Mothballed Coal

[openspaceman]

Burning a tree releases ALL the sequestered CO2 built up over decades in a very short space of time.

Yes the atmospheric CO2 increase doesn't differentiate between sources

Leaving it to decay takes decades for just a bit of the CO2 to be released, and much of it is never really released at all (which is why we have beds of coal and reserves of underground oil and gas, as breakdown products sequestered from trees and plants that grew millions of years ago).

Most decaying biomass is cycled fairly quickly, yes it has a sort of half life in the soil as it decays and soil organic carbon is a huge and very important reserve, as are peat bogs (which will be adversely affected as average temperatures go up and they dry out, a positive feedback effect that will cause them to respire CO2). Currently they tend to be in equilibrium, as new plants lay down the oldest are gradually respired.

I think oil and gas was mostly from marine organisms, coal OTOH is a quite different as it was laid down in hot swamps before any organisms had evolved to "eat" lignin, now we have plenty of fungi that will do the job.

It is irrelevant that the tree being burned took a few decades to grow as long as the annual increment matches that volume.

We need to start sequestering as much atmospheric CO2 as we can, as fast as we can. The oceans are doing their bit, but we need to do far more to reduce emissions and try and lock up CO2 in living things for a few decades, hopefully millennia.

I agree but the ocean surface waters are in equilibrium with the atmosphere and have absorbed about 45% of all the extra CO2 produced since the beginning of the industrial revolution, as carbonic acid lowers the pH this is a problem in itself.

So as we remove atmospheric CO2 (if we do) more will come out of solution from the sea and be released into the atmosphere.

I think anthropocentric CO2 is about 9 Giga Tonne of carbon per annum whereas the natural carbon cycle is about 200 Gtonne released to atmosphere and fractional more tied up in plant growth. So whereas most fossil derived CO2 is produced in concentrations around the developed world plant growth photosynthesises it throughout the world anywhere where conditions are right.

Intervention could be made by peoples throughout the world to take some of the growth that would be normally recycled by microbes into CO2 and water naturally and turn it into recalcitrant carbon...

Of course it cannot happen as we in the developed world will not pay others to do it.

[Oldgreybeard]

You only need to look at natural composting to see pretty graphically how much slower the process is when compared to burning, though, and I still maintain that many lovers of burning stuff just don't grasp the timing effect, and it's impact. Decaying stuff will, very slowly, release some of it's carbon, in the form of CO2, back into the atmosphere, but that is a very, very slow process compared to burning a whole tree in a few seconds inside a Drax boiler.

One one of our regularly morning walks there is a large weeping willow that fell over during the winter of 2012, during the bad weather we had just around Christmas that year. It's still where it fell, mostly intact, a decade later, with almost all the carbon it sequestered from the atmosphere over it's 30 to 40 year life still locked up inside it. It will probably take another decade or two for it to decay down, during which time the replacements that are growing from where it once stood will have sequestered as much carbon as the old tree did, so the process will be very close to being net neutral.

If someone had carted that willow off and burned it for heating, then the chances are all its sequestered carbon would have been released as CO2 into the atmosphere within the space of a few days or weeks, rather than a few decades.

I really cannot see any possible argument to support burning millions of tonnes of timber every year as being in any way, shape or form, carbon neutral in the short to medium term. The rate of growth of new timber (or other biomass with an equal sequestration capacity), globally, needs to match the rate of burning, in terms of sequestered carbon, and we are a million miles away from being even vaguely close to that. Global deforestation is still massively outpacing attempts at reforestation, and until it does match it, it is just not sustainable to burn stuff for fuel.

[Mart]

Hiya OGB. I do see a way for bio-mass, but whether it will work or not I don't know. So we need two things, sustainable bio-mass, so crops/trees planted at the rate of harvesting. And secondly BECCS.

I hope that CCS can work, though it's a big gamble, and for FF's it's a totally busted flush (too much extra cost and still a release of some sequestered carbon). But BECCS could actually be a way to get a good source of CO2 from flues, rather than direct air capture (which I doubt will ever be viable).

BECC's could* flip things on their head with the new growth of biomass, actually exceeding the CO2 not captured, in a very short time period, so that the new growth is actually ahead of the emissions, rather than being behind and only ultimately catching back up to where we were before the material was burned.

If* BECCS can work, and CCS is essential, which I understand it is to get CO2 levels back down (after they've peaked around 2050) to a +2C target by 2100, then this may be both essential, and if managed well, a good storage + demand following tool.

*I use 'could' and 'if' because I don't know if it'll work, but it may be an essential tool, and for all its faults, probably better than FF CCS, if only for the need to remove all arguments for FF's asap.

Hope that meakes sense.

[dan_b]

What does BECCS stand for?

[Countrypaul]

What does BECCS stand for?

BioEnergy with Carbon Capture and Storage

[Mart]

What does BECCS stand for?

Sorry Dan, I get carried away with acronyms sometimes .... IYSWIM.

So ..... CCS appears to be essential, and is part of the calcs when predicting the temp rise. Our CO2 levels in 2050, for instance, will be too high to prevent the max temp rise figures given for 2100, but those figures assume a lot of CCS in the second half of this century. We just need to find a way to do it. Scary!

So BECCS has the potential of being negative emissions, with any CO2 fugitive emissions from the bio-mass burning, being less than the CO2 from new growth and CCS.

But, must keep stressing, that's if the CCS is viable, and of course the bio-mass supply chain will need to be sustainable, and also low(ish) emissions. So many concerns and problems to be overcome.


Bit of an over digression, and I think I've mentioned this before, but Ukraine has a simply staggering level of sustainable bio-mass potential. So one way Europe could help them to re-establish income in the future might be to fund HVDC connections, CCS facilities, and bio-mass powerstations, so they could act as Europe's bio-mass energy, demand followers, when needed. Well it's a weird thought, probably not practical, but you never know!

[AE-NMidlands]

What does BECCS stand for?

Sorry Dan, I get carried away with acronyms sometimes .... IYSWIM.

So ..... CCS appears to be essential, and is part of the calcs when predicting the temp rise. Our CO2 levels in 2050, for instance, will be too high to prevent the max temp rise figures given for 2100, but those figures assume a lot of CCS in the second half of this century. We just need to find a way to do it. Scary!So BECCS has the potential of being negative emissions, with any CO2 fugitive emissions from the bio-mass burning, being less than the CO2 from new growth and CCS.
But, must keep stressing, that's if the CCS is viable, and of course the bio-mass supply chain will need to be sustainable, and also low(ish) emissions. So many concerns and problems to be overcome.
Bit of an over digression, and I think I've mentioned this before, but Ukraine has a simply staggering level of sustainable bio-mass potential. So one way Europe could help them to re-establish income in the future might be to fund HVDC connections, CCS facilities, and bio-mass powerstations, so they could act as Europe's bio-mass energy, demand followers, when needed. Well it's a weird thought, probably not practical, but you never know!

My fear is that CCS is just another (potential) technical fix which people (e.g. our govt.) think / hope/ believe will allow them to continue with our extraordinary energy consumption and so maintain our totally unsustainable way of life. Also (as posted in other threads) - like hydrogen - I fear it's just another "offloading strategy" to allow the pretence that all is well in our consumerist society.

Back to the topic... apart from Ukraine practising unsustainable prairie farming (which led to the US dustbowls) could we or the world cope with their wheat/sunflower/whatever output just stopping - simply to provide biomass instead?

[Mart]

What does BECCS stand for?

Sorry Dan, I get carried away with acronyms sometimes .... IYSWIM.

So ..... CCS appears to be essential, and is part of the calcs when predicting the temp rise. Our CO2 levels in 2050, for instance, will be too high to prevent the max temp rise figures given for 2100, but those figures assume a lot of CCS in the second half of this century. We just need to find a way to do it. Scary!So BECCS has the potential of being negative emissions, with any CO2 fugitive emissions from the bio-mass burning, being less than the CO2 from new growth and CCS.
But, must keep stressing, that's if the CCS is viable, and of course the bio-mass supply chain will need to be sustainable, and also low(ish) emissions. So many concerns and problems to be overcome.
Bit of an over digression, and I think I've mentioned this before, but Ukraine has a simply staggering level of sustainable bio-mass potential. So one way Europe could help them to re-establish income in the future might be to fund HVDC connections, CCS facilities, and bio-mass powerstations, so they could act as Europe's bio-mass energy, demand followers, when needed. Well it's a weird thought, probably not practical, but you never know!

My fear is that CCS is just another (potential) technical fix which people (e.g. our govt.) think / hope/ believe will allow them to continue with our extraordinary energy consumption and so maintain our totally unsustainable way of life. Also (as posted in other threads) - like hydrogen - I fear it's just another "offloading strategy" to allow the pretence that all is well in our consumerist society.

Back to the topic... apart from Ukraine practising unsustainable prairie farming (which led to the US dustbowls) could we or the world cope with their wheat/sunflower/whatever output just stopping - simply to provide biomass instead?

Yep, CCS is, I believe a FF industry trick to slow a transition to RE, but BECCS could be viable.

Why biomass instead of wheat, they have vast bio-mass production already? Sounds like a strange and extreme comment!

[AE-NMidlands]

Yep, CCS is, I believe a FF industry trick to slow a transition to RE, but BECCS could be viable.
Why biomass instead of wheat, they have vast bio-mass production already? Sounds like a strange and extreme comment!

I didn't know Ukraine did, unless you are saying that wheat etc goes into alcohol/ fuel production? My fear is that crops for energy will displace crops which are exported for food...
You (Mart) said "Ukraine has a simply staggering level of sustainable bio-mass potential" but that assumes we don't need the food which was produced there previously.
A

[Moxi]

Thank you to those providing info on the willow plans that’s closed a long standing question for me at least.

I don’t think industrial biomass burning is ever going to be good for the environment but I do think in the short term at least that a return to more woodland across Britain and managed domestic fire wood production could be beneficial until all electric heated homes are a guaranteed option for everyone and supplies are both robust and cheap.

Government needs to understand that putting everyone on to a single source for all their heating needs has to be beyond failure otherwise where will we all be ?

At present most people have at least two fuel sources and can manage for a short time without one or the other. If we are to go all electric then we either all need batteries or every house in the uk needs two dispersed feeder circuits to ensure supply - I can’t see how or who would would do this so are we going to be led to a situation where sections of the country are thrown into turmoil if the power goes off for more than six hours ? If water suppliers go off supply they’re out with bottled water will the electricity suppliers be out with batteries and MRE’s ???

Moxi