“Coal plants will have some sort of pollution control as compared to nothing at the farm level,” said Chandra Bhushan. deputy director general of the Centre for Science and Environment, a non-government organization.
Category: biomass
The New Coal – Burning wood pellets creates more global warming pollution than coal, not less
The new coal. More CO2 than coal. Yet biomass is called green by the AGW cult and the Eu and the other cult leaders .
“A controversy with reverberations across the Atlantic Ocean is brewing in Hamlet, North Carolina – a literal hamlet 120 miles northwest of Wilmington – where a new wood-pellet facility is already in the initial stages of construction.
The mill would become the fourth in North Carolina and the seventh in the Southeast built and operated by Maryland-based Enviva, the largest producer of wood pellets in the world.
The dried and compressed bits of wood produced at the plant would be shipped from Wilmington to a power company in the United Kingdom, who plans to burn them instead of coal as part of the country’s effort to slash greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by the end of the decade.
The problem, according to many energy analysts, is that burning pellets creates more global warming pollution than coal, not less. One prominent research ecologist even calls wood biomass “the new coal.”
At the same time, environmental advocates say the new mill will further the destruction of deciduous forests in the Southeast – especially in wetlands – and disproportionately harm public health in Dobbins Heights, an overwhelmingly African-American town two miles northeast of the facility.”
“A 2015 analysis for the Southern Environmental Law Center examining the loss of forests found that Enviva wood pellets supplied to Drax would create two and a half times more greenhouse gas emissions than coal over 40 years.
A 2014 study by the U.K.’s environmental agency also factored in drying and transportation costs; it found climate pollution from southeastern U.S. wood pellets to be three times that of coal.”
DRAX Biomass = 3 million Diesel Cars
DRAX would be a good name for a Bond villain. But its so much worse. They used to burn coal. Now they burn biomass.
And it is dirtier.
“emissions of particulates from the site [DRAX] were 897 tonnes last year compared to 382 tonnes in 2008.”
“The power station uses about seven million tonnes of biomass or wood pellets a year, much of it imported, particularly from the US”
“Last year, Drax received subsidies of £558 million for its biomass operation, a figure that is expected to rise to around £800 million this year as the third biomass unit comes on stream.”
DRAX Tree Killing – CO2 Emitting – Scam Continues
Read more about the DRAX scam at Paul Homewood’s Blog here.
And remember, burning wood chips makes more CO2 than coal.
Cash For Ash – Northern Ireland
Another insane scheme to subsidize the burning of wood unravels.
“November 2012: The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) is set up by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in a bid to encourage businesses to switch from oil or gas to wood pellet boilers.”
Just stop and think. They subsidized wood pellets (one of the dirtiest fossil fuels) to get people to switch from natural gas (the cleanest fossil fuel). Not only that … wood pellets produce way more CO2 than natural gas.
Utter insanity.
Why?
“It is part of Northern Ireland’s plan to meet renewable energy targets.”
Ahhh. The scheme relied on the stupidity of people and politicians confusing the term green and renewable with clean and CO2 free.
Sure. Wood pellets are renewable. But they are filthy with particulate matter and they produce 2x more CO2 (or more) than gas.
What went wrong? Can you guess?
“Autumn 2013: A whistleblower contacts the department, warning of flaws with the RHI, which she claims overpays businesses and does not provide an incentive to be energy efficient. Officials at the department look into her allegations but they are dismissed.”
Right. The subsidy pays you more if you burn more wood pellets. To an unlimited amount. If the government promised to pay you 10$ for every 5$ bill you burned there would be mass bonfires of $5 bills.
Summer 2015: Officials move to cut the subsidy paid to businesses, which has no cap, after realising an error in how the initiative was set up means companies could make hundreds of thousands of pounds off it.
The more heat a business generates, the higher the subsidy it is paid, making the scheme bad for both the taxpayer and the environment. For every £1 a business spends on fuel, it gets £1.60 in subsidies from the government.
Insane.
There is a jump in applications to join the scheme before the changes come into effect.
No shit.
Read the article … if you can stomach it.
Protected forests in Europe felled
What an insane world we live in where environmentalists are killing forests and bats and eagles all in the name of saving them from AGW.
Today the outrage is forests.
Protected forests in Europe felled to meet EU renewable targets – report
Europe’s bioenergy plants are burning trees felled from protected conservation areas rather than using forest waste, new report shows.
Protected forests are being indiscriminately felled across Europe to meet the EU’s renewable energy targets, according to an investigation by the conservation group Birdlife.
Up to 65% of Europe’s renewable output currently comes from bioenergy, involving fuels such as wood pellets and chips, rather than wind and solar power.
Bioenergy fuel is supposed to be harvested from residue such as forest waste but, under current legislation, European bioenergy plants do not have to produce evidence that their wood products have been sustainably sourced.
Birdlife found logging taking place in conservation zones such as Poloniny national park in eastern Slovakia and in Italian riverside forests around Emilia-Romagna, where it said it had been falsely presented as flood-risk mitigation.
Biomass Generates More Electricity Than Solar Panels in the US
Stupid and dirty biomass. Produces more CO2 than coal. Lots of particulate matter. Cuts down forests.
Idiots!
“What’s actually happening is we are basically cutting down perfectly healthy, productive trees,” says Tim Searchinger, a research scholar at Princeton University.
In 2015, biomass — which refers to trees or other organic matter burned for fuel — produced more electrical energy in the U.S. than solar panels.
Biomass is a Filthy Con
You know … I don’t agree with Henry A Waxman on much. At all in fact until I read this. But I do on part of this recent article.
And I don’t agree with Waxman that there is urgency on CO2 or climate change.
I only obliquely agree with him because the hypocrisy of a “green” that hates clean natural gas while supporting biomass burning is breathtaking.
Anyway … here is what he has to say:
… the House bill includes a little-known provision that would altogether ignore the carbon pollution emitted by burning biomass—trees and other wood products—to generate power.
Logging companies claim that biomass burned for power is “carbon neutral” – thus, not yielding a net pollution increase. They claim that growing new trees absorbs enough carbon pollution to offset the emissions created by burning mature trees. In effect, they assert that wood power is as clean as solar or wind electricity. This is simply not true. The reality is that burning biomass to generate electricity can produce more carbon pollution than it saves by replacing coal.
This biomass loophole would increase carbon pollution at a time when it is imperative that we reduce it. New trees require up to a century of growth to absorb enough carbon dioxide to offset pollution from mature tree combustion. Worse, there is no guarantee that replacement trees planted today to offset the pollution will survive that long. And even if the new trees eventually offset this pollution after a century, climate change is happening now. We can’t wait.
Notice the BS he is trying to peddle that only “logging companies” want biomass. Almost every greenie wants biomass. There is tremendous amounts of money involved in biomass and biomass subsidies.
Governments around the world are exempting the CO2 and pollution biomass is producing. Its a giant con. As is most of the subsidy farming and green anti-CO2 hysteria.
Ontario Wood Pellets Would Have Produced Less Than Half Of The (net) CO2 as Norwegian Wood Pellets
Ontario is importing “advanced biomass” wood pellets from Norway. See the post here is you are coming in late.
I was looking for total CO2 figures for the Atikokan plant. I haven’t found any yet. But I did find an OPG document showing CO2 production of 4 scenarios at Thunder Bay (which is also burning Norwegian Wood). One of those scenarios is a Natural Gas Combined Cycle power plant. It showed that plant producing a huge amount of CO2 compared to wood pellets. I know that isn’t true from this article.
Then I realized the the wood pellet CO2 numbers are based not on actual amount of CO2, but on the “net CO2” which is CO2 minus the fudge factor applied by the AGW cult to claims that since the trees are renewable most of the CO2 doesn’t really count. (page 10 and 11 here)
The key is where they use the term (net) as in “Green House Gas (GHG) Life Cycle Assessment (net)”
Anyway … back to comparing Ontario Wood Pellets to Norway Wood Pellets.
From this OPG document:
See all that CO2 produced by transporting all those pellets from Norway!
Ontario Spent 170 million to Convert a Coal Power Plant to burn Norwegian Wood Pellets
Ontario has shut down its coal power plants. One of those coal power plants was Atikokan. What OPG decided to do (because they needed dispatchable power) was to convert the plant to biomass. And that biomass was wood pellets. Not just any wood pellets. It was “Advanced Biomass”.
Advanced biomass has been treated to withstand exposure to rain, and has handling and storage properties similar to those of coal. It is still in the early stages of development, which is why OPG purchases advanced biomass fuel from Norway.
Before we get to CO2 and squandering hundreds of millions to change from one fuel you burn to anther fuel you burn …. you may ask yourself why you need to make wood pellets waterproof.
Wet biomass catches on fire. Or explodes.
Biomass fuel has a wide range of possible refuse items: pellets, chip logs, forestry, sewage sludge, methane, meat and bone, palm kernels, cereal, sawdust, bioenergy crops, or landfill gas. When a biomass fuel is stored in a pile, waiting for transport or use, the biomass can spontaneously heat through oxidation. In order for this to happen, three conditions must sync: rate of heat generation, air supply, and insulation properties of the immediate surroundings. With most biomass material, there is a high moisture content combined with air and/or bacterial fermentation – both of which can cause spontaneous combustion through oxidation.
Back to CO2. The study I have referenced before told us that wood pellets (especially those transported long distances like USA to UK) produce way more CO2 than coal. So I would assume that if you buy wood pellets from Norway, your power plant is producing more CO2 than if you had not spent 170 million and were still burning coal.
‘Green’ logic confuses me.Killing Norwegian forests and turning the wood into special waterproof pellets and then using a lot of fossil fuel to ship it to Ontario to burn in a closed down resurrected coal power plant seems crazy to me.
sunshine hours 