The Biomass Con.....

[ToraToraTora]

http://www.radiotimes.com/tv-programme/e/gf4cqk/dispatches--s197-e7-the-true-cost-of-green-energy-channel-4-dispatches/
Anyone see the dispatches program? Burning wood pellets, it turns out is far worse than burning coal. But they are allowed to discount their emissions out of the stack because they plant new trees, BS! They ship this stuff round the world using fossil fuels! PMSL how can this be better? another obfuscated BS fest.

[douglas9401]

I didn't see the programme but agree with what you say, Tora.
It seems to come from the same playbook that the greens and their fellow loons are taking their nationwide (Scotland) 20mph in towns speed limit idea from, never seeming to think of all that slow moving, higher revving traffic going about the place is pumping more than ever into the air.

Another wheeze dreamt up over too much drink one night.

[mushroom25]

much like the drive toward biofuel - reductions in emissions over petro-fuels, at the expense of rain forest eco systems stripped to plant palm oil plantations, and loss of food producing land to fuel production.

[ToraToraTora]

yes but these wood pellets are a bigger carbon footprint, isn't that the point? Their true damage is being hidden by omitting a vital ingredient from the arithmetic.Not only that they use fossil fuels to transport them, LOL indeed!

[ToraToraTora]

"Wooden pellets don't have to have a bigger carbon footprint. Coal does not have more of a carbon footprint than wooden pellets. " - yes they do, watch the program, as a fan of conspiracy theories should be right up your alley.

[AKMild]

Private Eye has been on to this for years.................

[ToraToraTora]

"It depends where the wood pellets are source from, the type of wood used and how far they've travelled." - hard wood, north America watch the program.
"If i cut a tree down and burn the wooden pellets i've made from that, there isn't any where near as much of a carbon footprint than if i extravated into the ground and pulled up some coal, to then make it burnable. " - oh dear, do you know what coal is? wood emits the same amount of carbon as coal. The wood has been shippoed from NA using diesel, they discount the emissions because supposedly a new tree has been planted but it takes 80 to 100 years to have the same carbon absorption as mature hard wood tree, again watch the program.

[ToraToraTora]

hard wood from NA is what the Drax power station uses. I'm not recommending coal, I'm just saying that this wood pellet game is no better.

[New Judge]

I’m not particularly fussed about “Climate Change” or “Global Warming” (or whatever name has been used to suit the latest figures) but I do hate being taken for an idiot.

“Coal has a bigger carbon footprint than wooden pellets…”

No it does not. I’ve commented on this topic many times before. The so-called “Biomass” confidence trick is almost as big as the South Sea Bubble. You have to burn about five times as much wood than coal to produce the same amount of energy with much of the heat being used simply to drive off the moisture contained in the wood as it is added to the furnace. Even leaving that aside and the fact that the wood has to be harvested, processed and transported four or five thousand miles (just as coal does), wood only has a smaller net emissions figure than coal because they plant saplings and their value and that of the carbon the trees are said to have absorbed before they are felled is used to “offset” (whatever that might mean) the emissions from burning the wood. Effectively burning the wood is done (on paper) with nil emissions. The saplings (which will take about 200 years to grow – if they survive) also fail to absorb as much carbon as their mature counterparts and in the long term the deforestation taking place to fuel to biomass industry will result in a net gain of carbon in the atmosphere.

The biomass industry would like us to believe that the fuel used in power stations is produced from waste-wood by products. In the main it is not and the stuff being imported to the UK from Canada and the USA is principally whole trees felled from forests specifically for the purpose.

There is a very good report here which explains all this far better than I can:

https://www.ecowatch.com/chatham-house-biomass-study-2288764699.html

If you cannot be bothered to read it, the concluding paragraph says this:

“Burning forest biomass is not a climate solution. It often worsens climate change by emitting more carbon than burning coal. These findings have now been corroborated by an established UK institution with a history of independent and rigorous research. It should serve as a wake-up call to policymakers in both the UK and EU that their renewables incentives and subsidies aimed at reducing carbon emissions from power plants are—in the case of forest biomass power—likely having the opposite effect and making our climate problems worse.”

Drax power station in Yorkshire is the UK’s largest, providing 7% of the country’s energy needs. Since 2010 some of its power plants have been gradually converted to burn biomass. It now consumes more than 7.5 million tonnes of the stuff annually. Apart from a small “token” amount produced from local products, this is virtually all sourced from the USA and Canada. The UK takes 60% of all biomass exported from the USA and Drax takes more than 80% of that. Overall about 65% of biomass for Drax comes from the USA with a further 25% from Canada. The deforestation requirement to sustain this supply is around 4,500 square miles – more than half the size of Wales - each and every year.

The biomass industry would like people to believe that it is a sustainable product which makes use of a few scraps of waste wood and compressed sawdust. It is nothing of the sort. It is a huge industry which is denuding vast areas of forest. It’s about as carbon neutral as chopping down the trees on your local common and burning them in your back garden. Anybody believing that such an industry contributes to the Earth's wellbeing needs to have a look at the facts.

[ToraToraTora]

once again judge I am in your debt for a typically thorough exposing of the situation. Yet another BA for your vast collection. Spath, take note.