Posted on 12/22/2019 12:19:40 AM PST by blueplum
Experts horrified at large-scale forest removal to meet wood pellet demand
Plans to shift Europe’s coal plants to burning wood pellets instead could accelerate rather than combat the climate crisis and lay waste to woodland equal to half the size of Germany’s Black Forest a year, according to campaigners...(snip)
...Alex Mason, from WWF’s EU office, said burning forests was “literally the opposite of what we should be doing” to help tackle the climate crisis. “As 800 scientists pointed out last year, converting coal plants to biomass will increase emissions for decades, if not centuries. "
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
There’s zero reason to believe this is being done with altruistic intent. Someone stands to make a lot of marks off this boondoggle.
Agreed! Maybe the U.K. should consider the fuel source described in the movie, “Beyond Thunderdome.”
;D
“Plans to shift Europe’s coal plants to burning wood pellets instead could accelerate rather than combat the climate crisis and lay waste to woodland equal to half the size of Germany’s Black Forest a year, according to campaigners”
Keep in mind that this fact HAS BEEN KNOWN by the Left and others in the business, as the amount of fuel needed to generate a certain amount of power is NOT a state secret.
However, they conveniently avoided this discussion until they destroyed the nuke plants in Germany and are well on their way to taking out fossil fuels throughout Europe.
Now some of us may wonder why these concerns weren’t brought up earlier, but not me, and probably not many of you guys. The reason is very simple, they simply DO NOT intend to replace this power at anywhere near the levels that people are used to, since they are Leftists and don’t like people having luxuries, like air conditioning (other than themselves). They know that solar/wind will not come close to giving them a decent amount of reliable power...but the masses don’t know that, yet...and now, based on this article, biomass will soon be shutdown.
So to Europeans, YOU’VE BEEN DUPED, but it’s hard to feel sorry for them, as they chose to ignore what we conservatives have been saying and instead put their faith in the Left. Now they pay.
They chose to ignore real science over Star Trekky stuff.
“They chose to ignore real science over Star Trekky stuff.”
Star Trek has more science than that. Star Wars mythology is a better analogy
I will now flip this two headed coin...
Can’t they just import fuel from Russia ?
In the late-70s, Jimmy Carter had industry jumping through hoops re. biomass fueled power plants. Basically, in order to get a federal permit for a new construction natural gas fired power plant, it was mandatory to include your engineering and economic evaluation of alternative energy solutions and why you did not implement the alternative energy solution.
I was tasked by my company to work on the option of wood gasification producing a syngas to provide the fuel for gas turbines. Lignite coal and wood are very similar in energy content and differ mainly in that wood has more ash and less sulfur than lignite. The engineering and economics of gasification were known well enough that this data was just a plug in. Wood availability and transport were the key unknowns and pelletizing was not a technical option at time.
So, where to get enough wood to fill a few hundred rail cars a day! Commercial grade wood chips were way too expensive so I focused on scrap wood. Construction scrap rapidly flunked out. Ditto for scrap pallets. So I decided to go straight to the source, East Texas lumber companies. To their credit, Champion lumber was the only company that not only had enough scrap but put together a FOB price in a couple days. It used the trimming scrap wood from tree trunks that at that time was largely left on the ground. Bottom line is that using wood gasification for syngas fuel would double capital cost, have way higher operating cost and lower reliability than using natural gas. Of course, this was known before embarking on this tilting at windmills adventure.
L8r
The western states have a huge pine beetle infestation leaving millions of dead trees. I wonder why there are so many forest fires./s
“Can’t they just import fuel from Russia ?”
Ding ! Ding ! Ding !
We have a winner !
Many are getting Nord Stream 2 wrong. Complete energy dependence on Russia is a feature, not a bug. It is Germany’s offramp out of NATO in the event of war.
But clearing forests to put up wind turbines is just fine?
Many Germans are turning against wind energy as they realize its harmful effects on birds, bats, insects and people nearby.
The destruction of forests and farmlands for these behemoth towers for unstable, inconsistent and ALWAYS less than predicted output is being revealed.
I predict within 10 years there will be no new wind turbine construction anywhere.
Have you noticed a pattern here. German politicians wants to be dependent on Russian gas and the American politicians were working to subvert America oil through Ukranian LNG.
Isn’t that what NordStream 2 is about?
I see no connection. But the fact is that burning natural gas is the cleanest fuel possible. Wood pellets aren’t economical to burn to heat a household. I have no idea how it might be economic on industrial scale.
German politicians want abundant cheap energy. They don’t care where it comes from. Ukraine doesn’t export LNG.
However,the Ukraine can buy the US oil companies as they are forced out of business because of globalists who want control for themselves.
Stupid..
This news outlet from the UK no?
I believe it is DRAK? that has one of the largest wood pellet fired power plants in the world and gets much of its wood from the east coast of the USA.
The power company is in the UK.
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