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How can it be considered green? Doesn't burning wood produce emissions too?
by pier25 5y ago
How can it be considered green? Doesn't burning wood produce emissions too?
- yCombLinks 5y agoNot net emissions. 1 ton of carbon was removed from the atmosphere in the tree growth, and that same ton is emitted on burning. Digging up coal that 1 ton of carbon has been sequestered under ground for millions of years, but is now in the atmosphere.
- yourusername 5y agoNo net emissions if you burn the tree close to were it grew. In the Netherlands we get our biomass from Scandinavia and Canada with boats and call that green energy. Ignoring the fuel for the boats and trucks to move the biomass to the power plant.
- uuidgen 5y agoGood furnace produce little particulate emission so its almost on par with burning gas. Biomass - so mostly wood, wicker or straw has all its carbon content coming from the air - they capture CO2 as they grow, when you burn them you release exactly the same amount of CO2, hence they're carbon-neutral.
- realreality 5y agoThey’re only carbon neutral if you replant what you’ve cut down.
- throwaway485239 5y agoYou don't really have to replant -- coppice and pollard are out of fashion, but maybe they can come back. Sprout Lands by William Bryant Logan is a fascinating read.
- uuidgen 5y agoBut that's the idea behind the biomass burning. If you just burn all the forests an be done with it it's a bad idea. But if you replant the forests with fast growing species you can cut them down every 5-10 years and have a lot of biomass to burn in basically a closed cycle.
- _y5hn 5y agoThe new species can be worse for the ecology than not planting. It's not that easy as just plant anything.
- SiempreViernes 5y agoIt does, but if it is young wood it contains newly captured carbon and so the net effect over a short time period (in climate terms) is that it doesn't change the overall atmosphere. In comparison to coal or other fossil fuels, which adds tons of carbon that had previously been outside the atmosphere, a net zero over 50 years is pretty green. Of course, this supposes you actually manage to get enough new trees grown in that time which might not be true if forests are logged by clear cutting and not supported after that.
- throwaway485239 5y agoYes it does, but full burning isn't the only option. You can also char or pyrolize wood to produce heat while leaving behind [mostly] the carbon. The carbon can be easily sequestered by burying it in the ground, or with more difficulty upcycled to industrially useful forms like carbon black, graphene, or diamond.