No coal burned (1 Viewer)

DMW said:

Isn't large-scale use of wood pellets to generate electricity effectively a giant pyramid scheme? It takes what, about 30 years for a commercial plantation to grow to harvest. Carbon sequestration isn't linear - a 30 year old tree captures far more than a 1 year old or 10 year old, so clear-cutting a plantation and planting seedlings isn't a like-for-like replacement. It takes 30 years to achieve parity, and I don't think you get 30 years' worth of power generation from one harvest. As demand for "green" energy grows, the area of forest required to support the wood pellet industry is going to exceed the amount of forest available.

Click to expand...

opisska said:

How can you even think about letting any company from China come even close to your nuclear power plants, let alone build them? How is there not a widespread outrage in the UK against that?

Click to expand...

jurek said:

Yes, exactly on all fronts.

A sapling few years old captures 1000s times less carbon than a grown tree. The carbon released from burning wood will contribute to global warming for several decades before being captured back.

Forests and wood are a very limited resource. There is a fixed amount of land available to grow trees, and trees grow at a fixed, slow rate. The amount of coal possible to replace by burning wood is small part of the total.

Forests are already pressed by demand of wood for other purposes. Adding demand of 'green' industry destroys them.

Trees, rotting wood, shrubs and other wild biomass is a habitat for biodiversity. It should not be treated as a simple store of carbon like agricultural leftovers. From the point of conservation, it is better even to burn coal.

This is what happens in Poland, where everything is cut on enormous scale. Commercial forests, private forests, national parks, trees in city parks, trees on roadside verges, trees between fields. Carbon capture industry on top on existing timber industry is a death sentence to biodiversity.

Click to expand...