How much carbon dioxide is produced when different fuels are burned?

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Papers obtained by Panorama show Drax took timber from rare forests in Canada it had claimed were “no-go areas”. It comes as the government decides whether to give the firm’s Yorkshire site billions more in environmental subsidies funded by energy bill payers…

All of the 6.5 million tonnes of wood pellets burned by Drax each year are produced overseas. Many come from Drax’s 17 pellet plants in the US and Canada. In 2022, Panorama revealed the company had obtained logging licences in the Canadian province of British Columbia and filmed logs being taken from what the programme said was primary forest to a pellet plant owned by Drax…

Drax says that it decided in October 2023 to stop sourcing wood from old-growth priority deferral areas, and that “work to implement this decision through the supply chain is ongoing”…The burning of wood from old-growth forests contradicts the company’s previous claims. In a 2017 report about sustainability, Drax stated it would not take wood from what it called “no-go areas”. It said: “We do not take from protected forests, old growth or primary forest, sites that have been classified as having a high biodiversity value.”

DB2

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What did they expect naming it Drax?

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Wasn’t Drax also a villain in one of the Bond movies?

DB2

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“Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more.”

Drax, which operates a tree-burning power station in the UK, has signed a deal with three Japanese shipping companies to develop a “bioship” fuelled by wood chips instead of marine diesel. It hopes to see the first wood-fuelled cargo ship set sail by 2029.

The vessel would itself be used to ferry woodchips* harvested by Drax from North American forests *to new markets in Japan…

However, the plan will infuriate many environmental groups who argue that cutting down forests for fuel is the wrong way to reach net zero.

DB2

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Wood chips is only one form of biomass. It should be possible to pelletize weeds or corn stover for use as green fuel–recycling carbon dioxide.

Ideally you look at yield–i.e., sun energy fuel produced per acre. Ideally on land not suited to farming. The right crop is likely to be regional given rainfall, soil types, temperature range, growing season etc.

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At the same time, there is a lot more to a tree than to a grass, a much higher energy density.

“Tree crops are the most grown. representing 70% of the global biomass market due to the high plant to heat (BTU) conversion rate. Simply stated, biomass tree crops require far less plant mass compared to grass and vegetable to achieve a consistent burn rate.”

DB2

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The Sweden-based company, the Netherlands’ third-largest energy producer, first sought a permit in 2018 to build the 120-megawatt power plant using only forest biomass to generate energy. The facility, to be built just outside Amsterdam, would have powered up to 24,000 homes in exchange for 395 million euros ($424.8 million) in subsidies pledged by the Dutch government…

According to Biomass Magazine, an industry trade publication, the Netherlands remains the European Union’s largest importer of wood pellets for industrial energy production. In 2023, the Dutch imported 2.3 million metric tons of pellets, nearly half from the United States. Denmark and Italy ranked second and third in wood-pellet imports.

According to the Swedish energy company, it is closing all of its coal-fired heat and energy plants across Europe and shifting to other energy sources, including wood pellets. Meanwhile, the global forest biomass industry is poised to expand dramatically on both the supply and demand sides by 2030, according to International Energy Agency estimates.

DB2

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Doesn’t matter. The administration is banning the discussion.

A leaked memo from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Research Service division revealed Sunday that the agency has banned some key language from its vocabulary, including the words “climate” and “vulnerable,” as well as the phrase “safe drinking water.”

Other baffling entries on the memo’s banned language list are “greenhouse gas emissions,” “methane emissions,” “sustainable construction,” “solar energy,” and “geothermal,” as well as “nuclear energy,” “diesel,” “affordable housing,” “prefabricated housing,” “runoff,” “microplastics,” “water pollution,” “soil pollution,” “groundwater pollution,” “sediment remediation,” “water collection,” “water treatment,” “rural water,” and “clean water,” among dozens of others.

Steve

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This is a sad development. Biomass is another source of the sun’s energy. It does in effect recycle carbon dioxide.

Yes, the moisture content of biomass reduces its energy content per unit of weight. But comparison to coal or oil is dubious at best.

I think their claim is ridiculous. I hope govt agencies are smarter than that!!!

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Current news on DRAX power plant:

The government has agreed a new funding arrangement with the controversial wood-burning Drax power station that it says will cut subsidies in half.

The power station, a converted coal plant in north Yorkshire, generates about 5% of the UK’s electricity and has received billions of pounds from the government and bill-payers because wood pellets are classed as a source of renewable energy.

Though there are plans to eventually capture the carbon emitted from Drax, its emissions from burning the pellets are currently unabated.

Critics of the power station have called it one of the UK’s leading emitters of the climate warming gas CO2, but Drax disputes that description.

It argues that burning wood is carbon neutral because when trees are cut down for fuel, new trees can be planted that effectively re-absorb the carbon dioxide released.

The new agreement will run from 2027 to 2031 and will see the power station only used as a back-up to cheaper renewable sources of power.

The government says that will mean that when there’s lots of wind and solar, Drax won’t run at all.

It says the company currently receives nearly a billion pounds a year in subsidies and predicts that figure will more than halve to £470m under the new deal.

Michael Shanks, the Minister of Energy, said the previous subsidy arrangement had allowed Drax to make “unacceptably large profits” and that the new deal would be a “step change in value for money and sustainability”.

In a statement, Drax said the the new mechanism would represent a “net saving” for consumers and quoted analysis which suggested it would cut electricity system costs by between £1.6bn and £3.1bn over four years.

A “clawback mechanism” in the new arrangement is designed to stop the company making excessive profits if electricity prices rise steeply.

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But are they?

Are they funding any planting or just leaving that up to others?

Mike

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Funding planting is cheap. It is the ongoing cost of maintaining the growing trees over the years–until the cycle repeats.

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And if they are planted, how many decades pass before they metabolize the carbon dioxide emitted in the burning? Half a century, say, where the warming isn’t neutralized.

DB2

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Ancient techniques:

that I use to have “virtuous” fire wood from my lands in Mexico.

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We certainly do have tree farms that can be harvested after 20 to 30 years. Steady state production of wood chips is possible.

Broadly speaking, pelletized biomass is a possible fuel. Then you can ask what crop is most efficient at converting sunlight to fuels given climate, temps, rainfall, growing season, soil type, and other possible uses for resources like land, fertilizer, water, etc.

The right answer likely will vary from one situation to another.

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You keep posting that CO2 is great plant food and not a problem for climate change and global warming. So why are you so worried about CO2 emissions from biomass burning? Have you gone green?

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Carbon dioxide is plant food, and we and the world will survive alright.

My concern is the falsity of claiming that burning wood has no impact on warming. Of course, there is the impact on the forests themselves, both in North America and Europe. From the New York Times…

When the bloc began subsidizing wood burning over a decade ago, it was seen as a quick boost for renewable fuel and an incentive to move homes and power plants away from coal and gas. Chips and pellets were marketed as a way to turn sawdust waste into green power. Those subsidies gave rise to a booming market, to the point that wood is now Europe’s largest renewable energy source, far ahead of wind and solar. But today, as demand surges amid a Russian energy crunch, whole trees are being harvested for power…

Forests in Finland and Estonia, for example, once seen as key assets for reducing carbon from the air, are now the source of so much logging that government scientists consider them carbon emitters…

The industry has become so big that researchers cannot keep track of it. E.U. official research could not identify the source of 120 million metric tons of wood used across the continent last year — a gap bigger than the size of Finland’s entire timber industry.

DB2

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But you do not believe that there is global warming. So what is your point? Do you believe that global warming and climate change are happening?

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Not so; you have to read more carefully. I am what some call a Lukewarmer.

DB2