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Biosphere carbon is carbon neutral. If you grow a tree, pulp the tree, and burn the tree, the amount of overall carbon available has not changed as the process

Biosphere carbon is carbon neutral. If you grow a tree, pulp the tree, and burn the tree, the amount of overall carbon available has not changed as the process of growing new trees will reuse the same carbon. Ignoring external energy costs, obvs. It's a little weird to think about but those wood burning plants are mostly taking the production waste of lumber processing and using it for fuel, similar to wood pellet grills but much larger, and it burns surprisingly clean, relatively speaking anyway. What's killing us is pulling billions of tons of carbon that was buried deep in the earth and reinjecting that into the atmosphere.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Huh! I guess it depends on whether those trees will actually end up being repopulated. I'm still not sure I'd put it in the same class as solar energy for that reason (not arguing against it as a power source), although perhaps solar generates so little the distinction is meaningless?
- reincarnate0x14 5y ago
  Solar and wind and hydro and nuclear aren't carbon neutral though, they're zero carbon (again excluding external costs of production, etc). With carbon-neutral the amount of biosphere C stays constant, with carbon zero is may potentially go back down as natural or artificial carbon capture processes happen. It's not a distinction that is made in public discourse commonly but matters if, for example, it's powering a carbon capture system or producing methane from atmospheric gasses. Doing that via a carbon-neutral system would be a net negative energy relatively to carbon usage case, whereas using a nuclear reactor or solar plant to do it when it's overproducing relative to immediate grid load would work out.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > With carbon-neutral the amount of biosphere C stays constant, with carbon zero is may potentially go back down as natural or artificial carbon capture processes happen The net effect is the same. A country running on biofuels and a country running on solar will have the same net production irrespective of carbon capture. One emits and absorbs while the other never emits.
    - LordDragonfang 5y ago
      Assuming a totally steady-state biosphere, and that zero-carbon energy and carbon capture are mutually exclusive, which are not a valid assumptions. Almost every first-world country's biosphere is limited by human action, so a country running on "zero carbon" energy can allow the biosphere to capture carbon at effectively the same rate as the biofuel country, and not release the carbon back into the atmosphere.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  Tree farming is pretty common, both for lumber and biomass fuel. NY state has over 300,000 acres of tree farms. https://www.nytreefarm.org/about/ https://www.nytreefarm.org/about/
Swenrekcah 5y ago
However, while carbon neutral from trees would have been great in the past and hopefully will be again in the future, right now it’s not our saviour because it takes decades to rebind the carbon in a new tree and we don’t have decades anymore. So it’s like natural gas, a marginally better thing than coal and oil but still not great. Same with carbon offsets from planting trees, it might be fine to require planting trees for every flight or something but it really should not be used to “offset” the emissions because it won’t.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  That's not true though, because it's not 1:1 -- we don't burn one tree, pause, plant a new tree, we burn millions of trees while many more millions of other trees are simultaneously being grown and are at various stages of maturity, only a handful of which (relatively) will be burned for fuel like this. The carbon from the tree burned can be absorbed by all the other, currently growing, trees.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  If the sawdust and twigs was just going to be dumped to rot, then it would give off methane, so similar to food composting, burning that output can be GHG negative. Its not going to be a primary source of power, because solar and wind are so ridiculously cheap and scalable, but every little bit helps in the short term. Once fossil fuels are elimanted it'll make sense to do other things with them, rather than burn them.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

Huh! I guess it depends on whether those trees will actually end up being repopulated. I'm still not sure I'd put it in the same class as solar energy for that reason (not arguing against it as a power source), although perhaps solar generates so little the distinction is meaningless?

reincarnate0x14 5y ago
Solar and wind and hydro and nuclear aren't carbon neutral though, they're zero carbon (again excluding external costs of production, etc). With carbon-neutral the amount of biosphere C stays constant, with carbon zero is may potentially go back down as natural or artificial carbon capture processes happen. It's not a distinction that is made in public discourse commonly but matters if, for example, it's powering a carbon capture system or producing methane from atmospheric gasses. Doing that via a carbon-neutral system would be a net negative energy relatively to carbon usage case, whereas using a nuclear reactor or solar plant to do it when it's overproducing relative to immediate grid load would work out.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > With carbon-neutral the amount of biosphere C stays constant, with carbon zero is may potentially go back down as natural or artificial carbon capture processes happen The net effect is the same. A country running on biofuels and a country running on solar will have the same net production irrespective of carbon capture. One emits and absorbs while the other never emits.
  - LordDragonfang 5y ago
    Assuming a totally steady-state biosphere, and that zero-carbon energy and carbon capture are mutually exclusive, which are not a valid assumptions. Almost every first-world country's biosphere is limited by human action, so a country running on "zero carbon" energy can allow the biosphere to capture carbon at effectively the same rate as the biofuel country, and not release the carbon back into the atmosphere.
dahfizz 5y ago
Tree farming is pretty common, both for lumber and biomass fuel. NY state has over 300,000 acres of tree farms. https://www.nytreefarm.org/about/ https://www.nytreefarm.org/about/

Swenrekcah 5y ago

However, while carbon neutral from trees would have been great in the past and hopefully will be again in the future, right now it’s not our saviour because it takes decades to rebind the carbon in a new tree and we don’t have decades anymore. So it’s like natural gas, a marginally better thing than coal and oil but still not great. Same with carbon offsets from planting trees, it might be fine to require planting trees for every flight or something but it really should not be used to “offset” the emissions because it won’t.

TameAntelope 5y ago
That's not true though, because it's not 1:1 -- we don't burn one tree, pause, plant a new tree, we burn millions of trees while many more millions of other trees are simultaneously being grown and are at various stages of maturity, only a handful of which (relatively) will be burned for fuel like this. The carbon from the tree burned can be absorbed by all the other, currently growing, trees.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
If the sawdust and twigs was just going to be dumped to rot, then it would give off methane, so similar to food composting, burning that output can be GHG negative. Its not going to be a primary source of power, because solar and wind are so ridiculously cheap and scalable, but every little bit helps in the short term. Once fossil fuels are elimanted it'll make sense to do other things with them, rather than burn them.