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Burning wood pellets puts out co2. claiming zero carbon output for this means people could literally burn forests and claim they're being carbon neutral. It's s

Burning wood pellets puts out co2. claiming zero carbon output for this means people could literally burn forests and claim they're being carbon neutral. It's scandalous. The only option would be forests that are managed and burnt for fuel. I'd be interested to know what area of forest you'd need to bring under this sort of management in order to produce say, enough power for a medium sized city. But ultimately this is hopeless as a solution, you're basically planning to burn wood to produce power producing massive amounts of co2. It doesn't solve anything. Downvotes edit. Pls correct my math. Copypasta Google. A standard 500 megawatt coal power plant produces 3.5 billion kWh per year That's 3.5 million MWh. From https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/biomass-energy-resources/reference-biomass/facts-figures/potential-yields-of-biofuels-per-ha-pa/ https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/biomas... Best case here biofuel is 63per hectare. Which means you need around 55,000 hectares of forest to replace one coal fired power station. Seriously, I hope I'm wrong.

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eloff 6y ago
The CO2 in wood comes from the atmosphere recently, while the CO2 in coal came from the prehistoric atmosphere. That's an improvement. That's also how biofuels work. Wood is a renewable resource when managed sustainably, and carbon neutral. How practical it is, is another matter entirely.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Wood can even be carbon negative if you bury a portion of the biochar. Obviously, there's some challenges in scaling a biochar industry in terms of space, efficiency, etc., but it is possible.
  - kristianp 6y ago
    You're not going to get any significant biochar from burning the wood pellets efficiently, are you?
zebrafish 6y ago
The pellets come from managed forests. Typically around 7 trees are planted for each harvested. The carbon emitted from the burning of the pellets is absorbed by the tree while it matures. These trees generally have ~10 year lifespans. If there were no productive use for the trees, the land would be taxed by the government anyways, the trees cut down permanently and the land would be used for ranching or farming.
- dmurray 6y ago
  > Typically around 7 trees are planted for each harvested How does that work? Most trees die of disease or get eaten by animals? Or are you just saying that at this point in time, maybe in some specific country or region, planting vastly outweighs harvesting?

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eloff 6y ago

The CO2 in wood comes from the atmosphere recently, while the CO2 in coal came from the prehistoric atmosphere. That's an improvement. That's also how biofuels work. Wood is a renewable resource when managed sustainably, and carbon neutral. How practical it is, is another matter entirely.

Pfhreak 6y ago
Wood can even be carbon negative if you bury a portion of the biochar. Obviously, there's some challenges in scaling a biochar industry in terms of space, efficiency, etc., but it is possible.
- kristianp 6y ago
  You're not going to get any significant biochar from burning the wood pellets efficiently, are you?

zebrafish 6y ago

The pellets come from managed forests. Typically around 7 trees are planted for each harvested. The carbon emitted from the burning of the pellets is absorbed by the tree while it matures. These trees generally have ~10 year lifespans. If there were no productive use for the trees, the land would be taxed by the government anyways, the trees cut down permanently and the land would be used for ranching or farming.

dmurray 6y ago
> Typically around 7 trees are planted for each harvested How does that work? Most trees die of disease or get eaten by animals? Or are you just saying that at this point in time, maybe in some specific country or region, planting vastly outweighs harvesting?