6 ms·

The wood pellets are interesting —- if we were growing forests at the same rate as we consume them via the pellets, would it be close enough to a closed loop sy

The wood pellets are interesting —- if we were growing forests at the same rate as we consume them via the pellets, would it be close enough to a closed loop system?

TheUndead96 6y ago
This is unfortunately not the case. Lots of wood is imported from the third world, potentially the Amazon. Even if it was grown in the country it is consumed in, it would eventually suffer the same issues that industrial farming does. The soil becomes depleted and requires fossil-fuel based fertilizer. Burning the Amazon is now progress, apparently. Something like fusion, or cleaner nuclear, is our only hope. I worry about us.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  Do you have any source for that? I find shipping wood half way around the world for power troubling but I've never heard anyone claim that the wood is not sourced from sustainable forestry. For the most part the Amazon is being burned to provide farm and grazing land.
  - DFHippie 6y ago
    I would be surprised if the pellets weren't sourced from Canada, where it's probably white pine, not tropical hardwoods.
- yaacov 6y ago
  > He says the plant now uses seven million tonnes of pellets sourced from commercial forests in the US a year
- Avicebron 6y ago
  I worry about us as well, it seems sustainable to burn wood, but no one ever talks about the rate of burning vs. growth. It's deceptive.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  > cleaner nuclear If we (USA) hadn't stopped building nuclear in the 80s, and had merely continued building it at the same pace, our grid would be (approximately) carbon-free today. Not twenty years from now, not fifty years from now, today. But no, we collectively decided that no amount of engineering could possibly make nuclear acceptably safe, and we made the grown-up responsible decision to pump our atmosphere full of CO2 instead. Facepalm.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    > But no, we collectively decided that no amount of engineering could possibly make nuclear acceptably safe This is such bullshit. We have reactors that are 40 years old still operating safely. And in the 40 years since, safety systems have improved considerably. A modern reactor could probably have a 100 year service life and no accidents. But such is the world we live in: people are scared of stuff they shouldn't be, and ignorant of all that should scare them.
    - catalogia 6y ago
      As far as I'm aware, the US Navy has operated hundreds of nuclear reactors for more than 60 years without any major incidents. That's several thousand reactor-years of positive experience. (They did lose two nuclear powered submarines, the Thresher and Scorpion, but in neither case is a problem with the reactors believed to be the cause. Though the Thresher's reactor is thought to have SCRAMed in response to it's control circuitry being shorted out, causing a loss of propulsion.)
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    The reason we stopped building nuclear power palnts is that growth in energy demand suddenly slowed or stopped, nuclear power plants turned out to be more expensive than promoted, and because of a 1978 law called PURPA that opened up the grid to non-utility generators.
    - jjoonathan 6y ago
      > nuclear power plants turned out to be more expensive than promoted We didn't suddenly forget how to economically build nuclear power plants. What changed was that > we collectively decided that no amount of engineering could possibly make nuclear acceptably safe and prices rose without bound to reflect that decision.
Anon4Now 6y ago
I'm not sure that would scale. According to their website (https://www.draxbiomass.com/ https://www.draxbiomass.com/), each plant produces about 1/2 metric tonne of wood pellets / year. The Drax plant uses 7 million tonnes / year, so you would need 14 equivalent plants to produce enough wood pellets for just one power plant. In the 1980's, old growth logging was shut down in my state (Oregon) for environmental reasons. The new growth forests had a long growth cycle, so the two big operators (Georgia Pacific and Louisiana Pacific) moved the bulk of their operations back to the South, where the Southern Pine had a 12 year growth cycle. I think a reasonable guesstimate would be that the max wood pellet production from renewable forest land would be far less than the input required to convert all the existing coal-fired plants to biomass. It's just one play in what will have to be a multi-faceted approach to green energy.
- dmurray 6y ago
  > According to their website (https://www.draxbiomass.com/ https://www.draxbiomass.com/), each plant produces about 1/2 metric tonne of wood pellets / year This is off by a factor of a million, though I think you reached the right conclusion.
  - Anon4Now 6y ago
    Oops, yeah, each production plant lists capacity at about 1/2 _million_ metric tonnes / yr.
rapnie 6y ago
I saw a documentary a while back related to the Netherlands, where they traced lots of these wood imports as coming from the US, mostly bought from private land owners cutting down pristine forest.
- catalogia 6y ago
  The margins on that must be awful. A simple tax on imported wood would probably resolve the matter by rendering it commercially infeasible to import wood as fuel.
  - rapnie 6y ago
    There is also a bad influence of this within the country. As nature reserve organizations saw their budgets cut for many years, there is now a commercial incentive to cut some extra wood here and there. Even the government's own 'Staatsbosbeheer' is suspected (note: not proven) to be doing this.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- rapnie 6y ago
  Coincidentally on TV today (program Beau). About wood pellets coming from North Carolina where large areas of forest are completely cut down. Enviva Biomass is one of the big producers driving things in NL. There's lotsa subsidies involved, and local governments like it, as it constitutes a transition from gas to an 'intermediary' fuel.

The wood pellets are interesting —- if we were growing forests at the same rate as we consume them via the pellets, would it be close enough to a closed loop system?

TheUndead96 6y ago

This is unfortunately not the case. Lots of wood is imported from the third world, potentially the Amazon. Even if it was grown in the country it is consumed in, it would eventually suffer the same issues that industrial farming does. The soil becomes depleted and requires fossil-fuel based fertilizer. Burning the Amazon is now progress, apparently. Something like fusion, or cleaner nuclear, is our only hope. I worry about us.

VBprogrammer 6y ago
Do you have any source for that? I find shipping wood half way around the world for power troubling but I've never heard anyone claim that the wood is not sourced from sustainable forestry. For the most part the Amazon is being burned to provide farm and grazing land.
- DFHippie 6y ago
  I would be surprised if the pellets weren't sourced from Canada, where it's probably white pine, not tropical hardwoods.
yaacov 6y ago
> He says the plant now uses seven million tonnes of pellets sourced from commercial forests in the US a year
Avicebron 6y ago
I worry about us as well, it seems sustainable to burn wood, but no one ever talks about the rate of burning vs. growth. It's deceptive.
jjoonathan 6y ago
> cleaner nuclear If we (USA) hadn't stopped building nuclear in the 80s, and had merely continued building it at the same pace, our grid would be (approximately) carbon-free today. Not twenty years from now, not fifty years from now, today. But no, we collectively decided that no amount of engineering could possibly make nuclear acceptably safe, and we made the grown-up responsible decision to pump our atmosphere full of CO2 instead. Facepalm.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  > But no, we collectively decided that no amount of engineering could possibly make nuclear acceptably safe This is such bullshit. We have reactors that are 40 years old still operating safely. And in the 40 years since, safety systems have improved considerably. A modern reactor could probably have a 100 year service life and no accidents. But such is the world we live in: people are scared of stuff they shouldn't be, and ignorant of all that should scare them.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    As far as I'm aware, the US Navy has operated hundreds of nuclear reactors for more than 60 years without any major incidents. That's several thousand reactor-years of positive experience. (They did lose two nuclear powered submarines, the Thresher and Scorpion, but in neither case is a problem with the reactors believed to be the cause. Though the Thresher's reactor is thought to have SCRAMed in response to it's control circuitry being shorted out, causing a loss of propulsion.)
- pfdietz 6y ago
  The reason we stopped building nuclear power palnts is that growth in energy demand suddenly slowed or stopped, nuclear power plants turned out to be more expensive than promoted, and because of a 1978 law called PURPA that opened up the grid to non-utility generators.
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    > nuclear power plants turned out to be more expensive than promoted We didn't suddenly forget how to economically build nuclear power plants. What changed was that > we collectively decided that no amount of engineering could possibly make nuclear acceptably safe and prices rose without bound to reflect that decision.

Anon4Now 6y ago

I'm not sure that would scale. According to their website (https://www.draxbiomass.com/ https://www.draxbiomass.com/), each plant produces about 1/2 metric tonne of wood pellets / year. The Drax plant uses 7 million tonnes / year, so you would need 14 equivalent plants to produce enough wood pellets for just one power plant. In the 1980's, old growth logging was shut down in my state (Oregon) for environmental reasons. The new growth forests had a long growth cycle, so the two big operators (Georgia Pacific and Louisiana Pacific) moved the bulk of their operations back to the South, where the Southern Pine had a 12 year growth cycle. I think a reasonable guesstimate would be that the max wood pellet production from renewable forest land would be far less than the input required to convert all the existing coal-fired plants to biomass. It's just one play in what will have to be a multi-faceted approach to green energy.

dmurray 6y ago
> According to their website (https://www.draxbiomass.com/ https://www.draxbiomass.com/), each plant produces about 1/2 metric tonne of wood pellets / year This is off by a factor of a million, though I think you reached the right conclusion.
- Anon4Now 6y ago
  Oops, yeah, each production plant lists capacity at about 1/2 _million_ metric tonnes / yr.

rapnie 6y ago

I saw a documentary a while back related to the Netherlands, where they traced lots of these wood imports as coming from the US, mostly bought from private land owners cutting down pristine forest.

catalogia 6y ago
The margins on that must be awful. A simple tax on imported wood would probably resolve the matter by rendering it commercially infeasible to import wood as fuel.
- rapnie 6y ago
  There is also a bad influence of this within the country. As nature reserve organizations saw their budgets cut for many years, there is now a commercial incentive to cut some extra wood here and there. Even the government's own 'Staatsbosbeheer' is suspected (note: not proven) to be doing this.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rapnie 6y ago
Coincidentally on TV today (program Beau). About wood pellets coming from North Carolina where large areas of forest are completely cut down. Enviva Biomass is one of the big producers driving things in NL. There's lotsa subsidies involved, and local governments like it, as it constitutes a transition from gas to an 'intermediary' fuel.