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Its incredibly satisfying going off-grid. We have an off-grid cabin and its awesome turning up and finding the batteries fully charged and ready to dispense fre

• dmoy 10y ago
  Is burning wood carbon zero? My in-law/relatives in Alaska say it can pollute quite a bit. Though I don't know how that relates to any carbon zero metric.
  • pessimizer 10y ago
    Burning wood is ultimately carbon neutral, deforestation is the problem.
    • reitanqild 10y ago
      And here we need to be careful: around here there is a major problem with trees filling up what was once farmland. No problem you may say but it means less local produce and more import, both import of meat as well as animal food.
      • pjc50 10y ago
        Where's that? How productive/marginal was the farmland?
  • Retric 10y ago
    Carbon is not the only form of pollution, burning stuff generally puts a lot of nasty crap into the air.
    • dmoy 10y ago
      Wood specifically is like 50% carbon by weight, no?
      • daurnimator 10y ago
        That would imply 50% non-carbon.
        • DougWebb 10y ago
          Most of that is probably water.
      • TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
        Long-term exposure to burning wood for heating and cooking can cause heart and lung disease.[1] The main air pollutants in wood smoke are particulate matter (PM), carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and a range of other organic compounds like formaldehyde, benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.[1][2] Using reverse-cycle refrigerant heating (or 'heat pumps') is probably the least worst polluting method of heating. Modern heat pumps can generate (well, move) four times more heat energy than used to drive the pump[3], with the added benefit of moving the source of pollution away from populated areas, or being carbon neutral via window, solar, hydro, geothermal. 1. http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/environment/factsheets/Pages/wood-smoke.aspx http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/environment/factsheets/Pages/wo... 2. https://www.environment.gov.au/resource/wood-heater-particle-emissions-and-operating-efficiency-standards https://www.environment.gov.au/resource/wood-heater-particle... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump#Performance_Considerations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump#Performance_Consider...
        • theoh 10y ago
          Aarg, sorry for downvote. Finger slipped. I think you're right about the cleanness of heat pump systems. Unfortunately they do not have the libertarian freedom flavour of a wood fire.
        • Retric 10y ago
  • yardie 10y ago
    It's a net zero emission as long as the trees come from a sustainable forest.
    • hueving 10y ago
      Only if the person actually plants a tree for every fire they burn. Even then, that does not offset the ash and other chemicals in the thick smoke ejected into the air that causes huge pollution problems at any scale.
      • swsieber 10y ago
        I'm wondering how forest fires being a natural thing fit into your viewpoint. I don't think that fact entirely negates your point, but it does seem to dampen it at least.
        • khedoros 10y ago
          Trees contain carbon. Burn trees, and they release carbon. New trees end up growing in the ash after it falls and re-capturing carbon. It's a natural, cyclic process. The problem isn't that humans release carbon or other pollutants (burning trees, coal, oil, etc), it's the scale we do it at, and that we don't automatically re-capture it without doing extra work like planting more trees.
      • savanaly 10y ago
        >Only if the person actually plants a tree for every fire they burn. But wouldn't a tree be more likely to grow, and in the long run the expected number of trees in a forest be unaffected by the felling of any given tree? (the same can't necessarily be said for the felling of hundreds of trees of course).
      • maxerickson 10y ago
        A healthy forest plants trees all on its own.
      • digler999 10y ago
  • kileywm 10y ago
    Burning wood is not carbon zero. It is the reverse of carbon sequestration in the sense that atmospheric CO2 was once converted to wood by the tree, and now the wood is being burned and the captured carbon release back into the atmosphere. That could be nearly carbon zero (I don't know the contributions from soil and what mass remains as ashes, etc..), except when you consider the opportunity cost. That burned tree, presumably healthy just prior, loses the ability to sequester any more carbon. A burned tree puts carbon in the atmosphere AND removes a carbon sequesterer simultaneously. That act is removing X amount of future sequestration until the tree would have naturally died and turned to soil. At that point most of that carbon would still be in solid form and not in the atmosphere. I'm nitpicking at this point, but I lean toward burning wood as not carbon zero for the sake of opportunity cost.
    • lucaspiller 10y ago
      Biochar is a potential solution, although the technology isn't there yet (at an industrial scale). If wood is heated in an oxygen free environment it will turn into a form of charcoal. At the same time it will release gases (like methane) that can be captured and used as a fuel separately. Rather than burning the charcoal, it is put back into the soil which effectively traps the CO2. This also improves the condition of the soil and reduces the need for fertilisers.
    • JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      Doesn't that exactly describe a carbon-neutral lifecycle?
      • kileywm 10y ago
        Good point, I really didn't complete my thought. Updating my comment to explain.
    • maxerickson 10y ago
      It really only makes sense to measure the carbon capture at the level of the forest. When a tree is cut down or dies, it makes room for other trees to grow. Removing mature trees that are no longer growing very much can increase the rate of capture. Removing trees that are growing quickly and replacing them with smaller trees could reduce the rate of capture. Either way, there is a limit to how much carbon a given forest will capture (rot releases it just as well as fire) and it will only do it for the life of the forest, which is usually not a geologic time scale.
• soundsop 10y ago
  Electricity derived from solar panels and stored in batteries is neither free from cost nor free from carbon emissions. The monetary cost and emission of carbon coincides with the manufacture of the solar panels and batteries rather than the generation and storage of the energy unlike many other technologies. The costs and emissions of solar-derived electricity may be lower than alternatives but they are most certainly not free.
  • abraae 10y ago
    Yes, I should have said "ignoring the embodied energy of the panels & associated equipment". This is somewhat justifiable for the panels since they have a 25+ year life. Less so for the batteries, which have maybe an 8 year life with good care. We try to burn power as much as possible (e.g. running the water pump) when the sun's up, so it doesn't have to pass through the batteries.
    • jcoffland 10y ago
      A lot of carbon goes it to making solar panels. http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-...
• hueving 10y ago
  >means you can actually live at entirely carbon zero That's not enough. You need to also do something to offset the carbon dioxide that went into manufacturing everything and the transportation for it. Make sure you plant a few hundred trees if you want to be at carbon zero. You also need to plant trees to replace the wood you burn. And you need to offset the CO2 from process of making any food you bring in as well. Otherwise it's an unjustified feel-good exercise to claim you are living at carbon zero.
  • abraae 10y ago
    Yes, we have a few hundred trees. Good point about the food though.
  • unethical_ban 10y ago
    Actually, one needs to kill oneself (not with fire). Living takes up carbon. Come on. Acting as if any "carbon positive" living is immoral, is insanity.
    • duaneb 10y ago
      Why would planting trees not work?
      • amorphid 10y ago
        Trees die. Decomposing, or burning, gives off all the carbon they soaked up.
        • reitanqild 10y ago
          This can however take a decades or a few hundres years if not more. Around here they have found logs thousand of years old in the swamps.
          • digler999 10y ago
            > in the swamps probably because theres not much O2 in the water compared to the atmosphere.
• sandworm101 10y ago
  >> at entirely carbon zero. Not even close. You're still eating something. Unless that came from a magic farm, fuel was used to generate/transport that food. And to complete the picture, you still have all the external resources provided by a very carbon-hungry society. That includes everything from health and education to military infrastructures ... all of which burn carbon in epic amounts. Carbon zero is an idea, not something that any one person can every accomplish.
• grecy 10y ago
  Up in the Yukon and Alaska plenty of people live in off-grid houses/cabins year round. It's amazing to never get a bill for your house - no water, no electricity, no garbage collections, etc. etc. Friends have a 10kW system which in summer provides plenty of power for a sump pump for water, a big TV, espresso machine, etc. etc. In the winter they have to watch what they use, and they usually run the generator for a couple of hours a week to keep the batteries at a healthy level.
• ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
  upvoted but also agree with others pointing out that you're far from being 'carbon zero', not that there's anything wrong with it :)