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Wood Chips as Fuel, Green or Not

Roger B

When Michael Moore released Planet of the Humans in 2019 the Green Movement was up in arms. A key theme of the film is how bad burning wood chips as fuel is, especially when they come from harvested timber and are shipped round the world.

Now the Green ‘think tank’ Ember is saying how bad burn wood chips is:

eandt.theiet.org/.../drax-power-plant-largest-single-source-carbon-emissions-uk-report-finds

Are people slowly starting to realise the many fallacies about ‘renewable energy’?

A quite profound quote I saw on another website:

“Climate Change has Destroyed Environmentalism”

As long as it claims to reduce CO2 emissions and is ‘renewable’ you can cut down as many trees as you like, destroy as much landscape as you like and create as much mining pollution as you like. If it helps an already rich person to get rich so much the better.

My usual disclaimer: I accept that the climate has changed, is changing and will continue to change. We should try to reduce our impact on our planet and minimize our consumption of finite resources.

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  • Roger B said:
    Are people slowly starting to realise the many fallacies about ‘renewable energy’?

    Many fallacies?  I think Drax is one exceptional case.

  • in reply to Simon Barker

    Simon:

    Which is worse a controlled burn of logged wood producing electrical energy or a wild uncontrolled forest fire?

    It is a practice in some parts of the of the US to thin out the forests (log trees) then have controlled burns to prevent natural fires being started by lightening.

     I live next to a wildlife area, which is a habitat for the endangered scrub jay (bird) which can not exist surrounded by tall trees. Every few years selected trees are cut down and fire prevention lanes. are created by the county.

    Peter Brooks

    Palm Bay 

      

  • in reply to Peter Brooks

    The trouble with Drax is its size.  It was the biggest coal-fired power station in the UK, and has now been converted to burn vast quantities of wood instead.

    Originally, there was talk of sources such as short rotation coppice.  Some famers even planted up fields of willow trees.  But it turns out to be more effective to burn whole trees than big piles of willow twigs.  So forests in America are being chopped down and stuck on boats to England, just to burn them for electricity.

    It's safe to assume it's all low-grade wood that timber mills don't want.  But it's not clear how much of it would have been cut down anyway.

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  • in reply to Peter Brooks

    The trouble with Drax is its size.  It was the biggest coal-fired power station in the UK, and has now been converted to burn vast quantities of wood instead.

    Originally, there was talk of sources such as short rotation coppice.  Some famers even planted up fields of willow trees.  But it turns out to be more effective to burn whole trees than big piles of willow twigs.  So forests in America are being chopped down and stuck on boats to England, just to burn them for electricity.

    It's safe to assume it's all low-grade wood that timber mills don't want.  But it's not clear how much of it would have been cut down anyway.

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