6 ms·

> It is generally accepted that wood burning produces more co2 than coal and natural gas. It's not that simple. Coal (/oil/gas) burning releases CO2 that was p

> It is generally accepted that wood burning produces more co2 than coal and natural gas. It's not that simple. Coal (/oil/gas) burning releases CO2 that was previously safely stored in the ground and didn't affect the Earth atmosphere. Burning wood only (granted, prematurely) releases CO2 that is already in circulation. The main ecological problem with burning wood is deforestation and impact of harvesting on the animals and plants. If wood comes from renewable forests (there are lots of countries that properly manage their forests) then the environmental impact is much lower than with coal/oil/gas. That said, importing the wood from half the world away sucks.

wsc981 4y ago
Trees also store CO2. Actually, burning trees means less CO2 will be extracted from the air. More CO2 in the world means plants and trees can grow quicker. If one believe CO2 is an issue (personally I don’t buy it), then burning trees is not a great way to fix the issue.
- Aerroon 4y ago
  Once trees die they will release all that CO2 back into the atmosphere anyway. And trees will naturally die. Then another tree will grow in its place over time. It's not a permanent storage of CO2 unless we cut it down and bury it or build something long-lasting with it.
  - victorbstan 4y ago
    I don't think that's true, how does "all the CO2" get released back into the atmosphere? During the decomposition of wood there are a lot of bacteria, fungi, worms, etc. that feed on the carcass of a dead tree. It doesn't just "evaporate" into the atmosphere...
    - smallnamespace 4y ago
      The bacteria, fungi etc. emit CO2 as part of their metabolic process, just like you and I do.
      - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
        There's also carbon sequestered in the soil. Decomposition doesn't end up with the entire tree evaporating.
- drekk 4y ago
  It's great that 95%+ of the people we consider experts in these fields don't matter because CO2 is something plants breathe? Famously you can never have too much of a good thing. Impossible to overdose on water as we all know.
Aerroon 4y ago
This point needs to be emphasized. Wood burning is renewable compared to coal. Europe is the second smallest continent in the world. It has roughly the area of the United States. Despite that, Europe has the highest forest coverage of all the continents.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Europe isn't really a continent though. More like a subcontinent of Asia, like India.
  - 2III7 4y ago
    It is called eurasia.
- origin_path 4y ago
  But as doomberg is pointing out the actual alternative we should be comparing to isn't coal but uranium.
  - cedilla 4y ago
    We'd need a time machine to start building reactors a few decades ago. And why, just to build more of the most expensive energy source ever conceived with the potential to make large portions of Europe uninhabitable? Nuclear is expensive, it's unsafe, there's the proliferation risk, and only very few countries figured out how to store spent fuel. Promises of safe and cheap tech to solve these problems are common but still unfulfilled. Solar and wind energy on the other hand is so cheap to build up and don't need decade long mega projects. We can have a better, cheaper energy source right now. Nuclear has nothing to offer.
    - IMTDb 4y ago
      Except - I guess - CO2 free energy when it's dark and windless. Like in a typical November night <hen you like having your home heated to acceptable levels.
brnaftr361 4y ago
I don't know how the infrastructure works for biomass, but open pit coal mines in the US are extraordinarily efficient when management isn't fucking them up. We're talking electric conveyor systems that span from pit to plant, diesel-electric haul trucks, and a rail loop that drives right under the plant for loading onto a train that will net about 15-17k tons and ship "directly" to the generator. A coal seam can last a real long time depending on demand. And the infrastructure is already there and has been for ~50 years with various optimizations added along the way - at least in my locale. I'm under the impression that logging is far less efficient due to the nature and complications of the work, but that is, I admit, simple conjecture: You're constantly moving, maybe with some gravity assist, to transport and load the raw material, I imagine for packing efficiency they're chipping straight into a 53' trailer, which will then port a relatively small sum, about 21-22.5 tons, compared with a haul truck, which range from 153-410 tons for back-and-forth movement. If we consider this holistically, BTU/man, BTU/manhour should both be accounted for as well, since those are real inputs which at scale (I imagine) represent a pretty substantial expense in terms of CO2. Coal is also "processed" on site, with pretty minimal input: being crushing, drying, and sometimes spraying. There aren't secondary and tertiary processes. Energy from PRB coal, at the minimum of my data is about 7,420 BTU/lb. Some dry wood can "compete" at this level, apparently, when dry in fact one data point indicates 9033 BTU/lb (Colorado Pinyon). Maximum mean BTU for coal in the PRB is 11k (compared to 8.2 kBTU/lb pellet). I say compete because from what I've heard, generator designs aren't indiscriminate and require certain energy densities to hit efficiency - which may be a benefit of biomass because there's a lot more control, I'd imagine, in pelletizing wood vs. coal, which is a simple mix-batch. At scale it might actually be a pretty considerable boon for biomass. To me this reads that biomass is going to require more input to extract the same amount of energy. The processing to get biomass to similar energy density is going to require more energy input. But even the primary input, knocking trees over, chipping them, porting them, is going to be less efficient and less centralized, and even once it does culminate in some logistical knot... You said it yourself, it sucks. But also, deforestation sucks. So does human sprawl. My point here is that I do think the idea that burning wood is "carbon neutral" is spurious, because there are a lot of points which fossil fuels are used, and used less efficiently, and that the process at least by my imagination is ultimately less efficient, and those losses will also inevitably contribute to increases in the CO2 chain which I think is largely ignored. Maybe it's more like slightly-less carbon - cause the whole "if it's wood and we burn it now and let it grow back later while we keep cutting more and more down to satisfy the constantly increasing energy demands..." reads like we're displacing consequences into the future. But! This is with the caveat that I'm not particularly familiar with the processes of biomass fuel production chain, and that my calculations are based on US information and doesn't necessarily pertain to industries in the EU.
DennisP 4y ago
It's not even that simple. Burning wood is only carbon-neutral on a multi-decade timescale. Trouble is, the next couple decades are critical. We're at risk of pushing the climate over tipping points, after which warming will go further even if we take our own emissions to zero. So it's important that we reduce emissions in the short term. Burning wood increases short-term emissions. By the time it all balances out, it'll be too late for it to matter. And even that assumes that the forests grow back enough to balance out. Those tipping points include drought and forest fires, so that's not a given.
vba616 4y ago
>Coal (/oil/gas) burning releases CO2 that was previously safely stored in the ground and didn't affect the Earth atmosphere This sounds crazy to me. The whole issue with climate change and CO2 is there is too much on a global scale. So it's all fungible. Yet people continually talk as though the CO2 molecules have labels on them to determine if they're sinful or not.

wsc981 4y ago

Trees also store CO2. Actually, burning trees means less CO2 will be extracted from the air. More CO2 in the world means plants and trees can grow quicker. If one believe CO2 is an issue (personally I don’t buy it), then burning trees is not a great way to fix the issue.

Aerroon 4y ago
Once trees die they will release all that CO2 back into the atmosphere anyway. And trees will naturally die. Then another tree will grow in its place over time. It's not a permanent storage of CO2 unless we cut it down and bury it or build something long-lasting with it.
- victorbstan 4y ago
  I don't think that's true, how does "all the CO2" get released back into the atmosphere? During the decomposition of wood there are a lot of bacteria, fungi, worms, etc. that feed on the carcass of a dead tree. It doesn't just "evaporate" into the atmosphere...
  - smallnamespace 4y ago
    The bacteria, fungi etc. emit CO2 as part of their metabolic process, just like you and I do.
    - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
      There's also carbon sequestered in the soil. Decomposition doesn't end up with the entire tree evaporating.
drekk 4y ago
It's great that 95%+ of the people we consider experts in these fields don't matter because CO2 is something plants breathe? Famously you can never have too much of a good thing. Impossible to overdose on water as we all know.

Aerroon 4y ago

This point needs to be emphasized. Wood burning is renewable compared to coal. Europe is the second smallest continent in the world. It has roughly the area of the United States. Despite that, Europe has the highest forest coverage of all the continents.

nonethewiser 4y ago
Europe isn't really a continent though. More like a subcontinent of Asia, like India.
- 2III7 4y ago
  It is called eurasia.
origin_path 4y ago
But as doomberg is pointing out the actual alternative we should be comparing to isn't coal but uranium.
- cedilla 4y ago
  We'd need a time machine to start building reactors a few decades ago. And why, just to build more of the most expensive energy source ever conceived with the potential to make large portions of Europe uninhabitable? Nuclear is expensive, it's unsafe, there's the proliferation risk, and only very few countries figured out how to store spent fuel. Promises of safe and cheap tech to solve these problems are common but still unfulfilled. Solar and wind energy on the other hand is so cheap to build up and don't need decade long mega projects. We can have a better, cheaper energy source right now. Nuclear has nothing to offer.
  - IMTDb 4y ago
    Except - I guess - CO2 free energy when it's dark and windless. Like in a typical November night <hen you like having your home heated to acceptable levels.

brnaftr361 4y ago

I don't know how the infrastructure works for biomass, but open pit coal mines in the US are extraordinarily efficient when management isn't fucking them up. We're talking electric conveyor systems that span from pit to plant, diesel-electric haul trucks, and a rail loop that drives right under the plant for loading onto a train that will net about 15-17k tons and ship "directly" to the generator. A coal seam can last a real long time depending on demand. And the infrastructure is already there and has been for ~50 years with various optimizations added along the way - at least in my locale. I'm under the impression that logging is far less efficient due to the nature and complications of the work, but that is, I admit, simple conjecture: You're constantly moving, maybe with some gravity assist, to transport and load the raw material, I imagine for packing efficiency they're chipping straight into a 53' trailer, which will then port a relatively small sum, about 21-22.5 tons, compared with a haul truck, which range from 153-410 tons for back-and-forth movement. If we consider this holistically, BTU/man, BTU/manhour should both be accounted for as well, since those are real inputs which at scale (I imagine) represent a pretty substantial expense in terms of CO2. Coal is also "processed" on site, with pretty minimal input: being crushing, drying, and sometimes spraying. There aren't secondary and tertiary processes. Energy from PRB coal, at the minimum of my data is about 7,420 BTU/lb. Some dry wood can "compete" at this level, apparently, when dry in fact one data point indicates 9033 BTU/lb (Colorado Pinyon). Maximum mean BTU for coal in the PRB is 11k (compared to 8.2 kBTU/lb pellet). I say compete because from what I've heard, generator designs aren't indiscriminate and require certain energy densities to hit efficiency - which may be a benefit of biomass because there's a lot more control, I'd imagine, in pelletizing wood vs. coal, which is a simple mix-batch. At scale it might actually be a pretty considerable boon for biomass. To me this reads that biomass is going to require more input to extract the same amount of energy. The processing to get biomass to similar energy density is going to require more energy input. But even the primary input, knocking trees over, chipping them, porting them, is going to be less efficient and less centralized, and even once it does culminate in some logistical knot... You said it yourself, it sucks. But also, deforestation sucks. So does human sprawl. My point here is that I do think the idea that burning wood is "carbon neutral" is spurious, because there are a lot of points which fossil fuels are used, and used less efficiently, and that the process at least by my imagination is ultimately less efficient, and those losses will also inevitably contribute to increases in the CO2 chain which I think is largely ignored. Maybe it's more like slightly-less carbon - cause the whole "if it's wood and we burn it now and let it grow back later while we keep cutting more and more down to satisfy the constantly increasing energy demands..." reads like we're displacing consequences into the future. But! This is with the caveat that I'm not particularly familiar with the processes of biomass fuel production chain, and that my calculations are based on US information and doesn't necessarily pertain to industries in the EU.

DennisP 4y ago

It's not even that simple. Burning wood is only carbon-neutral on a multi-decade timescale. Trouble is, the next couple decades are critical. We're at risk of pushing the climate over tipping points, after which warming will go further even if we take our own emissions to zero. So it's important that we reduce emissions in the short term. Burning wood increases short-term emissions. By the time it all balances out, it'll be too late for it to matter. And even that assumes that the forests grow back enough to balance out. Those tipping points include drought and forest fires, so that's not a given.

vba616 4y ago

>Coal (/oil/gas) burning releases CO2 that was previously safely stored in the ground and didn't affect the Earth atmosphere This sounds crazy to me. The whole issue with climate change and CO2 is there is too much on a global scale. So it's all fungible. Yet people continually talk as though the CO2 molecules have labels on them to determine if they're sinful or not.