Questioning Wood Biomass Burning
Across much of Europe, countries and utilities are meeting their carbon reduction targets by importing wood pellets from the southeastern United States and burning them in place of coal. (1)
Climate activists approve of cutting down thousands of acres of North American hardwood forests–nearly 300,000,000 trees per year– and turning them into wood pellets, which are hauled by truck and cargo ship to England’s Drax Power Plant (pictured).
There they are burned to generate electricity, so that the UK can meet its renewable fuel targets. And that’s just one ‘carbon neutral’ power plant. That’s one year to slash and burn fuel and fifty years to regrow replacement trees. This is not green sustainable energy. (2)
CO2 neutral wood burning is leading to widespread deforestation across northern Europe–a rather embarrassing development for the Europeans who recently expressed their condemnation over Brazilian forest policy.
Satellite images show deforestation has risen 49 percent since 2016 in Sweden, Finland and the Baltic countries. (3)
Wood pellets are viewed as renewable and thus are supposed to be brakes on ‘climate change’. But now recent studies suggest that burning wood pellets coming from harvested trees in forest thinning operations may instead be accelerating warming. (4)
Recent research reveals that scientists earlier had not adequately taken the clouds that formed due to forests into account. These high albedo clouds play a major role of having a cooling effect. Clouds tend to form more over intact forests than they do over forest free areas. Forests along with the clouds they help create, act to cool surface temperatures.
Thus efforts to keep forests intact at midlatitudes would help cool the earth’s surface. To the contrary, efforts that lead to the thinning or even the destruction of forests–e. g., wood pellet production– will serve to lessen the cooling effect, or even cause warming. (5)
A similar result was reached in another paper. Using global satellite data researchers found that for 67% of sampled areas across the world, afforestation would increase low level cloud cover, which should have a cooling effect o the planet. The authors also found that forest type plays a role, notable in Europe where needle leaf forests generate more clouds than broad leaf forests. (6)
Another study found a profound surface temperature impact by forests.
Poor forestry practices in northern Germany led to a decreased temperature cooling capacity by the forest that had increasing wood harvest activities. (7)
It is scientifically well known that the carbon emission from wood fuel is bigger by half than that from coal, twice that from oil and three times that from gas, for the same energy released, and that it is a misleading concept to characterize burning biomass for fuel as carbon neutral. (8)
Burning woody biomass increases atmospheric CO2 levels for decades. Burning forest biomass for power generation emits more CO2 per unit of final energy than burning fossil fuels, including coal. (9)
The EU’s own scientists strongly oppose the classification of biomass burning as carbon neutral. Policymakers prefer the chicanery. Consequently, around 60 percent of the EU’s renewable energy now comes form biomass burning.
So, while the EU has on the one hand banned natural gas project funding, thereby obstructing nearly 600 million Africans from finally achieving access to modern agricultural technology, refrigeration, transportation, hospitals, housing, schools, etc., they have simultaneously been busily burning forests for fuel and deceptively calling it carbon neutral. (10)
In other words, what the EU is doing in relying on deforestation in electricity generation and banning the use of fossil fuels achieves the exact opposite of what is claimed.
It’s almost as if governments and policymakers are trying to worsen the environment, raise the cost of energy, and entrench people in poverty.
Forest thinning and clearing operations, e. g. for harvesting trees for wood pellet production or wind park construction, not only leads to higher surface temperatures, but also to a rapid injections of CO2 into the atmosphere when the wood pellets are burned. In the end, it means wood pellets are backfiring.
They lead to forest degradation, and even more rapid CO2 emissions and pollution from their burning. (4)
Burning trees for energy is not a climate solution.
References
1. Bill McKibben, “Don’t burn trees to fight climate change–let them grow,” newyorker.com, August 15, 2019
2. Paul Driessen, “Real threats to biodiversity and humanity,” eurasiareview.com, May 2, 2022
3. P. Gosselin, “Environmental disaster: northern Europe deforestation up 49 percent due to effort to meet CO2 targets,” notrickszone.com, September 6, 2020
4. P. Gosselin, “Green fuel folly: forest thinning for wood pellet production has a profound surface warming impact.” wattsupwiththat.com, March 15, 2022
5. Sara Cerasoli et al, “Cloud cooling effects of afforestation and reforestation at midlatitudes,” PNAS, 2021, Vol. 118, No. 33
6. Gregory Duveiller et al., “Revealing the widespread potential for forests to increase low level cloud cover,” Nature Communications July 15, 2021
7. Jeanette S. Blumroder et al., “Forestry contributed to warming of forest ecosystems in northern Germany during the extreme summers of 2018 and 2019,” Ecological Solutions and Evidence, Volume 2, Issue 3, July- September 2021
8. Philippe Leturcq, “GHG displacement factors of harvested wood products: the myth of substitution,” Scientific Reports, 10, Article number 20752, 2020
9. Laura Bloomer et al., A call to stop burning trees in the name of climate mitigation,” Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, Volume 23, 2022
10. Kenneth Richard, “EU’s carbon neutral policy of burning forests for fuel spews 28 percent more CO2 emissions than burning coal,” notrickszone.com, May 2, 2022
Header image: BBC
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Alan
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The stupidity of this is unbelievable. There is all the CO2 emitted in processing and transport to take into account but it is ignored. Not that it makes the slightest difference to the climate.
A few years ago I saw the Chief Executive of Drax Power Station boasting about her climate saving activities and saying the next step was to capture all the carbon dioxide and put it underground.
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Tom Anderson
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We seem to witnessing the consequences of modern “education.” They don’t learn to think.
That is, you just took that CO2 out of the tree where it was already stored. Why didn’t you just leave it there? … Brainless from beginning to end.
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Kevin Doyle
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The energy density per kilogramme of coal is much higher than wood.
Why not pay Welsh miners to supply your necessary warmth?
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