Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

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pwa
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by pwa »

Ben@Forest wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 6:07pm
pwa wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 4:41pm However, another source says waste wood is now used: https://www.letsrecycle.com/news/glennm ... ass-plant/ I'd need to know more about that to form an opinion.
I don't think your link links to the article you want. However l don't see that 'waste' wood in itself is a bad feedstock to use. Close to me is Chilton Biomass CHP plant. Its Wiki entry says:

The feedstock for the plant is wood which has reached the end of its useful life such as old shipping pallets, manufacturing offcuts, wood from the construction and demolition industries, and material from civic amenity sites. This wood is collected through a network set up by Dalkia. The fuel would other wise be sent to landfill.

Although l don't live that closely l have been past it many times, including cycling. Someone said earlier that such plants made a bad smell for the locals, l have never smelled anything (and when it was built there was a lot of local support for it).
I think the link is correct but the comment about waste wood is quite far down. I have walked in the hills immediately to the east of this plant, within a mile of it sometimes, and I have never noticed any smell of burning wood.
pwa
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by pwa »

Biospace wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 6:56pm
pwa wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 5:25pm
Cugel wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 5:09pm
Biofuels are also dismissed by Jacobson: “The biofuels push was really not helpful. They hold constant, or increase, air pollution and they use a huge amount of land.”[/i]
Just to pick up on that one thing, the land used for forestry where you and I live is of next to no use for anything else, save the wind farms that co-exist with the forestry. Maybe somewhere else he has found biofuel production taking up valuable agricultural land. If not, his point is a dud.

As explained by in the various links I've listed upthread, this whole greenwash of burning forests for Grid electricity has only become possible because of some poor definitions made in the Kyoto 1992 protocol, whereby biomass is treated as carbon neutral at point of use. This explains the whole confusion, https://www.chathamhouse.org/2017/02/wo ... -emissions

The UK government has been extremely opportunistic in exploiting this error, it appears to me to be little short of disaster in progress. Even were there no emissions with harvesting, processing and transportation, even if woodland was replaced like-for-like with no damage done (mostly impossible), there is a decades-long increase in carbon emissions until replacement trees are sufficiently well grown to significantly capture carbon - at which point, they're often felled. Young trees sequester much less carbon than mature ones.

We're already living through an acceleration of the 6th Mass Extinction, yet we're now cutting down forests on the other side of the planet to fire our wasteful uses of energy. If nothing is done, as the price of carbon/carbon taxes rise then more and more agriculatural land will be used for tree farming and even more people will go hungry because of the West's greed.

If we are talking about managed forestry as we have in the UK, an estate can have a more or less constant level of carbon capture by keeping the same balance of land at different stages, from felling, through the growth stages and thinnings, to final felling and replanting. Individual trees are lost but the estate can be managed to always have X number of hectares at stage 1, Y number of hectares at stage 2 and so forth. So never any significant loss of carbon capture across the estate.
Biospace
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by Biospace »

pwa wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 7:14pm
If we are talking about managed forestry as we have in the UK, an estate can have a more or less constant level of carbon capture by keeping the same balance of land at different stages, from felling, through the growth stages and thinnings, to final felling and replanting. Individual trees are lost but the estate can be managed to always have X number of hectares at stage 1, Y number of hectares at stage 2 and so forth. So never any significant loss of carbon capture across the estate.
I was referring to how our government has used this to turn the UK into the world's single largest importer of biomass for electricity, responsible for hundreds of thousands of trees sent to be burned at Drax every day.

WRI_Apr_2022.png

A video showing results of large scale logging in British Colombia, where a lot of wood destined for the UK is harvested
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2LgXHC1T9s

An article linking the vulnerability to floods once a landscape has had its trees removed
https://forestry.ubc.ca/highlights/defo ... re-floods/
pwa
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by pwa »

Biospace wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 7:37pm
pwa wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 7:14pm
If we are talking about managed forestry as we have in the UK, an estate can have a more or less constant level of carbon capture by keeping the same balance of land at different stages, from felling, through the growth stages and thinnings, to final felling and replanting. Individual trees are lost but the estate can be managed to always have X number of hectares at stage 1, Y number of hectares at stage 2 and so forth. So never any significant loss of carbon capture across the estate.
I was referring to how our government has used this to turn the UK into the world's single largest importer of biomass for electricity, responsible for hundreds of thousands of trees sent to be burned at Drax every day.


WRI_Apr_2022.png


A video showing results of large scale logging in British Colombia, where a lot of wood destined for the UK is harvested
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2LgXHC1T9s

An article linking the vulnerability to floods once a landscape has had its trees removed
https://forestry.ubc.ca/highlights/defo ... re-floods/
I accept there are questions about Drax. But it doesn't have to be that way. Sustainable forest management is possible. A conveyor belt of timber, where the overall estate remains the same over time, is achievable. If Drax is operating outside of this, that is indeed a problem.
Biospace
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by Biospace »

And the carbon emissions with a decades-long gap before some is re-sequestered - I thought there was a climate emergency, critical that we act?

It would be good to think that the sort of management you talk about would be possible on such a large scale, but environmental concerns for wildlife seem to simply go out of the window. We're not talking somewhere the area of a home county, but the area of whole nations.

It feels to me that if Government supports something, there will be people who assume it must somehow be ok. Have you read some of the links I've provided upthread?
Ben@Forest
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by Ben@Forest »

Biospace wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 7:37pm I was referring to how our government has used this to turn the UK into the world's single largest importer of biomass for electricity...
The UK is the world's second biggest net importer of timber period. Only China imports more. It's hardly a surprise we import timber for energy production, we have to import it for everything else.
Carlton green
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by Carlton green »

Ben@Forest wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 9:44pm
Biospace wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 7:37pm I was referring to how our government has used this to turn the UK into the world's single largest importer of biomass for electricity...
The UK is the world's second biggest net importer of timber period. Only China imports more. It's hardly a surprise we import timber for energy production, we have to import it for everything else.
The UK is far far away from self sufficiency and as a nation we over consume. Population - or rather over population - is also the ‘elephant in the room’.

https://populationmatters.org/sustainab ... on-policy/
Don’t fret, it’s OK to: ride a simple old bike; ride slowly, walk, rest and admire the view; ride off-road; ride in your raincoat; ride by yourself; ride in the dark; and ride one hundred yards or one hundred miles. Your bike and your choices to suit you.
Biospace
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by Biospace »

Ben@Forest wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 9:44pm
Biospace wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 7:37pm I was referring to how our government has used this to turn the UK into the world's single largest importer of biomass for electricity...
The UK is the world's second biggest net importer of timber period.

I'm sure it is. And the UK is the world's largest importer of biomass (wood pellets) for electricity and as the graph shows, by a considerable margin.

What happens regarding carbon accounting when wood for power is imported from a country not in the UN system? This BBC piece suggests they conveniently vanish, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39053678



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pwa
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by pwa »

Biospace wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 10:10pm
Ben@Forest wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 9:44pm
Biospace wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 7:37pm I was referring to how our government has used this to turn the UK into the world's single largest importer of biomass for electricity...
The UK is the world's second biggest net importer of timber period.
I'm sure it is. But it's the world's largest importer of biomass (wood pellets) for electricity and as the graph shows, by a considerable margin.

What happens regarding carbon accounting when wood for power is imported from a country not in the UN system? This BBC piece suggests they conveniently vanish, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39053678


Screenshot 2023-01-23 at 22.08.30.png
Screenshot 2023-01-23 at 22.09.32.png
That second piece talks about electricity production from pellet burning having higher carbon dioxide emissions than from gas burning. But does that take into account the carbon capture that happens as trees grow? The rationale for biomass is that whatever is released will be equalled by what is captured elsewhere in the system, excepting the emissions associated with processing and transportation. There is no carbon capture associated with obtaining gas or other fossil fuels.
Biospace
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by Biospace »

As explained by in the various links I've listed upthread, this whole greenwash of burning forests for Grid electricity has only become possible because of some poor definitions made in the Kyoto 1992 protocol, whereby biomass is treated as carbon neutral at point of use. This explains the whole confusion, https://www.chathamhouse.org/2017/02/wo ... -emissions

The UK government has been extremely opportunistic in exploiting this error, it appears to me to be little short of disaster in progress. Even were there no emissions with harvesting, processing and transportation, even if woodland was replaced like-for-like with no damage done (mostly impossible), there is a decades-long increase in carbon emissions until replacement trees are sufficiently well grown to significantly capture carbon - at which point, they're often felled. Young trees sequester much less carbon than mature ones.

We're already living through an acceleration of the 6th Mass Extinction, yet we're now cutting down forests on the other side of the planet to fire our wasteful uses of energy. If nothing is done, as the price of carbon/carbon taxes rise then more and more agriculatural land will be used for tree farming and even more people will go hungry because of the West's greed.
Also mentioned was the BBC article above which suggests that when dealing in carbon with nations which are not subscribed to the UN protocols (said to include USA, Canada and Russia), the carbon trading isn't necessarily accounted for. Which is to say, when wood is burned it's treated as carbon neutral, the assumption being that when harvested this will be accounted for.
pwa
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by pwa »

I think the "bottom line" is that burning wood for heating homes can be low in net carbon emissions as long as the source of the fuel is a sustainably run estate where the stock of living biomass remains stable over decades and centuries, with younger trees constantly coming along to replace the ones being cropped. In a well run estate there will be timber at all growth stages, capturing carbon to offset the carbon that will later be released when the wood is used as fuel. I accept that large scale electricity production at Drax, with its reliance on imported timber of dubious origin, may not comply with this requirement.
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al_yrpal
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by al_yrpal »

An old friend in Germany heats his home with a wood pellet boiler. He has been complaining of massive price increases for pellets recently.

Al
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Ben@Forest
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by Ben@Forest »

al_yrpal wrote: 24 Jan 2023, 9:18am An old friend in Germany heats his home with a wood pellet boiler. He has been complaining of massive price increases for pellets recently.
Because a lot are produced in Russia which won't be being exported now - though I've heard they are being exported to Turkey and then into the EU - whichever way the price will be higher.
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Cugel
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by Cugel »

Biospace wrote: 23 Jan 2023, 9:37pm And the carbon emissions with a decades-long gap before some is re-sequestered - I thought there was a climate emergency, critical that we act?

It would be good to think that the sort of management you talk about would be possible on such a large scale, but environmental concerns for wildlife seem to simply go out of the window. We're not talking somewhere the area of a home county, but the area of whole nations.
Many of the commercial forest plantations in Britain are of a design that greatly reduces the bio-diversity of the places covered in firs and spruces compared to other kinds of forest with a much wider range of tree species. Walk in any of the commercial forests and, away from the access corridors and their fringes of wild-growth, the forest floor is a dim and lifeless-looking place.

So there's one detrimental effect of using fast-growth timber as nothing much more than a fuel source.

And when it comes to burning the stuff, there's plenty of pollutant given off, whether it can be smelt from a mile away or not.

Still, it's better than oil or coal.

***********

The technologies associated with other renewables such as solar and wind also have their detrimental effects from the manufacturing processes - lithium extraction and all the rest. But perhaps the materials involved can be recycled in a much more effective fashion, in the longer term, reducing the need to extract ores by substituting the refinement of defunct gubbins parts.

If or when renewable energy becomes so prolific that it also becomes very inexpensive, refinement costs of complex waste from lithium batteries et al may become much more cost effective, and far less damaging, than extracting and refining ores.

********
Burning trees can't really be made any less polluting than it is now. Is that the case? This isn't true of other renewable-style energy generation techniques. Is that the case?

Cugel
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pwa
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Re: Not giving my money to the fossel fuel industry

Post by pwa »

Cugel wrote: 24 Jan 2023, 11:39am
...........Many of the commercial forest plantations in Britain are of a design that greatly reduces the bio-diversity of the places covered in firs and spruces compared to other kinds of forest with a much wider range of tree species. Walk in any of the commercial forests and, away from the access corridors and their fringes of wild-growth, the forest floor is a dim and lifeless-looking place.
This is very true. Although the coniferous forestry you and I are familiar with was first planted up in the early or mid twentieth century as a source of timber for things like pit props and construction timber. And prior to that it was mostly very poor grazing land, nibbled to within an inch of its life by sheep. But yes, there are other firewood species that have better diversity associate with them. Willow has been done commercially. I have coppiced hazel in the past, to enhance woodland diversity, and I have burned the timber from that. I have been back to a couple of the places where I did that about 17 years ago and the coppiced trees are now back to where they were, ready to be re-cropped. Willow would be even quicker.
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