which amounted to £617m in 2022 and £587m in 2023.
In February, Drax chief executive Will Gardiner said he wanted to build more wood pellet plants in the US, doubling production to 8m tonnes by 2030.
Green campaigners said the plan was designed to exploit loopholes in carbon accounting rather than to save the planet.
Merry Dickinson of Axe Drax, which campaigns against the company’s plans to expand wood burning, said: “Burning wood pellets emits as much carbon as coal. This latest move is nothing more than another greenwashed scam from Drax.”
Sally Clark from Biofuelwatch said: “Using wood pellets to power ships will only lead to more climate-wrecking emissions, harm to wildlife and pollution of communities. If we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate breakdown, we need to protect and restore the world’s forests, not allow big polluters like Drax to send our futures up in smoke.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/14/drax-power-ships-controversial-biomass-fuel-trees
Drax is already burning the equivalent of half the New Forest every year. Heaven knows how many more forests will be cut down to satisfy Will Gardiner’s lust for more wood pellets.
And as we already know, burning trees adds far more CO2 into the atmosphere than any other fossil fuel, in terms of the energy produced. The theory that trees will eventually grow back to replace them is highly dubious, as many come from virgin forests which may never regrow. Even if they do, it will take decades to offset the CO2 emitted from burning, by which time billions of other trees will also have been burnt.
Burning wood was of course man’s main source of energy for millennia; now we seem to be intent to regress to those days.
As for Drax, they are in a bit of a hole, being totally reliant on government subsidies. If these are stopped, they don’t have a viable business; hence their desperation to expand operations, regardless of the environmental destruction they will wrought.
Wood burning steam boats are so, so a century ago !!
They then found coal worked better, then liquid fuels.
But so are electric cars an d windmills are so three centuries ago.
They then found uranium burning steamboats worked even better, now we’ve come full circle back to wood !
A ’34 wagon.
West Europe was deforested in the 1850s
Much wood was imported, as logs, from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland and Russia, by England and the Netherlands. All ships were built of wood
Then, coal, and later gas and oil, came to the rescue.
At present, the world gets 78% of all its energy from low-cost coal, oil, gas, and hydro and nuclear, with minimal subsidies/kWh, with a few percent from variable, grid-disturbing, dysfunctional wind and solar, after 30 years of about 50% subsidies/kWh
We need more CO2 ppm to increase biomass that uses 6 molecules of water and 6 molecules of CO2 to produce one molecule of glucose and 6 molecules of oxygen
We need more greening of the earth to reduce arid areas and desert areas, and revive flora and fauna
Plants need 1200 ppm CO2, as proven in greenhouses
Excerpt from:
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/hunga-tonga-volcanic-eruption
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/natural-forces-cause-periodic-global-warming
Important Role of CO2 for Flora and Fauna Growth
Plants require require at least 1000 to 1200 ppm of CO2, as proven in greenhouses
Many plants have become extinct, along with the fauna they supported, due to a lack of CO2
As a result, many areas of the world became arid and deserts.
Current CO2 needs to at least double or triple
Earth temperature increased about 1.2 C since 1900, due to many causes, such as fossil CO2, flora CO2, and permafrost methane which converts to CO2.
.
CO2 emissions of fossil fuels are a blessing.
CO2 has increased from about 296 ppm, end 1900 to 421 ppm, end 2023, and
1) Increased world greening by at least 10 to 15%, as measured by satellites since 1979. Increased greening produces oxygen by photosynthesis. It forms a filter in the upper atmosphere that absorbs harmful UV radiation, with wavelengths below 240 nm, 2) Increased world fauna, 3) Increased crop yields per acre, 4) Reduced world desert areas
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Fossil fuel CO2 was 37.55 Gt, or 4.8 ppm in 2023, about 68% of total human CO2. See URL.
https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2/co2_annmean_mlo.txt
CO2 (human + natural) was 418.53, end 2022; 421.08 ppm, end 2023; increase 2.55 ppm
The rest of CO2 was absorbed by oceans and other sinks; one CO2 ppm = 7.821 Gt
Mauna Loa curve shows an annual variation of 8 – 9 ppm during a year, due to biomass growth and decay.
Photosynthesis 6CO2 + 6H2O → C6H12O6 (glucose) + 6O2
We need more biomass that uses CO2 to produce O2. See URL
.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/new-study-2001-2020-global-greening-is-an-indisputable-fact-andhttps://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/co2-is-not-pollution-it-s-the-currency-of-life
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/summary-of-world-co2eq-emissions-all-sources-and-energy-related
https://issuu.com/johna.shanahan/docs/co2_pitch_4-3-24_baeuerle_english
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Oceans Absorb CO2
Sea water has 3.5% salt, NaCl, by weight.
CO2 molecules continuously move from the air into sea water, per Henry’s Law
CO2 and NaCl form many compounds that contain C, O2, H2, Cl. They sustain flora and fauna in the oceans.
At the surface, seawater pH 8.1, and CO2 421 ppm, the % presence of [CO2], [HCO3−], and [CO3 2−] is 0.5, 89, and 10.5; “Free” CO2 molecules at the surface, is only 0.5%; CO2 out-migration is minimal, given the conditions.
The oceans are a major sink of CO2 (human + natural) in the TS.
At least 40% of new CO2 in the TS, is added to the oceans; about 50% stays in the TS
https://tos.org/oceanography/assets/docs/14-4_feely.pdf
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https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/12401907497?profile=RESIZE_710x
THE IMPORTANCE OF 100-y OLD TREES IN THE AGE OF SAIL
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-importance-of-100-y-old-trees-in-the-age-of-sail
CO2 EMISSIONS FROM LOGGING, CLEARCUTTING AND BURNING
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/co2-emissions-from-logging-clear-cutting-and-burbing
THE TRAVESTY OF US SOUTHEAST WOOD PELLET EXPORTS TO EUROPE
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-travesty-of-us-southeast-wood-pellet-exports-to-europe
The problem with all those ppms is not a question of their accuracy, but why are there no error bands? 421 ppm +/- ???
You can look up error bands on Mauna Loa website
I know. I also know what a dry mol ppm means and how water vapor changes the published numbers.
It is also true that urban areas are ~10 ppm higher than the published averages and rural areas are ~ 10 ppm lower.
It is fascinating that the precision is 2 decimal places (5 significant figures).
My point is, why are the tolerances not published in these many reports?
Also of interest: Mauna Loa is the largest active volcano on earth in present times.
CO2 does not globally disperse instantly.
The local CO2 will be a tad higher.
Same for the other 3 locations due to volcanic contributions.
The Mauna Loa seasonal variations is considered to be due to due to flora growth and decay, but there is no mention that the temperature swings also affect ocean temperatures, which affect release and absorption rates.
At present, the world gets 78% of all its energy from low-cost coal, oil, gas, and hydro and nuclear, with minimal subsidies/kWh
OK Will, what “subsidies”?
As far as I can tell they are all overtaxed to pay for unreliable generation subsidies.
Technically, SOME countries subsidize their electricity – Nigeria is a tizzy over the government removing SOME of the subsidy causing rates to ~triple roughly.
But definitely yes, in countries infected with the NetZero virus electricity is taxed and governmental screwed up so it costs more than it should.
The mandate of the government and regulators should be to provide reliable electricity as cheap as possible.
And I’d be OK with a jurisdiction opting for a slightly higher alternative if it meant more local jobs and production. Like Japan using nuclear versus anything else since they don’t have their own natural gas.
It might also make long term security and economic sense to diversify production methods, like Ontario used to take pride in having about a third of electrical production coming from coal, nuclear and hydro (ages ago!)
Basically: price, security, balance of payments.
Politicians imposed charges and mandates on traditional utilities that offset any subsidies. They HAVE to buy expensive offshore electricity.
As a result, utilities have been getting rate increases, because they are allowed a return on assets of 9%, by law, which they pass on to users, which lowers the standard of living of these users to pay for the IPCC global warming hoax, which is being exploited/scammed by the moneyed elites
Trump needs to win by a landslide to put and end to all this Biden BS
https://www.businessinsider.com/women-accused-trump-sexual-misconduct-list-2017-12
That is a red herring, and has nothing to do with the scam of the moneyed elites to legally plunder your wallet and deprive you of a good future, per IPCC-inspired global warming hoax
Do not get diverted by bull manure
Keep your eye on the prize
Like with the Hollywood producer, women let men have some to get something. Then, years later, they want to complain and be compensated because even though he gave them a “lift” they were not good enough to make it BIG. Every women who goes after those men should be arrested for prostitution, if such laws exist in those jurisdictions.
The oldest profession they say.
The “casting couch” is and was a true thing because there are a significant number of women who will trade sexual favors for monetary and/or career help. IF ME TOO included all women just NOT doing so, there would then be an even playing field based on TALENT but we all know that will never happen.
As to TRUMP!, the NY trial shows that the payoff for the NDA was actually an extorsion payoff and Stormy and her Attorneys should all be arrested for the extorsion plot.
BUT as per all the NY criminals,(judge, DA, etc.), that will not happen. YET.
Minor nit. The optimum CO2 ppm varies by species.
Otherwise… excellent post.
Many of the species needing 500 – 1200 ppm have already died out, just like the fauna that existed when those flora species were in abundance
Today, we see only a pale copy of what was there tens of millions of years ago.
Remember, we are in an ice age with slowly decreasing temps.
When you figure how many btu’s are in a cubic foot of wood versus how many btu’s are in a cubic foot of bunker oil, I would think it would take a “ship load” of wood to power it across the ocean leaving not much product to burn in a power plant….
I like the animated thing shoveling money into a boiler.
Maybe someone skilled AI art could add a picture of the Old West’s “Iron Horse” with it’s wood filled tender and cars morphed into a ship towing barges of wood pellets? 😎
There is a classic Buster Keaton scene from one of his movies.
Are you talking about the one where he’s eating lunch on one of the drive arms that starts turning?
A classic, especially considering that back then, he was doing his own stunts and that was a real locomotive really put in motion with him sitting there!
Another classic was when he was standing in front of a barn and the front of the barn fell down. That was really him “betting’ that nothing went wrong and that the hay-loft opening wouldn’t hit him.
(I saw a documentary on him where it said a doctor in an examination years later showed that he had broken his back in the past.
He thought about it and concluded that it must have been a scene where he pulled a valve that opened the water from a water tank designed to refill steam engines. He was standing right under it for the shot. He took some time off.
And I’ll add this. I think it was that same documentary. He was in “History of The World, Part 1”. A lot of him running scenes. A stunt man did some some of the running. He said that no one believed him when he said that he been Buster Keaton’s stunt man.)
That’s OK, UK taxpayers will be footing the bill so Drax doesn’t care how stupid the whole plan is.
Drax has already been green-shamed and exposed for their past Rube Goldberg-esque craziness, but the government keeps paying so Drax doubles down on the stupid, laughing all the way to the bank.
When the taxpayers’ money and/or patience runs out and the whole scam collapses, executives will land gracefully with their golden parachutes, and ‘retired’ politicians will pick up lucrative speaking tours and directorships.
claiming that the controversial power source can help to cut greenhouse gas emissions from sea freight
Last I heard, wood-burning power plants emit more CO2 than coal, about 150% more, in addition to its other drawbacks. Drax has been criticized by the alarmists for their wood-burning power plants that replaced coal-powered ones. The vortex of insanity from the climate communists spins out of control…
Sounds like someone whose initials are G____ c__________ didn’t do a very good job of drafting that bill. I imagine they are terribly embarrassed and will cease bothering everybody forthwith.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AdiuqQ7xm30&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fduckduckgo.com%2F&feature=emb_title
In Britain;
The CfD subsidy for burning trees in biomass plants rose from about £7/MWh in March to nearly £60/MWh in April. This encouraged more biomass generation and the total subsidy paid for biomass jumped from £2m in March to over £34m in April 2024. The total CfD subsidy paid for the last 12 months is over £2bn, and the trend is clearly upwards.
See more … https://davidturver.substack.com/p/debunking-cheap-renewables-myth
Drax need to take a risk and convert their plant to small nuclear
Or large nuclear. Most of the downside is lawfare by the Green Blob.
Or BACK to coal.
“curiouser and curiouser” cried Alice – Adventures in Wonderland
Thanks for expressing that sentiment well.
Talk about idiocy.
I have this vision of an elderly woman in India making chuppatties out of cow dung to dry in the sun for fuel. The lying alarmists call it ‘traditional biomass’. With global wood burning it produces THREE TIMES the global energy of all the solar panels and windmills. Is this why we will never check the Keeling curve or because it’s ocean outgassing? Discuss.
The lying alarmists call it ‘traditional biomass’
I remember a documentary where some guy was traveling through Africa. He saw someone cooking with dung. His reaction was “Look at how sustainable they are!”
“Look” but don’t smell!😣
Shouldn’t the ship itself have to built of wood? Unless of course these clever clogs have found a new way of making steel by burning wood.
Built of wood with large cloth squares supported on tall poles to catch the wind.
I can’t believe no one thought of that before!
Renewable. Excellent.
natural fiber cloth only
There are designs and test craft using wing-like sails to power big ships or at least reduce the fuel load.
But I guess Drax found there wasn’t enough subsidy in it.
Have to also mine and process the iron ore with wood, stone, and bronze tools and equipment?
Harold the Chemist says:
All of this wood stuff is absolute nonsense, because wood is not greenhouse neutral. In fact, it has a huge carbon footprint.
Harvesting wood from the forest starts with heavy machinery with big Diesel engines such as bulldozers and road graders constructing access roads. The loggers then come with their chain saws and fell the trees. After the trees are buked, the logs are hauled up to the access road using cables and wenches powered by Diesel engines. The logs are then loaded onto trucks with big Diesel engines and taken to the mill which can be many kilometers away from the logging site.
At a pulp mill, the logs are debarked and chipped for pulping. The bark is used as fuel for the boilers for generating process steam.
At a saw mill, the logs are sawed into rough lumber which sent to the planar mill for production of standard dimensional lumber.
At a mill producing wood pellets, the debarked wood is ground up, treated with binding agent and pressed into pellets which are dried and bagged. This whole process uses lots of energy. The
wood pellets would eventually be sent to various markets using trucks with big Diesel engines!
…and THEN the pellets are shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to be put on more trucks to get to Drax.
But maybe all the wood pellets will be burned to power the ship, so those last trucks won’t be needed.
buked = bucked (limbs removed)
I was surprised the spell checker did not mark “buked” as a misspelling. I checked my dictionary and there was no definition under the “buck” entries that mentioned removing limbs from fallen trees.
I’m surprised as well, “buck” is in common usage for trees, and “buked’ also passed my spell checker. I did find this for “buked”:
https://www.definitions.net/definition/buked
Editors:
“…sternly disapproved, hated, persecuted”
“To disrespect someone”
Then there’s ChatGPT: ““Buked” is not a recognized word in the English language. It appears to be a misspelling or a colloquial term with no specific definition.”
Do any mills still use bark for power?
Yes, it’s called hog fuel.
Not to mention the 20+ years needed to replace the trees.
I wish I could find a wench that got by on diesel, all the wenches I’ve encountered preferred champagne.
The term tree is used loosely here. At average weight of 237kg the better term would be large bush if aged or sapling if newly grown; hardly a tree. Surely a tree is not a tree until it has a mass greater than one tonne.
Reference?
I agree with RickWill – what kind of twig are they using in the reference ‘tree’ used in the conversion?
I have no knowledge about ships but Russia build nuclear submarines and icebreakers. Wouldn’t nuclear powered ships not be a better option? Or is it a safety issue or too complicated to handle for regular companies? Every solution so far seems worse than what we have now.
Using nuclear power would demonstrate a level of common sense approaching clear thinking, normal sanity. In other words, totally against the rules.
Nuclear-powered ships are super expensive and usually cost billions.
she swallowed a fly … my oh my.
FSK bridge.
Consider the effect it would have had if a radiation event was part of it.
Wow. Down votes.
Consider that the number of commercial ships vastly outnumber military and commercial ships dock near population centers while military generally stay at military bases and consider collisions due happen, then is not it worth considering the impact of a radiation event due to a collision?
Do not misconstrue. I think nuclear power is very good for many things, but I know the difference in design and construction of commercial ships does not come close the military ships. Also commercial ships have economic constraints that never seem to apply to military vessels.
The navy tends to use a lot of nuclear propulsion and for them, much of it is always having fuel available. Nuclear is costly to install and maintain so currently you don’t see it in commercial ships. With the newer reactors, you might start seeing it in large ships depending on how well the smaller reactors are accepted in the power generation industry. You might look at the N.S. Savannah as that was the first time a reactor was used to power a non navy ship.
Levels of training are also high.
Number of operating personnel is higher.
No, no,.no.
I don’t want a nuclear powered ship carrying a boat load EV’s to catch fire and then cause the whole ship to sink and unleash a plague of annoying mutated talking sponges upon the planet.
Before we all bandwagon onto nuclear powered cargo ships, we should pause and consider everything.
This would allow us to rise above the nonsense of ill-planned and ill-conceived so called renewable energy schemes.
Much of what is touted as the only solution ignores the consequences. Dead birds, dead whales, dead solar panels (hail), etc.
Every decision, every action has consequences. It is the unanticipated consequences that bite us in the ass every time, so we need to explore it fully.
Piss poor politics produces piss poor planning.
I can just see it. The ship arrives at the dock. The port authority enquires, what happened to all the wood pellets, they were carrying for Drax. To which the reply was ‘we burnt it’.
Shades of Peter Macfarlane, aka Para Handy, Master of the steam puffer Vital Spark, who “didn’t cost the owners much for coal if coal was the cargo”.
It should be relatively easy to convert a wood burning boiler to coal, if they ever came to their senses. However, I am not taking any bets on that happening.
“the environmental destruction they will wrought”
NONSENSE
Subsidies is a problem. But it’s not an environmental destruction. The forests aren’t being cut for biomass- biomass is a by-product. The forests are grown and harvested to produce high value sawlogs. Some of what’s left goes to pulp, some to firewood, and some to biomass. STOP LYING. No virgin forests are being cut for biomass. This story is as bad as anything by ff haters. Before anyone writes about DRAX or any other forest related story, try talking to a forester. Without a biomass market, that same material would be pile up on site and torched- before they level the ground again and plant more trees.
I came looking for your post. I knew it would be here.
People don’t understand the timber industry. Making use of by-product, like parts of the trees that can’t be used for dimensional lumber, is responsible stewardship. It allows forest owners and sawmills to make more from what would otherwise be non-economical.
Hauling that wood to England, and declaring that it is green, or does anything to affect world temperatures, is insane for a lot of reasons, but not because they’re cutting down virgin stands of timber to make wood pellets. They aren’t
So how many Draxs can be built before they DO have to start pelletizing logs (oops, dey bin caught doin’ alredy)….Doesn’t Europe have it’s own deadfall and undergrowth ? If you want to prevent CO2 emissions why not just bury wood in an anoxic swamp somewhere ? Would save lots of transport emissions.
Maybe burning wood makes sense if we can cut down predicted forest fire areas in advance. Sorta like an old Star Trek episode where people reported to be euthanized cuz the computer predicted they were going to die in an upcoming war anyway, and it was necessary to avoid the destruction of war.
The reason to not bury the wood- is, in addition to being of no value to the climate, is that it costs a lot of money to harvest the wood and move it around, and dig a hole, etc. And it’s not about cleaning up the forest (rake it is what Trump said)- it’s because most forests have way too many trees that will never be good for high value timber- due to the species or something wrong with the tree. To maximize growth on the best trees, you need to weed the forest.
Drax may claim they’re doing this for the climate- which of course is absurd. I grant that. But, from the point of view of mostly down in Dixie forest industry, it’s all about getting rid of wood they don’t want- rather than burning it in big piles, really causing true air pollution- not of the supposed carbon variety. The fax that Drax and the UK and anyone else thinks this is good for the climate- to replace coal- isn’t the concern of the forestry companies- who just want to manage those forests to maximize profits in an honest way. Much I don’t care for their type of forestry as they have short rotations and genetically engineered trees, on my properties. It’s like a corn crop that grows for maybe 20-30 years on some sites. But, it’s their land for them to determine how to manage those forests. The objective is NOT to maximize wildlife or aesthetics, just like a corn farmer.
They certainly aren’t cutting down virgin stands to produce pellets. There’s hardly any virgin forests left in the US. If any are cut, the wood will go to all the different markets, with the least valuable going to pellets.
You might want to research that statement. https://e360.yale.edu/digest/u-s-forests-are-being-devastated-to-supply-biomass-energy-industry-report-finds
There are multiple operations in the US where the only product is biomass.
Yale Environment 360 are f*****g idiots who don’t have a clue about forestry. I’ve tried enlightening them many times- with no luck. F*****g ivy league idiots.
“according to a new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Dogwood Alliance, and the Southern Environmental Law Center.”
all are forestry haters who want to end all forestry- only a retard would believe anything they say about forestry
The Dogwood Alliance, which I refer to as the Dogshit Alliance is promoting “proforestation” which is a truly stupid idea that we must lock up all the forests to do nothing but sequester carbon, to save the planet. This hallucination was delivered to the world’s ivory tower intellectuals by Bill Moomaw, who lives in my area- a former IPCC author- who is a chemist but who thinks he knows everything about ecology and especially forests but he knows next to nothing about forests. I could go on all day about him but don’t want to bore the other folks here.
30% on that tract and much lower on other tracts- I’ve had wood go to biomass on my forestry projects and sometimes it’s as high as 30% because most forests around here had been severely high graded, more than once- leaving severely depleted, degraded forests- removing that much for biomass is the only way to IMPROVE the forests. But, these forestry haters have succeeded in killing biomass as an industry in the Northeast east because the politicians here are mostly brain dead. If I sound angry, it’s because I’d love to b***h slap all of them. 🙂
As for looking at these “horrific images”- hey, go back and look in 10 years and you’ll see a young thriving forest. Most forestry doesn’t look horrible. It sometimes does but nature is tough and these companies want to grow more wood. Lots of economic activities look ugly- like most factories, most urban sprawl, etc., etc., etc.
And, most of these forestry haters are upper middle class or richer- most live in large wood homes with nice wood furniture and tons of paper products. Especially, that dude- Bill Moomaw, who lives in uppity Williamstown. I could say much more….
Where I live, a company ultimately owned by German minor royalty manages a fairly large area. We see how the new trees grow. The tract cut 15 years ago was clearcut, but this year’s cut left a substantial number of straight 30-odd foot trees and planted between them. It looks as if they are keeping up with improved management strategies.
Where? In Germany?
That would mean that the videos of “sawlogs” being hauled to, and stacked up at, pelleting plants are completely fake! Not impossible, but can you prove it? Wouldn’t the “biomass”, according to you, arrive at the plant as wood chips, processed at the site?
If those logs were potentially sawlogs- they’d END UP AS SAWLOGS not biomass. Many large logs are of low value species or have SEVERE DEFECT. A sawlog is worth 1,000 times more than biomass, pound for pound. I don’t have to prove anything to fools. Sometimes the chips are produced on the site- if the logging crew can afford a very expensive heavy duty chipper- then the chips go to the pellet plant is special trucks that are designed to be tilted to empty.
In particular, many hemlock and pine trees are loaded with defect that makes them worthless for sawing. Hemlock is often unsaleable for sawlogs regardless of quality and size- the wood industry doesn’t want them because the market place of finished lumber doesn’t want them. Often pine has multiple defects including white pine weevil which makes them crooked- but the stems of the trees can be enormous- yet they are worthless as sawlogs. If a pine log sits in the hot sun for a few days it gets “blue stain” which ruins it. Many hardwood trees have big hollows in them which run the length of the tree. I could write a book on this subject, but some people would rather learn forestry from some f*****g environmental extremist law firm or a dumb as s**t ivory tower intellectual who couldn’t find himself out of a 1 acre forest.
I’m retired now, but one of my customers was one of the largest paper products producers in the U.S. They exclusively used waste wood and it makes me wonder how projects like the one above might affect the raw materials being brought into one of their 15 plants in the U.S. operating 24×7.
The forest land of the American south is vast- and could produce many times more wood if the markets existed. Selling the very worst wood for biomass will have no effect on the pulp industry- especially since such wood is worth more as pulp than it is for biomass. And if they have to compete for the same wood- so be it. Vive capitalism!
Overall, the potential for producing wood in America truly is far more than current markets call for. The majority of the forest land isn’t even managed at all- much is mismanaged, for sure, but much is locked up for now no good reason. It’s a shame- like the failure to wisely use fossil fuels, of which there is a great deal- so instead, we wreck the landscape with “green energy”. Small example- the state of Wokeachusetts has about a million acres of prime forest land. The cutting on all this land is about 5% of the potential.
Regardless, America has been called the wood basket of the world- yet it’s potential has hardly been tapped. A potential great industry going to waste, like so many others.
Here is a link to a ongoing forest management project that I have a personal interest
in=========>
https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=65687
At the bottom of the page there are map links. The dark brown is where they will
be using a fire management burn. I personally think that instead of burning
they should set up a Fischer=Tropsch and convert it to diesel. The potential
diesel is around 80gal/ton. This unit will yield 20T/acre. They are going to burn
40K acres..If my math is correct they will be burning around $180M worth of diesel
in this project. I would rather that be used to maintain our road system, schools and
other public systems ect..As you can see there is a lot of potential for solids to liquids
on Nation Forest lands. There is a federal law that requires the Wood Products Industry
to approve a solids to liquids operation and they will not approve this…I’ve posted
here on this subject recently.
What’s the economics of your proposed system? It costs a lot to set up something like that, I’d think. But if it’ll work, then it sounds great.
But is the proposed burn supposed to burn trees or just slash and trees already on the ground? Maybe they’re not looking to reduce the tree population, only the slash and deadwood. But in a thinning, many trees should be removed- and if they can be used at all- they should be used for the “highest and best value”- seems like converting to diesel is better than pellets. I don’t know if people around the northeast are even aware of the Fischer=Tropsch system. Arguments against it will be made by the same fools who argue against pellets.
I learned about the portable F-T plants from a boiler company executive
in Buffalo NY during the big recession back in ’07. His company was
building components for several 250 MW biomass plants in Canada.
The first photo was in Vermont on some private timber ground near
Burlington. He also knew of another across the border also on private
timber ground. Volvo made these units. Sweden had/has an energy program that
was designed to allow the country to become energy independent and not
be beholding to OPEC. The then MT Governor Brian Schweitzer tried to
get the closing pulp mill in Frenchtown MT to be converted to F-T
but hit a wall and the plant was closed and demolished. It’s now a toxic
waste site. Obviously there are forces that don’t want this technology
in use..
Near Burlington is a very nice biomass plant- been there for some decades.
Sweden considers itself essentially carbon neutral, while having many biomass plants. But in America and in parts of Europe, fanatics are trying to kill biomass. Over the last several decades it’s one thing or another that they use as an excuse to stop forestry. Many of the leaders of the anti forestry movement are right here in Wokeachusetts. I know all of them and have argued with them. I should write a book on this topic.
The project I linked to was conifer lodge pole all beetle killed
back around ’06. The forester description is “jackstrawed”
as in a game of pick up sticks. Once the needles fall out and sun
light hits the ground along with the trees not drinking any water
grass grew very tall which is a fine fuel. as in 4-6 tons/acre
No one ventures into those units in late summer, it is a death trap if there is any ignition, a smoldering lightning strike the night before or any kind of spark.
I’ve knew of a fire over in Lolo that burned over 600 acres in 30 min
flame height around 300+ft.
At least this will make a fire break and allow to help with fire risks.
It could be salvaged into OSB or other products but the USFS just
burns it off. Had a controlled burn near here last fall around 50K acres along the continental divide trail.. it’s a high risk operation..the
enviros haven’t made any demands on this project –yet.
There is incontrovertible evidence that a substantial part of the DRAX biofuel supply comes from virgin forests in BC Canada.. it was either CTV or CBC in Canada that made a documentary that caught DRAX by following logging trucks from the logging sites to the mills. Of course DRAX representatives denied it when challenged, Like everything green they have lost their moral compass it’s suborned to greed.
Whether it’s a virgin forests or not- is none of your business. They are going to manage the forests as they see fit. It’s not up to to pass judgement on them. Suborned to greed? What kind of job do you have? Do you seek higher salary every year? is that greed? How about all the bureaucrats who get raises every year whether they deserve it or not? Almost everyone is greedy. So what? It’s human nature.
When you see logs on a truck- you have no way of knowing anything about those logs. For all you know, they may be full of defect. It’s impossible that they’d send quality sawlogs to a chip plant because the value as chips is trivial compared to sawlogs.
So you believe every documentary you watch? If you lived in Russia, would you believe that Putin is just trying to liberate the Ukrainians from that N**i Zelensky? A lot of dumb ass Americans believe that.
So, beware of using the word “incontrovertible”.
CBC is left wing propaganda, show me the evidence, I live in BC, There are no virgin forest being logged here.
More of an environmental problem is the aband0ned marginal farms that are turning into scrub forest.
Depends on where they are. Abandoned farms in the American northeast- all quickly grow back to forest but not often the way foresters would like them because you get early succession species which are usually the lowest value for timber. Sometimes there’s a nice mix. It’ll often take 2-3 silvicultural projects to enhance the forest to growing the best species- which often are the species that dominated the site in pre-colonial times. It’s complicated. In arid areas you will get true scrub forest- but that may have been what was there before the farms.
By 1830, over 80% of MA forests had been cleared. By the end of that century, the farms were slowly being abandoned. Now about 80% of the land is forest again. Almost all forests in the state have stones walls showing where the fields were. It’s interesting to try to figure out what happened on any property.
Another nuclear grade green facepalm.
What, made of steel.
I thought coal was wood just older.
Well, as we age, the pressure increases, so…..
Burning actual slash, lumbering waste products, locally for fuel might be viable, if one can minimize transport.
Drax strikes me as pure subsidy mining.
open the way to zero-emission shipping
How is burning wood zero-emission? How is it even less emissions than diesel?
Harold the Chemist says:
Wood is proposed to be zero emission because the CO2 produced by combustion is taken up by trees in the forest. This CO2 is “good CO2”. Wood actually has huge carbon foot print. See my comment above about wood’s carbon footprint.
CO2 produced by combustion of fossil fuels is “bad CO2”. So we are told by the environmentalists.
rr
Has anyone done the calculations to quantify the volume of biomass (or wood chips) needed to do all of this? How may trees will we have left after the first year is a question curious minds want to know.
Drax is behaving like a Bond villain. Oh, wait …
Nevertheless, ask the good and livid citizens of Maine and Vermont who see their famous forests chopped up for the idiocy of the virtue signallers.
Drax are environmental Desperados.
Virgin forests? All growing in neat rows and all the same size? It’s a pretty neat book keeping scam though.