OT: Chatham House study reveals biomass not as carbon neutral as thought

[Chris Hogg]

ITYM 45 km.sq.

[Chris Hogg]

Let alone up to 50 of them!

[tabbypurr]

Wood can be dried in situ, still standing, by ring barking the tree. New timber could, I expect, be grown on the same land while the old is drying.

NT

[harry]

Drivel. Where do you suppose our coal comes from?

[harry]

Full of shit as usual. Proper biomass forests are specially planted for the job. Usually a hybrid willow. When established it's cut down and regrows in about five years.

[harry]

In cold climates willow is grown on marshland and harvested in Winter when the marsh is frozen It regrows and can be harvested every five years or so. It's grown on on land unfit for other purposes.

[harry]

It's perfectly fine. I have coppice willow myself. Cut down every five years in rotation.

[harry]

Coal ash and combustion products is far more toxic than wood ash.

[Chris Hogg]

Well, apart from that link being absurdly short on specifics, you've just advanced a very strong argument in favour of fracking.

[Chris Hogg]

Drax is burning something around 5 million tonnes of biomass annually, virtually all of it wood chip imported from the southern states of the US, plus a little locally produced straw and willow. Yet only half of Drax is converted to biomass ATM. From your link, the yield of dried willow is 5 tonnes per acre, so that's one million acres just to fuel half of Drax and producing say 2GW, in round figures.

Willow is fine for fuelling the occasional domestic wood-burning stove, but as a fuel supply to provide a significant proportion of the nation's electricity, it hasn't got a hope.

See also Euan Mearns on the subject

[tim...]

Poland :-)

tim

[The Natural Philosopher]

Does it? I had assumed USA...

[harry]

The USA and Russia. So transport issues are the same for coal and pellets.

[Chris Hogg]

Absolutely not. Coal is much more energy dense than wood pellets, so you get far more coal per shipload than you get for wood pellets. Or putting it another way, you need more shiploads of wood pellets than coal to get the same amount of energy, shit-fer-brains.

Coal import data for 2015 from here:

(annual tab and types of coal summed)

kilo-Tonnes European Union 614 Australia 910 Canada 334 China 23 Colombia 7,070 Republic of South Africa 317 Russia 9,187 USA 5,317 Other countries 427

[DICEGEORGE]

xxx

But 'free market' costs dont include the costs of the pollution, cleaning up the waste, and the flooding of low lying areas where many cities are... [g]