Mothballed Coal

[Mart]

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

Nope, not food previously produced, that's your assumption, not mine. They, and their neighbours, and Russia, have vast forestry already. Those countries provide most of the bio-mass pellets shipped around Europe. The pellets I buy (for the animal rescue), have gone up 150%* in price due to the shortages now from Ukraine, the need for neighbours to rely on their own (no spare from Ukraine), and the restrictions from Russia.

[*I was getting them for £4/bag (15kg), now ~£10 (I used to give them free, now I sell them for £5). Pets-at-Home, have gone from £6 to £12.]

So, Ukraine (and probably some neighbours) could expand their well managed forestry / bio-mass by utilising more of the forestry, or simply shipping less bio-mass. No need to impact wheat production as you claimed.

I don't know much about pellet boilers, but I'd suggest that heatpumps would be more efficient. So providing leccy from Ukraine (and / or others) would probably provide more kWh(t) in the UK (for example), and also remove all of the distribution energy consumption.

Expanding the issue, where I get my pellets, those pellets are a minority of their business. Most is commercial bio-mass, not pellets nor bagged, though I don't know exactly how this works, for commercial heating. Perhaps that too would work more efficiently via a leccy process.

[Mart]

Hi Moxi - Just a thought, but a potential alternative to FF methane, may be synthetic methane .... You what!

I'm not convinced that H2 is viable for space heating, not only is it 1/6th as effective as heatpumps (leccy to H2 to boiler v's leccy to HP), but the whole gas network needs upgrading. But if the H2 is blended with captured CO2 to produce methane, then that might help. But it does still have the leccy losses of producing H2.

I can see wood or pellet burning as an alternative for some, but it involves a lot of transportation (losses) so as you say, perhaps a stop gap before HP's really get up to speed, and reduce in cost.

Another potential plus, following the 'insulate, insulate, insulate' mantra, is that the Gov is supposedly going to launch a new subsidy for efficiency and insulation next Mch/Apr. Possibly upto £15k per household, across various items, for improvements, but their last scheme was an abject failure.

[Ken]

There is 420 trees for every person on the planet and thats just trees. Per person and so a family could have 1000 trees to their names

If a large 50yr old tree falls down and i use it for biomass and at the same time allow or plant a new tree then. The CO2 released will be absorbed by the remaining 420 trees in 50/420yr ie in 43 days ! In effect i could carry on like this forever unlike oil, gas, coal. Until we do not use these FF then dont tell me biomass is wrong.

[Oldgreybeard]

There is 420 trees for every person on the planet and thats just trees. Per person and so a family could have 1000 trees to their names

If a large 50yr old tree falls down and i use it for biomass and at the same time allow or plant a new tree then. The CO2 released will be absorbed by the remaining 420 trees in 50/420yr ie in 43 days ! In effect i could carry on like this forever unlike oil, gas, coal. Until we do not use these FF then dont tell me biomass is wrong.

Let's put some numbers into this debate. Right now we are felling between 3.5 billion and 7 billion trees each year. The upper figure is already close to one tree per person felled each year. As of September this year we were re-planting about 1.9 billion new trees each year. Each new tree will take two or three decades to sequester the carbon released from each of the 3.5 billion to 7 billion trees lost each year. We are absolutely hopelessly behind the curve.

Even if were able to magically up the planting rate to, say, 7 billion new trees next year, it would still take at least 20 to 30 years to start to arrest the loss of carbon sequestration problem, because of the time lag. Why this critical time lag between replanting and harvesting is so hard to grasp I'm not sure. We would need to plant between 3.5 billion and 7 billion trees every year for maybe three to five decades, to start to arrest the loss of carbon sequestration.

Until we reach that point, then any burning of trees is just adding to the growing CO2 problem, and there are no defensible arguments at all to suggest otherwise. Tree burning is emotive, because some people like looking at flames, and will twist any argument around to try and make it seem as if it isn't harmful to the planet because they like it, or because it's cheap for them. It always reminds me of the sort of Jeremy Clarkson characters, who love high performance fossil fuel vehicles and will make any sort of tenuous argument to not have to change their love of burning fuel in big engines.

Even if we started planting three or four times the number of trees we have been planting each year, from today, it would never start to arrest the drop in tree carbon sequestration in my lifetime, and most probably not in my children's lifetime.

[Mart]

@Ken & @OGB

I think you are both right. If well managed and sustainable, then bio-mass can work. In the US and Canada their tree mass (my term, I can't think of the correct one), actually increases when demand for wood / wood products increases. That's because it provides more money for replanting. [Edit - I'm not suggesting that bio-mass production is run well, but I think it needs to be looked on separately from the need to increase forestry mass around the World. that might seem contradictory, but wood / bio-mass production is an industry, that should (should?) be sustainable short, medium and long term.]

But ..... unsustainable bio-mass, and I suspect much comes under this now, sadly, is making things worse. Also, the transportation costs/energy make everything worse.

So the idea behind bio-mass is a good one, but I'm not sure if works. It could be made viable, but hoomans aren't good at stuff like that if products go beyond national barriers.

My Ukraine suggestion, just a personal idea, is to make the process more efficient and contained. In fact if a country producing bio-mass, also consumes it (for leccy generation), then all parties will want to minimse processes and costs (and energy).

Will it (large scale international bio-mass) ever work well ..... I have my doubts, but it may be essential to our future, if (big IF) BECCS is the most viable form of CCS, since CCS is essential to minimising the temp rise this century.

In summary (I'm being funny now, or at least attempting it), it's a massive mess, with potential to help and also make things worse.

Just to throw another spanner/idea into the mix - there is a really good argument to include far more wood in construction going forward, especially with the improvements in glulam. So, we could lock up a lot of wood in buildings, and in doing so will produce even more waste material possibly suitable for bio-mass ..... but I'm really stretching now.


Also, and this may already be in the calcs for re-planting / CO2 sequestration, but my limited knowledge of tree planting in the US wood production (based on watching the TV series 'Axe Men'), seemed to show that more than one tree is planted, for each cut down. Then there's a first cut/thinning after 10yrs (I think), and then a second later. Both produce wood material, before reaching the one for one adult tree, in any area. So that may help speed up the timeline for CO2.

But I would also say that the industry uses huge amounts of vehicles, fuel etc, as do many I suppose.

[Oldgreybeard]

The real issue is that our atmosphere does not recognise international borders. It's a global problem, and we cannot justify burning trees anywhere until we reach global equilibrium, where the carbon sequestered each year from planting new trees matches the carbon burned into CO2 each year from burning older ones. We are massively away from that, as mentioned above I doubt we'll reach equilibrium in my children's lifetime, and definitely won't in mine.

[Moxi]

I was thinking short term for wood burning OGB and only as a back up to all electric otherwise what does happen when the grid goes down ? At the moment most homes have two sources of heating for cooking and DHW for many that natural gas - government is wanting to move us all to electric BUT that feels like all our eggs in one basket the grid is pretty reliable but we all know it can fail short and long term and is subject to a badly functioning market model.

What will the future fall back be when the lines go down - like Shetland at the minute - I doubt any of those homes don’t have an alternate fuel heat source - my question is what should this be in the future ?

Moxi

[Countrypaul]

I was thinking short term for wood burning OGB and only as a back up to all electric otherwise what does happen when the grid goes down ? At the moment most homes have two sources of heating for cooking and DHW for many that natural gas - government is wanting to move us all to electric BUT that feels like all our eggs in one basket the grid is pretty reliable but we all know it can fail short and long term and is subject to a badly functioning market model.

What will the future fall back be when the lines go down - like Shetland at the minute - I doubt any of those homes don’t have an alternate fuel heat source - my question is what should this be in the future ?

Moxi

We are all electric so do have all our eggs in that one basket. I thought most gas boilers only operate if there is electric power, certainly pumps require electric to circulate central heating. How many places have a gas fire that is simply lit with a match nowadays? All the oil boilers I have seen also require electricity to function.

[Fintray]

I was thinking short term for wood burning OGB and only as a back up to all electric otherwise what does happen when the grid goes down ? At the moment most homes have two sources of heating for cooking and DHW for many that natural gas - government is wanting to move us all to electric BUT that feels like all our eggs in one basket the grid is pretty reliable but we all know it can fail short and long term and is subject to a badly functioning market model.

What will the future fall back be when the lines go down - like Shetland at the minute - I doubt any of those homes don’t have an alternate fuel heat source - my question is what should this be in the future ?

Moxi

We are all electric so do have all our eggs in that one basket. I thought most gas boilers only operate if there is electric power, certainly pumps require electric to circulate central heating. How many places have a gas fire that is simply lit with a match nowadays? All the oil boilers I have seen also require electricity to function.

That's the problem with the electric going off for whatever reason it also means that your central heating is off as well. The only oil burner that work would be one with a vapourising burner (e.g. oil fired AGA). After our 4 days without electricity last year my priority was to get my Lister generator connected up.

[Joeboy]

I was thinking short term for wood burning OGB and only as a back up to all electric otherwise what does happen when the grid goes down ? At the moment most homes have two sources of heating for cooking and DHW for many that natural gas - government is wanting to move us all to electric BUT that feels like all our eggs in one basket the grid is pretty reliable but we all know it can fail short and long term and is subject to a badly functioning market model.

What will the future fall back be when the lines go down - like Shetland at the minute - I doubt any of those homes don’t have an alternate fuel heat source - my question is what should this be in the future ?

Moxi

I think it's peat in the shetlands as the fallback?