Wood pellets

[Joeboy]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59546278

[billi]

Yeah , it seems another greenwashing industry

Did not know, that the UK is by far the biggest importer of woodpellets worldwide
Dont get me wrong , but now the EU lables Gas and Nuclear as "Green" too ontop of those "green " wood pellets
Must look good for the carbon emission statistics

I recently watched a documentary about wood-pellets from the US called " Burned: Are Trees the New Coal? "

An article about that film https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/province ... -new-coal/

These rivers eventually join to form the Chowan River, which empties into Albermarle Sound, a tidal estuary in North Carolina. They are also part of the drainage basin of numerous wetlands containing a unique and disappearing forest ecosystem called Bottomland hardwoods — forests so obviously connected to the river systems they surround because they are flooded by them for a good portion of the year.

Two centuries ago, these naturally treed river swamps of gum, oak and bald cypress, with their distinctive flaring trunks, knees and aerial roots, covered nearly 30 million acres of the Southeastern US. Today more than 60 per cent of the original Bottomland ecosystem is gone, mainly a result of the land being converted for agriculture.

But of what remains of the Bottomland forests, Turner is worried about a new threat — one that arrived on the scene within the last decade and is driving the recent spate of forest liquidation: wood pellet production for the biomass industry, much of it for export to Europe.

So lets hope on PV and Wind growth , but i am afraid , that greenwashing other industries will not make it easy to force up speed for those 2

billi

[Joeboy]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59546281

Part 2

[nowty]

As trees take so long to grow to replace the carbon released from the Drax power stations. An analogy is like me saying, because I bought into the Ripple WT1 which is going to generate me 8MWh for 25 years, that means that I can use the full 200MWh (my share over its lifetime) between now and the first week in March before it even starts generating conscience free with zero emissions. In fact as the grid is roughly 50% carbon free, I can use double that.

Then by March, I'll have bought into WT2, so I can start using that nearly 2 years before it even goes live. Then wash and repeat, over and over.

It would not surprise me if some of these green offsetting schemes is paying the USA to replant the forest they have just cut down to burn at Drax.

[Joeboy]

Its not pretty is it? Actually its obscene.

[nowty]

Its not pretty is it? Actually its obscene.

And I forgot to mention that because its being burnt in a very inefficient coal fired power station, the Co2 per kWh is about 650g / kWh compared with just over 400g / kWh from a modern gas generator.

In fact the Co2 per kWh from biomass is suggested on some websites to be higher than coal, up to 50% more which would mean almost 1kg per kWh. I mean think about that, 1kg is pretty heavy to hold in your hand and 1 kWh runs almost nothing, its about 20 mins at Nowty Towers with the heat pump on or less than 10 mins of home EV charging.

[billi]

... even if those felled woodlands would be replanted , it will take decades to grow to a forest to offset the carbon of the generation of trees burnt before

I wonder if its not much more sustainable to plant hemp as a biofuel or corn , miscanthus etc and that could be cut down every year and reseed .... plant parts can be used for other things too
Well on the long run its probably a no go to use food/agricultural areas for fuel production /electricity as i was told the same land area covered with PV is gaining upto 10 times more electricity than most of energy crops . ( But as known there are enough or plenty of empty roofs first)

Just wondering what the numbers would be like , when it comes to Vehicles , if biomass is burnt say in the Drax power plant and that electricity then charges an electric car , compared to a biogas combustion powered car

[Countrypaul]

Given that most ICE cars are <20% efficient in terms of converting fuel to useful motion (I'll ignore any heating(=), I would expect Drax and a battery car to provide a much better solution and that's ignoring the cost of processing shipping etc.

[Mart]

... even if those felled woodlands would be replanted , it will take decades to grow to a forest to offset the carbon of the generation of trees burnt before

I wonder if its not much more sustainable to plant hemp as a biofuel or corn , miscanthus etc and that could be cut down every year and reseed .... plant parts can be used for other things too
Well on the long run its probably a no go to use food/agricultural areas for fuel production /electricity as i was told the same land area covered with PV is gaining upto 10 times more electricity than most of energy crops . ( But as known there are enough or plenty of empty roofs first)

Just wondering what the numbers would be like , when it comes to Vehicles , if biomass is burnt say in the Drax power plant and that electricity then charges an electric car , compared to a biogas combustion powered car

I've been harping on about hemp for years. It has a 6 month carbon cycle, since it can typically be harvested twice a year, but I don't know how viable it is for making bio-mass pellets, but that is done. Lots of farms in Scotland and England are starting to grow it (and some already do/did), and Welsh farmers are taking note too.

Slight digression, but the nuisance plant gorse in Scotland has been found to contain huge amounts of protein, and could be harvested for animal feed, even human feed. Technically there's enough rogue gorse in Scotland that needs to be removed anyway, to feed the whole population, in terms of protein.

And yet another digression, which barely squeezes into the subject of biomass pellets, but the tonnage of fuel (oil, coal, nat-gas/LNG, and an ickle bit of pellets), accounts for almost 50% of sea going shipping (by weight). So as we move to RE for leccy, transport and space heating, we would also tackle nearly half of those tricky to solve sea going emissions too, almost by accident.

[billi]

Slight digression, but the nuisance plant gorse in Scotland has been found to contain huge amounts of protein, and could be harvested for animal feed, even human feed. Technically there's enough rogue gorse in Scotland that needs to be removed anyway, to feed the whole population, in terms of protein

Thats true , after years of watching and complaining about those insane costly and environmentally disastrous gorse fires in Ireland , i started to reed a bit about it , and it was a well appreciated plant once , it should be harvested instead and farmers should get some funding to do that , and others should be prosecuted for setting whole landscapes on fire ( last April only one fire destroyed 880 acres in Northern Ireland, Southern Ireland
Two fires have burned about one-third of Killarney National Park, approximately 2,000 hectares (4,942 acres) are blackened according to an estimate by the park’s Chief Fire Officer. .... it is by the way a nitrogen fixing plant ( as all leguminous plants) so they are able to source their feed out of the air

An article about gorse or Furze usage in former times

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heri ... -1.1483115

Some of the claims made for furze were little short of astonishing,” he wrote, recounting how one Cork farmer sowed a very poor field of four acres with furze in the winter of 1837 and was convinced it was more nutritious than hay. He recorded that the crop was harvested annually or biennially yielding eight to 14 tons per acre of “good succulent provender” when it was cut every year and 12-24 tons were cut every other year.

It was cut with a scythe or sickle and a day’s supply for 30 head of cattle could be cut in an hour.

He stated that the Wexford farmer, Sandham Elly had reported that “20 statute acres of gorse should support 100 head of cattle for the winter six months without other food save the morning feed of mangold wurzel turnips or potatoes.

“The saving of hay for 100 cows would be at least £200 per annum, enabling the small farmer to feed eight milch cows off the same space of ground that supported only one by grazing.”

Anyway , might be a idea for another thread