Carbon Loophole: Why Is Wood Burning Counted as Green Energy?

tinfoil said:
Young trees take up more carbon than older trees relative to their size. Once a young tree reaches maturity, it's going to take up more carbon than during the latter parts of its life. This is not a comment about burning wood, just the carbon cycle. And in the green sense it is carbon neutral. Particulate from burning is not the same thing.
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So you're okay with pollution and accounting tricks, as long as it forwards your agenda. Got it.
 
tinfoil said:
Exactly. Trees are carbon neutral. Any carbon they have was removed from the atmosphere to begin with so any that they return to the environment is already carbon that would have been there anyway.
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I suggest that you read this, it addresses the "carbon neutral" canard extremely well. Asides from that there is the transport element as well, these wood products are often shipped several thousands of miles away from their origin, and ships tend to use the dirtiest type of fuel oil to power the engines.

Chatham House’s recent paper, Woody Biomass for Power and Heat: Impacts on the Global Climate, highlights how the use of wood for electricity generation and heat in modern (non-traditional) technologies has grown rapidly in recent years, and has the potential to continue to do so. EU member states’ national targets for renewable energy generation agreed in 2009 have helped ensure that the EU is now the world’s largest producer and consumer of wood for energy. And although other member states use wood more extensively for heat, the UK is the EU’s largest user for electricity generation, mostly sourced from the US and Canada.

Wood for energy often has a positive image: a natural product of growing forests. The biomass energy industry, which has grown rapidly on the back of government subsidies, likes to contrast it with dirty coal or oil. They point to the government’s sustainability criteria, which notionally guarantee a reduction of at least 60 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions compared to the fossil fuels the biomass replaces.

The problem with this happy picture, however, is that in fact biomass, when burnt, emits more carbon per unit of energy than most fossil fuels. The exact amount varies with the type of biomass and the type and age of the power plant, but figures from the Drax power station, Europe’s largest consumer of wood pellets, show that in 2013 it emitted about 13 per cent more carbon dioxide per unit of energy generated from biomass than from coal.

How is this consistent with meeting the government’s requirement for a 60 per cent reduction in emissions? Only by completely ignoring the carbon emitted when the wood is burnt; the sustainability criteria measure only supply-chain emissions from harvesting, processing and transporting the wood. (Direct land-use change – for example, clearance of the forest for agriculture or urban development – also falls outside the criteria, but biomass for energy generally originates from existing forests.)

This treatment of combustion emissions as zero – and thus, the awarding to wood the same kind of financial and regulatory support as other renewables such as solar PV and wind – is justified on the basis that the carbon contained in woody biomass is part of the natural forest cycle. The carbon released during combustion was absorbed by forest growth in the past and will be reabsorbed by forest growth in the future; in contrast, fossil fuels originate outside this cycle and their combustion adds carbon to the atmosphere.

But this argument rests on a basic fallacy. Carbon is carbon, wherever it comes from, and if you burn wood for energy, you increase carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere (by more than if you had used fossil fuels), and thereby contribute to climate change. The fact that the carbon emitted was absorbed by growing trees in the past is simply irrelevant. After all, when it’s harvested you don’t have to burn it; you could use it for construction or furniture or window frames or a host of other uses, fixing the carbon in wood products rather than emitting it to the atmosphere.

Climate impacts

It is true that continued forest growth will absorb carbon in the future, but the process is a long one, taking decades or even centuries if whole trees are harvested and burnt. Replacing large mature trees, with plentiful leaf cover absorbing large volumes of carbon dioxide, with small young ones mean that the rate of carbon uptake will be far lower for years. On top of that, the impact of harvesting itself releases soil carbon into the atmosphere, further accelerating climate change.

The impact on the climate of using sawmill or forest residues for energy rather than whole trees is undoubtedly lower, since these tend to be wastes from other industries which harvest trees for their own purposes, and do not imply any additional harvesting. Sawmill wastes which, if left to themselves, would rot and release their stored carbon into the atmosphere in a matter of months or years, are in many ways the ideal feedstock; it makes sense to use them for energy rather than leave them to decay. However, mill residues are already intensively used and there seems little room for expansion; a survey in the US in 2011 (opens in new window) found that over 99 per cent of mill residues were already used, mainly for energy and wood products such as particleboard.

Forest residues are the parts of harvested trees that are left in the forest after log products have been removed, including stumps, tops and small branches, and pieces too short or defective to be used; these can amount to as much as 40–60 per cent of the total tree volume. Their impact on the climate if used for energy varies significantly. While the smallest pieces tend to rot and release their stored carbon into the atmosphere quite quickly, if left in the forest, they are generally not suitable for use for energy, as they contain too much dirt and ash to be burnt cleanly. Larger pieces are more suitable but take much longer to decay; burning them for energy instead of leaving them in the forest thereby increases carbon concentrations in the atmosphere for years or decades. And on top of that, a portion of the carbon and other substances contained in the residues is transferred to the soil as they decay; their removal from the forest for energy may reduce both soil carbon and the levels of the nutrients trees need to grow, again with negative impacts on the climate.

The biomass industry generally likes to claim that it uses mainly mill and forest residues, though on closer inspection the categories they report often contain whole trees, perhaps classified as ‘unmerchantable’ or similar. (This is not helped by the fact the categories used by Ofgem, for example, to whom UK biomass users have to report, are confusing and potentially overlapping.) Several independent studies, however, have concluded that the use of mill and forest residues is in reality substantially lower; pellet plants in the US – the UK’s main source of supply – in fact (opens in new window) source about 75 per cent whole trees.

Setting aside these arguments about feedstock, however, can it be safely assumed that future forest growth allows us to treat biomass as carbon-neutral? If the trees would have grown anyway, even in the absence of the biomass energy industry, it cannot be assumed that their future absorption of carbon cancels out the carbon emitted when wood is burnt. If the rate of carbon absorption in forests remains the same whether or not some of the harvested wood is burnt, then clearly, the best outcome for the climate in the short and probably medium term is not to burn it, but to use it for wood products or leave it to decay slowly in the forest. This is not an academic argument: the current global rate of emissions of greenhouse gases is incompatible with the aims of the Paris Agreement and may risk triggering irreversible tipping points in the Earth’s climate system. We need to reduce carbon emissions now, not in several decades’ or centuries’ time.

The biomass industry likes to point to the expansion of US forests in recent decades to show that forests overall have been absorbing more carbon even while increasing volumes are burnt for energy – sometimes implying that this forest growth has been encouraged by the demand for energy. But in fact US forest expansion started in the 1950s, decades before European subsidies stimulated the expansion of the modern biomass industry. And there is little evidence of recent overall forest growth in the US southeast, the location of almost all the pellet plants supplying European demand. In any case, the point is not whether US (or European) forests are expanding, but whether they would have grown at a different rate if part of their wood had not been burnt for energy. If they would have grown at the same rate, or faster, in the absence of biomass energy use then it cannot be assumed that using wood for biomass is good for forests, or the climate.

Redirecting public money

There is no question that renewable energy policy and forest policy both have a critical role to play in the mitigation of climate change. But governments have limited resources to deploy in their support, which is why the Chatham House paper questions whether it is really a good use of public money to subsidise activities which release stored forest carbon into the atmosphere, thereby increasing carbon emissions and accelerating climate change.

I argue instead that support should be limited to those feedstocks which genuinely reduce carbon emissions over the short term – i.e. mill residues and post-consumer wood waste. This would not only have a positive direct impact on the climate but would also release more resources for genuine zero-carbon technologies, such as solar, wind or tidal – and perhaps also for programmes encouraging afforestation and the more extensive use of wood in buildings and products. Use it, don’t burn it.
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https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/wood-not-carbon-neutral-energy-source#
 
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Bigdog said:
While some carbon is returned to the atmosphere during the decomposing process, trees are a net carbon sink. Don't doubt me.
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On short time scales, they can be called a sink, but the carbon does not go away. Are you sure you understand the terms you are using?
Want proof? Look at the seasonal variation in CO2. It's caused by plants taking up and then releasing CO2 during the growth season and also by the absorption rate of CO2 into water due to temps.
 
The Deep State said:
You're an idiot. Let's hold a basic physics conversation. Where do you suppose it was that the carbon in trees came from?
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No sir, you are the blithering idiot. Do you really want trees being taken from states like Mississippi and North Carolina to be used thousands of miles away? Anybody intelligent can see it is totally pointless and essentially just a box ticking exercise by Eurocrats.
 
tinfoil said:
On short time scales, they can be called a sink, but the carbon does not go away. Are you sure you understand the terms you are using?
Want proof? Look at the seasonal variation in CO2. It's caused by plants taking up and then releasing CO2 during the growth season and also by the absorption rate of CO2 into water due to temps.
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I usually agree with pretty much all you say on climate but you are being disingenuous here.

It is often argued that biomass emissions should be considered to be zero at the point of combustion because carbon has been absorbed during the growth of the trees, either because the timber is harvested from a sustainably managed forest, or because forest area as a whole is increasing (at least in Europe and North America). The methodology specified in the 2009 EU Renewable Energy Directive and many national policy frameworks for calculating emissions from biomass only considers supply-chain emissions, counting combustion emissions as zero.

These arguments are not credible. They ignore what happens to the wood after it is harvested (emissions will be different if the wood is burnt or made into products) and the carbon sequestration forgone from harvesting the trees that if left unharvested would have continued to grow and absorb carbon. The evidence suggests that this is true even for mature trees, which absorb carbon at a faster rate than young trees. Furthermore, even if the forest is replanted, soil carbon losses during harvesting may delay a forest’s return to its status as a carbon sink for 10–20 years.

Another argument for a positive impact of burning woody biomass is if the forest area expands as a direct result of harvesting wood for energy, and if the additional growth exceeds the emissions from combustion of biomass. Various models have predicted that this could be the case, but it is not yet clear that this phenomenon is actually being observed. For example, the timberland area in the southeast of the US (where most US wood pellet mills supplying the EU are found) does not appear to be increasing significantly. In any case, the models that predict this often assume that old-growth forests are replaced by fast-growing plantations, which in itself leads to higher carbon emissions and negative impacts on biodiversity.

The carbon payback approach argues that, while they are higher than when using fossil fuels, carbon emissions from burning woody biomass can be absorbed by forest regrowth. The time this takes – the carbon payback period before which carbon emissions return to the level they would have been at if fossil fuels had been used – is of crucial importance. There are problems with this approach, but it highlights the range of factors that affect the impact of biomass and focuses attention on the very long payback periods of some feedstocks, particularly whole trees.

The many attempts that have been made to estimate carbon payback periods suggest that these vary substantially, from less than 20 years to many decades and in some cases even centuries. As would be expected, the most positive outcomes for the climate, with very low payback periods, derive from the use of mill residues (unless they are diverted from use for wood products). If forest residues that would otherwise have been left to rot in the forest are used, the impact is complex, as their removal may cause significant negative impacts on levels of soil carbon and on rates of tree growth. The most negative impacts involve increasing harvest volumes or frequencies in already managed forests, converting natural forests into plantations or displacing wood from other uses.

Some have argued that the length of the carbon payback period does not matter as long as all emissions are eventually absorbed. This ignores the potential impact in the short term on climate tipping points (a concept for which there is some evidence) and on the world’s ability to meet the target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, which requires greenhouse gas emissions to peak in the near term. This suggests that only biomass energy with the shortest carbon payback periods should be eligible for financial and regulatory support.
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https://reader.chathamhouse.org/woody-biomass-power-and-heat-impacts-global-climate
 
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tinfoil said:
Young trees take up more carbon than older trees relative to their size. Once a young tree reaches maturity, it's going to take up more carbon than during the latter parts of its life. This is not a comment about burning wood, just the carbon cycle. And in the green sense it is carbon neutral. Particulate from burning is not the same thing.
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Yes, the Al Gorian solution is to cut and burn Old Growth Forests and replace them with Young Forests :palm:

BTW, new studies show that the sequestration gap between Young and Old Forests is not nearly as wide as previous studies indicated.
 
Bigdog said:

Yes, the Al Gorian solution is to cut and burn Old Growth Forests and replace them with Young Forests :palm:

BTW, new studies show that the sequestration gap between Young and Old Forests is not nearly as wide as previous studies indicated.
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LOL Al Gorian? Al would cringe at the thought of cutting trees and burning them. I am not certain you are accurately informed
 
tinfoil said:
I was speaking on the subject of carbon with respect to letting the trees rot. Making products that last for decades does indeed sequester the carbon short term.
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Yes but you said that younger trees absorb more CO2 that's not factually accurate. Older trees have far more leaves hence far more stomata for transpiration to occur.

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Rune said:
Wrong, Punk.
When they rot they release methane to the atmosphere, a greenhouse gas 24 times as potent as CO2.
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There are many sources of methane. From rotting vegetation when dams are first built, rice growing, composting and cows to name a few.

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Shape Shifter said:
No sir, you are the blithering idiot. Do you really want trees being taken from states like Mississippi and North Carolina to be used thousands of miles away? Anybody intelligent can see it is totally pointless and essentially just a box ticking exercise by Eurocrats.
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No sir, it is you that is the blithering idiot in this thread.
The trees being harvested in the US for export to Europe are not from the wild forests that your ancestors raped and pillaged simply for charcoal to smelt iron for his royal majestry to arm his Navy and better abuse it's colonies.
These trees are taken from tree farms,
billions of acres which have been continually planted and harvested for pulp wood for the purpose of making paper.
As to the rest of the assumptions made in your article most are incorrect and I will not bother addressing them at this time.
Suffice it to say though, that you are massively incorrect.
So much so that I can readily prove that wood burning, when used in place of fossil fuels is actually carbon negative.

What an anti-free trade hypocrite you are.
 
Rune said:
No sir, it is you that is the blithering idiot in this thread.
The trees being harvested in the US for export to Europe are not from the wild forests that your ancestors raped and pillaged simply for charcoal to smelt iron for his royal majestry to arm his Navy and better abuse it's colonies.
These trees are taken from tree farms,
billions of acres which have been continually planted and harvested for pulp wood for the purpose of making paper.
As to the rest of the assumptions made in your article most are incorrect and I will not bother addressing them at this time.
Suffice it to say though, that you are massively incorrect.
So much so that I can readily prove that wood burning, when used in place of fossil fuels is actually carbon negative.

What an anti-free trade hypocrite you are.
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My god, that is probably the longest post I've ever seen from you. You can prove nothing of the sort, and we all know that you'll just do your usual shit and run. I would far rather defer to an august institution like Chatham House than some metal bending hacktivist who has ideas above his station.

https://reader.chathamhouse.org/woody-biomass-power-and-heat-impacts-global-climate#



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Shape Shifter said:
Euan Mearns know the energy industry inside out, he concurs with Chatham House on this issue.

http://euanmearns.com/wood-pellets-drax-and-deforestation/

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I don't give a flying fuck who concurs, you are simply incorrect.
The US literally had billions of acres of farmed trees to feed the massive needs of paper users.
At some point, due to very effective recycling efforts the world demand for pulpwood was sated and paper mills from Maine to Florida closed with the vast acreage essentially going fallow.

The demand for wood pellets has been a multitude blessing, providing jobs, earning wealth, cutting fossil fuel use and helping to balance trade.
These are all good things that only an oil shill could feel bad about.

Refute anything I said sans character assassination, which is all you are good for.
 
Rune said:
I don't give a flying fuck who concurs, you are simply incorrect.
The US literally had billions of acres of farmed trees to feed the massive needs of paper users.
At some point, due to very effective recycling efforts the world demand for pulpwood was sated and paper mills from Maine to Florida closed with the vast acreage essentially going fallow.

The demand for wood pellets has been a multitude blessing, providing jobs, earning wealth, cutting fossil fuel use and helping to balance trade.
These are all good things that only an oil shill could feel bad about.

Refute anything I said sans character assassination, which is all you are good for.
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You do make me laugh, character assassination is pretty all you ever do ffs. It is pretty clear that you didn't read either of those two articles, so what's the point of discussing anything with you?

Even Greenpeace, Biofuelwatch and the Dogwood Alliance are vehemently against shipping wood pellets thousands of miles to replace coal and end up actually produce more CO2 not less. But apparently all these organisations are wrong but you are right!

NGOS CONDEMN COAL/BIOMASS INDUSTRY APPOINTMENT TO CLIMATE CHANGE COMMITTEE

Posted on March 28, 2017 by Almuth

REPRESENTATIVE OF COAL AND TREE-BURNING INDUSTRIES APPOINTED TO UK CLIMATE CHANGE COMMITTEE

Appointment of senior Drax official to advisory body represents “shocking undermining of the Committee’s independence and credibility”

​27th March 2017 – UK and US environmental campaign groups are condemning today’s appointment of a senior Drax representative Rebecca Heaton to the UK’s Committee on Climate Change [1], warning that it will seriously undermine the credibility of a statutory body, which was set up to provide independent advice to the Government about reducing carbon emissions [2].

Doug Parr, Policy Director at Greenpeace UK, “It’s surprising that the first business appointment to the Climate Change Committee should come from a sector as controversial as biomass and fossil fuel. It is well acknowledged that biomass can produce more carbon emissions than the coal it replaces, and major questions have been raised over public subsidies being used for unsustainable practices. Most energy companies see the future as being one of modern, decentralised energy systems, so experience from conventional, centralised power stations becomes less relevant. The CCC will have to work hard to ensure they are beyond reproach in transparently examining future technological scenarios, especially on bio-energy and decentralisation, to maximise benefits for the environment and the climate.”

Dr. Heaton will remain Head of Sustainability and Policy at Drax power station in Yorkshire, the world’s biggest wood-burning power station and the UK’s biggest coal burning plant and carbon emitter. Wood pellets burned by the plant are manufactured primarily from forests in North America, including trees clear-felled in hardwood swamps of the Southern U.S. The transition to burning wood means Drax now emits more greenhouse gases than when it burned only coal. A study published by the UK’s own Department for Energy and Climate Change in 2014 [3] confirmed that carbon pollution from burning trees for electricity can exceed that from coal for several decades. Drax collected at least £536 million in subsidies last year for burning wood [4], which is treated as a renewable energy by the UK government.

Almuth Ernsting, Co-director of the UK-based Biofuelwatch, states: “Drax has a vested interest in perpetuating the Government’s false accounting for biomass as ‘carbon neutral’, in skewing renewable energy subsidies further against low-carbon wind and solar power. It also has a vested interest in preventing or delaying a mandatory coal phase-out. Continued coal burning is responsible for high carbon emissions as well as human rights abuses and environmental destruction linked to mining.”

Drax has stated that it will stop burning coal, but only if it is allowed to convert wholly to biomass. This would require doubling its current biomass subsidies of around £1.5 million a day [5].

Adam Macon, Campaign Director at the US-based Dogwood Alliance, says “We’ve documented forests being destroyed to make the wood pellets Drax burns. By appointing Heaton, the Committee of Climate Change is giving a thumbs up to ongoing clear-felling of our forests, the best defence against global climate change.”

Dr. Mary Booth, Director of the US-based Partnership for Policy Integrity, adds: “Dr. Heaton does not acknowledge that burning trees for energy worsens carbon pollution in any timeframe meaningful for addressing climate change. She claims that biomass produces ‘carbon savings’ that are more than ‘80% compared to coal’ – ignoring UK government findings that show the opposite.”

Sasha Stashwick, senior energy advocate at the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council, said: “The Committee on Climate Change is supposed to provide independent advice to the UK government on issues like the real climate impacts of burning biomass for electricity. Appointing a representative of Drax, which stands to win or lose hundreds of millions in subsidies from the outcome of that advice, is a clear conflict of interest.”

David Carr, General Counsel at the US-based Southern Environmental Law Center said, “The CCC is meant to advise the UK on how to reduce its carbon emissions. By converting from burning coal to burning trees, Drax is increasing rather than decreasing its carbon emissions. The CCC should be promoting energy sources like solar and wind that eliminate carbon emissions, not old technologies like burning wood that increase carbon emissions.”
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http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2017/ccc-drax-pr/



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Neutral smeutral. I burn wood. It is the best. Saves money and is reliable heat. I only take dead trees


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