Government targeting wood and coal burning.

[pwa]

I have been involved in projects where woodland has been planted for firewood, and at the time it was billed as sustainable and almost carbon neutral. The idea is that you take a piece of low value land with little more than poor grazing on it and plant with fast growing trees (often willow) that increases the carbon the land takes in from the atmosphere. Then when the wood is burned you are just releasing the same carbon you took out of the atmosphere. So little or no net additional carbon in the atmosphere.

Clearly, if you go round clear felling woodland that was not planted for firewood and don't plant or coppice to ensure a continuity, that isn't good. But if you are managing a woodland to ensure it is not depleted over time, it must be taking in as much carbon as the burning of its wood releases. Getting that balance is the thing.

The world has a problem with too much CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to reduce it. Growing (removing) and releasing does nothing to help. Switch to a non-polluting method of heating and leave the trees holding on to the carbon they have removed from the atmosphere (and allow them to help reduce flooding, host wildlife, etc.).

Ian

But growing trees for fuel, then burning the wood from them, removes from the atmosphere the same as it releases. In theory at least it is carbon neutral. If you increase forest acreage for fuel you end up with no net carbon released, but with your home heated. You only get to release the carbon you captured. Compare that with gas burning where you capture nothing and only release. Unless Mick F's tree cover is being depleted his plot of land, with him on it, is releasing only as much carbon due to heating as it is capturing. If we all managed that balance we would be in a better place.

[francovendee]

I cut trees. I'm doing my best to rid us of the things!

Wood goes into our multifuel glass-fronted stove in the livingroom. Tons of hot water and we can switch on the pump to send it round the four radiators.

Also, we have a Stanley Traditional in the kitchen. This spends maybe ten months of the year lit 24/7 except when it needs to go out to clean out the grate properly. It provides some hot water so there's always some available.

One similar to this.errigal-blackenamel-955x472-20160322004026.jpg
We burn anthracite in the Stanley and it's certified for use in smoke control areas.

If, in the longer term, we are banned from burning wood and anthracite, someone somewhere will have to give us a grant to change to something greener.

Don't hold your breath for that grant, you'd likely suffocate. Any grant would be a one off anyway, nothing to offset any increased running costs.
We heat our home with wood but have to buy a lot of it. The farmer who supplies it always brings dry wood. He's not so dry himself and polish of most of a bottle of rosé before getting back on his tractor.

[PDQ Mobile]

I think the legislation is the first step in stopping domestic coal and wood burning.

The sustainability argument is daft. There are sustainable ways of heating that don't pollute to the same extent and don't release CO2 to the same extent.

Ian

If there one thing that wood is, is that it's very sustainable (if treated as sustainable) on into the foreseeable future in fact.
And it's carbon neutral.
And transport costs are low.
It is, for some folk, very cost effective too.
Modern forestry wastes a great deal of fine fuel wood- luckily.
The carbon cycle exists in any tree felled or dead whether burned or left to rot, burning merely speeds the process but is still considered carbon neutral.


Done right (that is burned dry, hot and with enough oxygen) pollution is kept minimal and the waste ash from pure wood is a useful by-product for gardeners or farmers.

Not suitable as a densely populated urban fuel but then there are not many trees in such places anyway.

That is quite different to any type of coal, though "house coal" is truly noxious.
And in many ways to lump (no pun etc!) the two together is disingenuous by the Govt.
As someone said upthread picking the low hanging fruit is easiest.

[Graham]

. . As someone said upthread picking the low hanging fruit is easiest.

. . . and doesn't upset the voting motorist.

We have coal-burners in some of the neighbouring properties. It is noticeable over quite large distances : unpleasant stuff.

[Ben@Forest]

We have coal-burners in some of the neighbouring properties. It is noticeable over quite large distances : unpleasant stuff.

And as usual legislation often already exists to cover this that is not enforced. My sister lives in London, in the house is a rather beautiful 1920/30s wood burning stove which may well have been there since that time.

She lives in a smokeless zone and should not burn wood on it, but very occasionally she does, it's used for 'atmosphere' rather than heat. But she and plenty of others do this.

Ironically if she had a wood-fired pizza oven, or fired a BBQ with hickory chips in her garden that is not illegal. Go figure.

[Psamathe]

....
We have coal-burners in some of the neighbouring properties. It is noticeable over quite large distances : unpleasant stuff.

Dangerous (health-wise as well).

Ian

[Mick F]

I know one member of this parish who heats his home using wood cut from his land and I suspect there are many like him.

I think you mean Mickf?
But he burns coal too.

There are very very few who use exclusively wood as a fuel for all hot water, cooking and domestic heating.
It requires a lot of wood for one thing.

Yes, wood and coal ......... but it's smokeless anthracite.
We've powered the Stanley on wood for a few days when we've run out of anthracite. Actually it's more economical in a way, as it goes out overnight rather than burning 24/7.

[mjr]

She lives in a smokeless zone and should not burn wood on it, but very occasionally she does, it's used for 'atmosphere' rather than heat. But she and plenty of others do this.

Indeed and I think that gives some of the worst non-coal pollution, with people burning for "atmosphere" usually aiming to set the burner controls to give big yellow flames, which means incomplete combustion, from large lumps of fuel that will last a long time, rather than maximising the blue flame and red glow from a smaller amount of fuel with a larger surface area to maximise the heat output but having to load in those smaller amounts more often.

Interesting on the BBQ loophole. I guess they rely on our weather being too cold for many people to do that often?

[Carlton green]

I have been involved in projects where woodland has been planted for firewood, and at the time it was billed as sustainable and almost carbon neutral. The idea is that you take a piece of low value land with little more than poor grazing on it and plant with fast growing trees (often willow) that increases the carbon the land takes in from the atmosphere. Then when the wood is burned you are just releasing the same carbon you took out of the atmosphere. So little or no net additional carbon in the atmosphere.

Clearly, if you go round clear felling woodland that was not planted for firewood and don't plant or coppice to ensure a continuity, that isn't good. But if you are managing a woodland to ensure it is not depleted over time, it must be taking in as much carbon as the burning of its wood releases. Getting that balance is the thing.

The world has a problem with too much CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to reduce it. Growing (removing) and releasing does nothing to help. Switch to a non-polluting method of heating and leave the trees holding on to the carbon they have removed from the atmosphere (and allow them to help reduce flooding, host wildlife, etc.).

Ian

If that is your true understanding of the situation then it is somewhat different from the reality that many of us live with. Trees have a life cycle and at the end if their life they are either used as construction material (commercially felled) or as firewood. In the country a lot of trees grow old and die or die due to storm damage, those trees are harvested for firewood; they have no other use and leaving them where they fell would normally not be helpful.

When I lived in large Towns and Cities I had a different mindset, but when you move to the Country and live amongst rural types - many of who are poor rather than landed gentry - one develops a more rounded understanding. Certainly a lot of ‘City’ folk interfere with County ways of life that they don’t really understand and it would be more constructive if they either left things alone or got educated by actually living in and working on the land. If fuel pollution is a concern then wood burning is a definite ‘red herring’, we need to focus on road transport and air travel because (IMHO) that’s where the real issues are.

[fullupandslowingdown]

wood isn't carbon neutral if you use a petrol chainsaw to cut it then a motor vehicle to carry it. peanuts you might say, but none the less.
when the government started a scheme for wood fueled central heating systems with a handy grant, that started the rise of cost in construction wood as demand shot through the roof. Previously wood burners got all they needed from a bit of felling but mostly windfall. According to the article there are now over a million homes with wood burners, and some of them are in urban areas. Wet wood is supposed to generate far greater levels of particulates which cause breathing problems and disease. The article reckons that home heating is actually worse than cars.

The government said wood burning stoves and coal fires are the largest source of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), small particles of air pollution which find their way into the body's lungs and blood.....
Around 1.5m homes use wood for fuel across the UK, however burning wood and coal in open fires and stoves makes up 38% of the UK's emissions of PM2.5.

By comparison, 16% come from industrial combustion, 12% from road transport and 13% from the use of solvents and industrial processes.

This means a wood burning stove emits more particles per hour than a diesel truck.

I walk by two and they obviously use unseasoned wood because of the acrid smell more like a garden fire.

The government should never have restricted grants for solar panels to only those who houses were well insulated. It's not significantly increased the number of houses with solid walls etc getting insulated, just stopped those owners from getting eco electricity cheaply. Of course you pay for your own installation but you have to use accredited installers if you want to sell your excess. They charge more than regular electricians because they can do, and the systems were priced on the commercial basis that the customer would be making a net profit from the installation after 8 -10 years. Without the benefits, installing your own system only made sense if you were off grid anyway and faced a massive fee to be connected to the electricity supply. The FIT scheme was closed to newbies anyway by the government last year.

Global warming is an urgent crisis and needs drastic measures now, not later. Make it truly affordable for anyone with a suitable roof to install solar panels. This will have a double benefit as a lot of cars aren't used during working hours which for most people is 9-4 when there is some sun around. With more electric cars, (and bikes) you drive to work, plug into the system which automatically starts charging the vehicle once enough solar power kicks into the system. approaches carbon neutrality.

[mjr]

You can't tell who's burning what by smell. I know someone who manages to burn dried wood and stink their street up with incomplete combustion.

Leaving fallen trees to rot would release bursts of methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Has anyone actually got a solar e bike or car charger that only starts charging once the panels are producing?

[Oldjohnw]

My wife has an elderly as aunt who lives alone in what used to be the farmhouse of the farm she and her husband ran.

She had read somewhere about trying to reduce the amount of stuff dumped into landfill so she throws butter/spread cartons and plastic milk bottles onto the fire, just as her late husband used to burn old tyres.

[Ben@Forest]

The world has a problem with too much CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to reduce it. Growing (removing) and releasing does nothing to help. Switch to a non-polluting method of heating and leave the trees holding on to the carbon they have removed from the atmosphere (and allow them to help reduce flooding, host wildlife, etc.).

Ian

Non-intervention in woodland is a possible management regime but all carbon locked up in leaves, twigs, branches, trunks is returned to the atmosphere when they die and decay. Thus as l think pwa has already said, it's a zero sum game.

The best way to lock up carbon is to use wood. There are still 11th century barns and 13th century cathedrals which have original beams, that's locking up carbon. And globally more buildings are being made of wood, which have a far smaller carbon footprint than bricks, concrete, cement etc...

https://www.binderholz.com/en-us/mass-t ... t-britain/

[Mike Sales]

Non-intervention in woodland is a possible management regime but all carbon locked up in leaves, twigs, branches, trunks is returned to the atmosphere when they die and decay. Thus as l think pwa has already said, it's a zero sum game.

The best way to lock up carbon is to use wood. There are still 11th century barns and 13th century cathedrals which have original beams, that's locking up carbon. And globally more buildings are being made of wood, which have a far smaller carbon footprint than bricks, concrete, cement etc...

https://www.binderholz.com/en-us/mass-t ... t-britain/

Timber is great for boats too.
Mine is made of plywood and mostly softwood. And epoxy resin.
I hope it has a long life.

[PDQ Mobile]

Timber is great for boats too.
Mine is made of plywood and mostly softwood.
I hope it has a long life.

I had a plywood sailing boat once!