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The carbon is captured when the tree grows and then released when the wood is burned. This is different from fossil fuels where it is underground.

azinman2 6y ago
And how does it get from the forest into compressed form, and then to the UK?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
rowanG077 6y ago
How is that different? Fossil fuels were also captured many years ago. The only difference is the number of years.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  The time it takes to renew.
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  Main difference is releasing co2 from fossil fuels introduces carbon that wood pellets don’t. Imagine we burn 100% of fossil fuels and then start burning wood pellets, versus going straight to wood pellets. The former releases a lot more carbon than the latter.
- woodandsteel 6y ago
  The difference is ff's were captured over many millions of years, and natural forces controlled the total amount of co2 in the atmosphere. What is happening today is the ff's captured co2 is being released a thousand times faster than it was captured, and that is overwhelming natural forces and causing co2 levels to skyrocket. Wood pellets are one of the ways to counter this. I could be wrong, but my guess is that you already knew all this and were only pretending to be ill-informed because you are a member of the fossil fuels forever club. If I wrong, then please let us know your views on global climate change.
- jotm 6y ago
  Eh, well, how is humans dying out different than dinosaurs dying out? The only difference is the species :D
hn23 6y ago
The reason wood is considered neutral is, that most of the wood is used for construction and other stuff. If you burn it and happen to burn fossil fuel as well, nothing is neutral.
- dmurray 6y ago
  No, it's considered neutral because you plant more of it to replace the trees you cut down (not because you are trying to save the world, just because you have some land that's suitable for growing a sustainable commercial forest). Over the life cycle of the tree from planting to burning, it's carbon neutral, though the shape of it for any given tree is 20 years of carbon sequestration followed by 20 minutes of carbon release.
  - kspacewalk2 6y ago
    The issue with that is two-fold: 1. Not nearly enough trees are being planted to offset the ones being cut down. 2. Neutral on a scale of 30 years doesn't much matter when we have to reduce the degree to which we're accelerating a highly non-linear climate change process right now.
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      I'm not sure about in Britain, but in the U.S. we do sustainably farm trees used for timber and have done so for the past 100 years.
      - jschwartzi 6y ago
        What kind of vehicles do you use to move the lumber from the farm to market, how are the pellet factories powered, and what kind of vehicles are used to move the bulk pellets from US to UK ports?
      - belorn 6y ago
        That is the point where someone bring up photos from almost 100 years ago and make comparison photo of today and notice the obvious: there is a lot more trees in the old photos.
vkou 6y ago
1. 'Waste wood pellet' power plants are a con job. 2. There is not nearly enough wood waste from construction sites/etc to operate them. 3. They have to be supplemented with wood cut down from forests. 4. There aren't nearly enough forests in the UK to operate these plants sustainably. 5. So, the wood they burn comes from cutting down Canadian forests, trucking them down logging roads, loading them onto barges, and shipping them across the Atlantic ocean to the UK. By the time you're done with all that, the carbon footprint of your wood pellet plant is greater than that of a coal plant.
- polycaster 6y ago
  > By the time you're done with all that, the carbon footprint of your wood pellet plant is greater than that of a coal plant. Could be true. Are there numbers/sources backing this argument?
  - vkou 6y ago
    I don't have a source that's likely to satisfy you - for two reasons. 1. Nobody has actually done a through, scientific carbon audit of the supply chain for these plants. You have napkin arguments in film, or on the internet, that you can trivially search for, that conclude this one way, or another, depending on their politics. 2. The carbon cost of running them is incredibly dependent on local conditions of the precise bits of wood that were sourced. I can expand on the latter. The hardest part about logging is getting your equipment to the logging site, building the roads to it, and then using those roads to get the logs out. I guess those are the three hardest parts about logging. If you can cut down your logs, truck them only a few miles, toss them in a river, and then pick them up a hundred miles downstream, to load onto a barge, your carbon footprint is minimal. If, on the other hand, you have to truck them 15 miles down logging roads, and then 90 miles down a freeway, your footprint greatly expands. (And has to include factors like building the logging roads to begin with.) Unlike with mining, building logging roads is much harder than building roads to a mine - because you have to cover a lot more ground, to get an industrially useful amount of wood - compared to something like a pit mine. You have to use heavy equipment to drag logs over incredibly difficult, unroaded terrain, so that they can be loaded onto trucks that will go down the roads.

azinman2 6y ago

And how does it get from the forest into compressed form, and then to the UK?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

rowanG077 6y ago

How is that different? Fossil fuels were also captured many years ago. The only difference is the number of years.

chrisseaton 6y ago
The time it takes to renew.
PopeDotNinja 6y ago
Main difference is releasing co2 from fossil fuels introduces carbon that wood pellets don’t. Imagine we burn 100% of fossil fuels and then start burning wood pellets, versus going straight to wood pellets. The former releases a lot more carbon than the latter.
woodandsteel 6y ago
The difference is ff's were captured over many millions of years, and natural forces controlled the total amount of co2 in the atmosphere. What is happening today is the ff's captured co2 is being released a thousand times faster than it was captured, and that is overwhelming natural forces and causing co2 levels to skyrocket. Wood pellets are one of the ways to counter this. I could be wrong, but my guess is that you already knew all this and were only pretending to be ill-informed because you are a member of the fossil fuels forever club. If I wrong, then please let us know your views on global climate change.
jotm 6y ago
Eh, well, how is humans dying out different than dinosaurs dying out? The only difference is the species :D

hn23 6y ago

The reason wood is considered neutral is, that most of the wood is used for construction and other stuff. If you burn it and happen to burn fossil fuel as well, nothing is neutral.

dmurray 6y ago
No, it's considered neutral because you plant more of it to replace the trees you cut down (not because you are trying to save the world, just because you have some land that's suitable for growing a sustainable commercial forest). Over the life cycle of the tree from planting to burning, it's carbon neutral, though the shape of it for any given tree is 20 years of carbon sequestration followed by 20 minutes of carbon release.
- kspacewalk2 6y ago
  The issue with that is two-fold: 1. Not nearly enough trees are being planted to offset the ones being cut down. 2. Neutral on a scale of 30 years doesn't much matter when we have to reduce the degree to which we're accelerating a highly non-linear climate change process right now.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    I'm not sure about in Britain, but in the U.S. we do sustainably farm trees used for timber and have done so for the past 100 years.
    - jschwartzi 6y ago
      What kind of vehicles do you use to move the lumber from the farm to market, how are the pellet factories powered, and what kind of vehicles are used to move the bulk pellets from US to UK ports?
    - belorn 6y ago
      That is the point where someone bring up photos from almost 100 years ago and make comparison photo of today and notice the obvious: there is a lot more trees in the old photos.

vkou 6y ago

1. 'Waste wood pellet' power plants are a con job. 2. There is not nearly enough wood waste from construction sites/etc to operate them. 3. They have to be supplemented with wood cut down from forests. 4. There aren't nearly enough forests in the UK to operate these plants sustainably. 5. So, the wood they burn comes from cutting down Canadian forests, trucking them down logging roads, loading them onto barges, and shipping them across the Atlantic ocean to the UK. By the time you're done with all that, the carbon footprint of your wood pellet plant is greater than that of a coal plant.

polycaster 6y ago
> By the time you're done with all that, the carbon footprint of your wood pellet plant is greater than that of a coal plant. Could be true. Are there numbers/sources backing this argument?
- vkou 6y ago
  I don't have a source that's likely to satisfy you - for two reasons. 1. Nobody has actually done a through, scientific carbon audit of the supply chain for these plants. You have napkin arguments in film, or on the internet, that you can trivially search for, that conclude this one way, or another, depending on their politics. 2. The carbon cost of running them is incredibly dependent on local conditions of the precise bits of wood that were sourced. I can expand on the latter. The hardest part about logging is getting your equipment to the logging site, building the roads to it, and then using those roads to get the logs out. I guess those are the three hardest parts about logging. If you can cut down your logs, truck them only a few miles, toss them in a river, and then pick them up a hundred miles downstream, to load onto a barge, your carbon footprint is minimal. If, on the other hand, you have to truck them 15 miles down logging roads, and then 90 miles down a freeway, your footprint greatly expands. (And has to include factors like building the logging roads to begin with.) Unlike with mining, building logging roads is much harder than building roads to a mine - because you have to cover a lot more ground, to get an industrially useful amount of wood - compared to something like a pit mine. You have to use heavy equipment to drag logs over incredibly difficult, unroaded terrain, so that they can be loaded onto trucks that will go down the roads.