Truth Detector (07-15-2020)
https://www.vox.com/science-and-heal...ellets-biomass
When a power plant burns wood pellets that were once living trees, they take on a big debt of carbon — or, as Sterman points out, liquidate an existing carbon credit. Think of this as principal. As with a financial institution, the world carbon and weather system charges interest: the opportunity cost from what would have happened had that tree remained there, growing and pulling ever more carbon from the air.
According to Moomaw and Sterman, the system only reaches parity once all that balances, and how long that takes depends on how trees are cleared — “thinning” individual trees or clearcutting whole forests — what trees they’re replaced with, and what fossil fuel they replace.
Against coal, Sterman’s lab at MIT estimated that parity takes between 60 and 90 years; the European Academy of Sciences is even less optimistic, estimating between generations and centuries. If the biomass replaces natural gas, the EAS found, it takes centuries at a minimum to reach parity. (This of course assumes that natural gas burns much cleaner than coal, which is arguable.) In case you’re wondering, the carbon debt of a wind turbine is paid off in about a year.
The biomass industry disputes these numbers, arguing that “thinning” a forest causes the remains trees to grow faster, taking up carbon more quickly. “It’s like the hairs on your head,” said McAleenan of Biomass UK. “If you pluck out one, the hairs around regrow so there’s no net loss. If you shave your head, it takes a long time to grow back. But that’s not what we do — we’re not clearing a whole forest.” Koss of Drax argues that the forests they buy from take a maximum of 30 years to repay their carbon debt.
But if the math here is disputed, critics like Moomaw argue, it’s also somewhat irrelevant, because there is no disputing the fact that more of those metaphorical plucked hairs equal more atmospheric carbon, and therefore more warming, today on the promise of savings later. Sterman, in a recent MIT paper, compares carbon neutrality logic to putting $1000 in a bank that promises to give it back, in 80 years, assuming they don’t go out of business or decide to spend it on something else. “You’d be better off if you keep your money,” he wrote, and “[i]t’s better to keep the trees on the land and all that carbon out of the atmosphere.”
The point is less the specific number of years to parity as that any amount of additional carbon in the atmosphere is bad news. During all those years until the carbon debt is, ultimately, repaid, that additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere worsens climate change, with consequences that will last lifetimes.
“Carbon neutral,” Moomaw said, “isn’t the same as climate neutral. Even once you reach parity, that carbon has been floating around for a century, absorbing radiant heat. That means more methane released from the permafrost, and more melt on the glaciers. Those don’t go away in a hundred years even if replacement trees successfully grow. Even if we stopped releasing carbon tomorrow, sea levels would still rise for centuries. Climate effects are irreversible.”
It’s for that reason that in January of last year, Moomaw joined a group of nearly 800 scientists from across the world in petitioning the EU Parliament to end its support for biomass.
“Europe has been properly encouraging countries such as Indonesia and Brazil to protect their forests,” the scientists wrote, “but the message of this directive is ‘cut your forests so long as someone burns them for energy.’ Once countries invest in such efforts, fixing the error may become impossible.”
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To meet just an increase of 3 percent in global energy demand with wood, the scientists wrote, the world would have to double its commercial logging. “At a critical moment when countries need to be ‘buying time’ against climate change, this approach amounts to ‘selling’ the world’s limited time to combat it.”
What role, then, do researchers see for biomass? Back when it started, the original renewables designation for biomass had been based on the idea that, say, a Finnish paper mill or a Swedish sawmill should get credit for running on its own scraps, rather than diesel. So if paper plants and sawmills burn residues and wastes that would otherwise quickly decompose, they wrote, that would be carbon neutral. But no increase in logging could be justified on climate grounds — even if, as the trade groups insist, it provided an additional income stream for forest owners.
To be fair, Andy Koss agrees with this, at least in principle: Drax, he argues, does run on the cast-offs of a larger logging industry. “Even our detractors agree that with residues, there’s real neutrality.”
The idea that the biomass industry runs only on waste from the lumber industry’s clear-cuts is disputed by land activists with groups like the Dogwood Alliance, but the larger problem is that the financial accounting implied by “residues” doesn’t match with the carbon accounting. Each additional “waste” tree still means incrementally less warming and a more stable world for future generations, a benefit of incalculable value that is, therefore, not calculated into its price.
The fact that the biomass industry has figured out a way to capture energy from an industry built on clear-cutting and burning them, the scientists argued, doesn’t make up for the fact that, in carbon terms, no more trees than absolutely necessary should be felled — or burned — at all.
So for policymakers, a challenge is figuring out a system of incentives and enforcement that would expand forests, which researcher and petition signer Mary Booth called “the only proven technology for sequestering carbon.” In the 19th century, the scientists concluded, “the use of wood for bioenergy helped drive the near deforestation of western Europe even when Europeans consumed far less energy than they do today.” Fossil fuel energy saved the forests, they wrote, but now the solution is “not to go back to burning forests, but instead to replace fossil fuels with low carbon sources, such as solar and wind.”
But in June 2018, the EU Commission, under lobbying pressure from the wood pellet industry and the Scandinavian lumber industry, voted to keep biomass listed as renewable energy — a decision which allows EU countries to stay on track to meet their “renewables” targets. They have now been joined in this position by the US. Like Britain, the US has big, expensive coal plants we would like to keep using, and biomass seems to provide a way to do this.
In the future, we could expect pellets to be burned either in converted coal or new biomass plants under the same accounting fallacy as the EU, something that Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, a longtime friend of the biomass industry, advocated last year in the wake of the California wildfires. Such a reform could build on the 2018 fiscal spending bill, in which Congress directed federal agencies pass policies that “reflect the carbon-neutrality of forest bioenergy and recognize biomass as a renewable energy source.”
This determination was made over the objections of the Environmental Protection Agency’s own scientists. But in November 2018, the heads of the US Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, and EPA released a joint statement affirming the carbon neutrality of biomass. Among the many benefits they listed for biomass from “managed forests,” or tree plantations, were three that seemed almost Orwellian: “to promote environmental stewardship by improving soil and water quality, reducing wildfire risk, and helping ensure our forests continue to remove carbon from the atmosphere.” And so we sail on into a darkening future, burning the forests to save them.
cancel2 2022 (07-15-2020), Truth Detector (07-15-2020)
They are getting rid of nuclear power but wind and solar are causing incredible instability in their grid. They have had to build a lot of brown coal power plants as well, incredible really you just couldn't make that up. They quite often have to shed load in the Summer by diverting it to other countries like Poland and Chechia. That's what happens when you let loony tune Greens control your energy policy.
Earl (07-15-2020), Truth Detector (07-15-2020)
Thanks I was looking a that and more this AM -I posted the best I could find that
"carbon neutral is not climate neutral"
And wood stoves stink. they make me gag -when the cool crisp air should be making me breathe deep.
Gawd help us. I do not want to be a captive of the Paris Accords - which Biden buys into ( and worse)
Earl (07-15-2020), Truth Detector (07-15-2020)
cancel2 2022 (07-15-2020), Earl (07-15-2020), Truth Detector (07-15-2020)
Earl (07-15-2020), Truth Detector (07-15-2020)
Biden plan also calls for creating an Environmental and Climate Justice Division within the Department of Justice.
Truth Detector (07-15-2020)
cancel2 2022 (07-15-2020), Earl (07-15-2020), Truth Detector (07-15-2020)
Hello T. A. Gardner,
You make some good points in the fact that it is currently impractical to try to run a modern air conditioned suburban home completely on solar, which would pretty much fill the lot and the roof with panels. And it would cost an arm and a leg in batteries. But it is far more achievable than it used to be, and getting more feasible every year. One of the areas if the most exciting advancements is battery technology, which is improving very notably. True, many of the BOTG episodes are not permanent homes, only weekend getaways and playthings of the rich. I was really curious about the price and practicality of that floating home in Miami with the four hydraulic spuds that raise the whole thing up out of the water. $20 million? That young couple must have been set for life. No way they made enough money on their jobs to pay for that thing. But it was pretty advanced and impressive engineering. I had to laugh, though, at the thought that he believed it was hurricane-proof. Shades of Titanic audacity, there.
I'm also pretty critical of the couples who go out on a mountain and fell just enough trees to build their cabin, wanting to leave as much of the woods as possible. What could they be thinking? That forest fires just never happen? Agreed, the bottle island was a total joke. I hope that guy knows that thing is little more than a sand castle waiting for the next big storm, really just a non-serious toy.
But there are also the people who really pull off something impressive, practical and intelligently thought out. One was an A frame in the woods, with the timber cleared well away from the structure, and the entire thing covered in steel. I like the creative use of underground ventilation systems that reduce the need for air conditioning power in other designs. The ones that use earth bags have to be incredibly efficient as far as heating and cooling. Some episodes look like they really have it all together.
Cities cannot practically utilize individual solar arrays yet. But it looks like solar is getting more and more efficient every year and it should be possible at some point to power cities completely with sustainable energy. I also like Bill Gates' new TWR nuclear technology that utilizes old spent fuel and cannot melt down. The USA should put a lot more R&D into that, and we should tax the super-rich far more in order to pay for it. Europe is going big on electric cars. We are going to have to go there to, and I welcome it.
Time does not stand still and neither does technology. It is ludicrous to cling to the past with coal and ICE cars. We would be left behind and out of an exciting new world.
Personal Ignore Policy PIP: I like civil discourse. I will give you all the respect in the world if you respect me. Mouth off to me, or express overt racism, you will be PERMANENTLY Ignore Listed. Zero tolerance. No exceptions. I'll never read a word you write, even if quoted by another, nor respond to you, nor participate in your threads. ... Ignore the shallow. Cherish the thoughtful. Long Live Civil Discourse, Mutual Respect, and Good Debate! ps: Feel free to adopt my PIP. It works well.
cancel2 2022 (07-15-2020), Earl (07-15-2020)
cancel2 2022 (07-15-2020), Truth Detector (07-15-2020)
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