New report: Biomass CO2 emissions 4X higher than COAL!!

Biomass is touted as a sustainable, 'net-zero' alternative to fossil fuels. It's even recommended by organisations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK Climate Change Committee. But environmental groups and scientists have disputed this claim for many years, and now new research shows that burning biomass releases much more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere than burning coal or gas. So, what's going on?

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Link to EMBER research report.

Wood and Panel Article

Mary Booth article in New York Review

Global Forest Watch

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[martijn]

A perfect example of a sunk cost fallacy and uninformed politicians.

[robinwhitebeam]

The students at my university thought this kind of power station was a non starter in 1997. School of Forestry, Bangor University, Wales. Use of wood in well made furniture and buildings to remove carbon from the atmosphere is a much better mechanism.

[terenzo]

Whatever we do, it seems that corruption and abysmal judgment waits around the corner for us with a brick.

[Marvin-fnks]

In Canada we just don’t do forest management by removing deadfall so that when the forests burn caused mostly by humans, the government can attribute it to the climate emergency!

[alis]

The wood scraps can be used reasonably if you apply a few rules:
1. Regional use. Every transport reduces the efficiency
2. Air dried. Yeah, a lot of wood is dried with additional energy used. If it dries in the air for a few years, you actually can use it too. That's also 3 more years for new trees
3. To burn it simply for electricity is crazy, when we have many more ways to create electricity, but only a few ways to create a lot of heat!
4. No wood plantations. Seriously: plantations are not forests. You will know once you have seen both... Plantations kill biodiversity and reduce carbon absorption!

[usaverageguy]

I have never understood how burning wood, in any form, could be considered good for the environment. Unless a politician gets involved.

[christopherlenahan]

I work in sawmilling in AB and worked in Pulp&Paper in BC. I use to say we sell wood chips and wood is a byproduct. Also Drax is shady as hell, aside from the fact that they are making wood pellets in Canada and shipping them to europe to call it green energy... They also got caught in BC chipping good lumber trees for pellets, which is a super waste of our trees. As you point out.
There is no Carbon capture on their AB/BC operations, and unless they do in Europe, then they are just burning wood from somewhere else.

[s-g-j]

Is anybody surprised by this revelation? I'm not. It reminds me of the boondoggle in the USA telling us that ethanol from corn is a good deal, economically. It's not.

[davebennett]

Some other considerations you could add:
1 The energy requirement to reduce the moisture content of the pellet feedstock to an acceptable level. Green wood waste is about 50% water. Feedstock needs to be 20% water or less.
2 The electricity required to run a hammer mill to grind the feedstock to the right size particles for pelletising
3 The electricity required to run the pressing machine to make the pellets.
Also, while pellets are being shipped from North America to Europe, some are being shipped from New Zealand to North America !

[devroombagchus]

What I find very important is that this large scale pellet industry is yet another example of the extraction economy. By cutting and moving the trees and crops, you deplete the soil. The minerals, etc are released in another part of the planet. Also, the land needed for biofuel competes with land for biodiversity and food for a rapidly increasing number of people.

[mcqueen]

This sort of Bait And Switch Scheme is happening in many sectors.
The Hydrogen Economy is almost entirely based on Methane Steam Reforming, producing more emissions while conning the public into thinking they are switching to a clean fuel with pure water as the only emission.
The recent uptake of Plug-In Hybrid vehicles instead of BEVs is the result of legacy auto makers convincing the public that they can go green without changing any of their own behaviour. Toyota convinced millions of gullible buyers into believing they were selling "Self-Charging Hybrids" when in fact they were sold vehicles that emit more than the ICE vehicles they were meant to replace.

[billdoodson]

I did a good number of inspections on the new pellet handling systems, prior to them being installed, to ensure they would meet the legislation for safe operation. I said at the time the whole thing was a great big cluster buck that would come back to bite people. Especially considering the amount of subsidy it was getting. Nice to be proved more than right 10 years on.

[bryansprecher]

Scientists studies show that the data always agrees with whoever is funding them.

[bossybug]

I remember when that idea cropped up and I remember thinking, that replacing coal with a less energy dense fuel that you'd have to get from all over the world, sounded like a particularly stupid idea. I'm as always disappointed to be right.

[eezawyrdo]

It gets worse. You forgot to mention the transport pollution to get it here over the Atlantic. A few thousand gallons of sump oil and diesel.

[RaglansElectricBaboon]

When I first heard Drax had gone 'carbon neutral' my kneejerk reaction was, 'bullsh*t'. In the years since then I've been vindicated and then some.. There was a Guardian article a few years ago about how ancient European woodland was being harvested to feed Drax and the reporters who tried to investigate were threatened with violence. Lovely.

[MX-Vette]

Biomass fuel/burning should only ever be waste to energy or disposing of a byproduct in a useful manner. We shouldn't be growing trees just to be burnt.

[davidkempton]

How the heck did we end up here, burning imported wood instead of lower emission UK coal..? 🤦

[RinoaL]

The issue is a lot of organizations and corporations don't want to take a break when demand is low, so they require concrete sources. If we found a use for bottle tops, companies would start out just taking bottle tops that people discarded, but as soon as there is a bottle top shortage, companies would start opening millions of soda bottles and throwing away the bottle and drink just for the tops, and never go back to taking waste bottle tops.

[SamuelClemens-oq]

Smart enough to understand the damage we're doing but too dumb to stop. I can't think of anything more vulgar than that.