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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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  • "Drax power plant ‘the largest single source of carbon emissions in the UK’, report finds"

    To take that point, out of context, is rather to miss the point of burning biofuels vs fossil fuels. Biofuels, in principle, are part of a cycle where nature carbon-captures the same carbon that burning emits and in a (relatively) short timescale. It's rather like implying a pond-pump which circulates water back to the same pond it draw the water from adds just as much water as a hose pipe fed from the mains .. although only the latter will produce a nett increase in pond water level.

    That's not to say that Drax is a shinning example of how to do things properly - as even there's a lot of detail to get right and perhaps not all of it has been in that case.

        - Andy.

  • in reply to AJJewsbury

    Small scale wood chip burning using local waste wood is a reasonable option. The heating of our apartment comes from such a source and there are plenty of local forests and a local timber industry.

    Cutting down whole trees to chip and then transporting them halfway round the world using fossil fuelled trucks and ships is not sensible. How short is the’ relatively’ short timescale from clear cut to full regrowth?  If the forest is burnt in year one the full amount of CO2 is emitted. Over the next (optimistic probably more like 100) 50 years the CO2 is slowly reabsorbed. In year two the next forest is burnt again emitting the full amount of CO2……

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  • in reply to AJJewsbury

    Small scale wood chip burning using local waste wood is a reasonable option. The heating of our apartment comes from such a source and there are plenty of local forests and a local timber industry.

    Cutting down whole trees to chip and then transporting them halfway round the world using fossil fuelled trucks and ships is not sensible. How short is the’ relatively’ short timescale from clear cut to full regrowth?  If the forest is burnt in year one the full amount of CO2 is emitted. Over the next (optimistic probably more like 100) 50 years the CO2 is slowly reabsorbed. In year two the next forest is burnt again emitting the full amount of CO2……

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