UK Hits Clean Energy Milestone: 50% of Electricity From Low Carbon Sources (theguardian.com)

Half of the UK's electricity came from wind turbines, solar panels, wood burning and nuclear reactors between July and September, in a milestone first. From a report on The Guardian: Official figures published on Thursday show low carbon power, which has been supported by the government to meet climate change targets, accounted for 50% of electricity generation in the UK in the third quarter, up from 45.3% the year before. The rise was largely driven by new windfarms and solar farms being connected to the grid, and several major coal power stations closing.

Comments

Wood burning is not clean

[Anonymous Coward]

Burning wood releases a lot of CO2 and should not be considered clean.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Andreas Mayer]

Wood burning can be considered clean in this context because the CO2 that is released was captured from the air in the first place.

So no additional CO2 is released when burning wood.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[srw]

And where do you think the carbon in coal and oil came from?

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the coal/oil reserves underground came from tens of thousands of years (if not longer) sequestration process. We burn through it in a fraction of that time. So in the long-term it may return to equilibrium, but in the short term we are putting a shit ton more CO2 in the air than would be there otherwise.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[nukenerd]

Firewood comes from treesthat take decades to grow (if not longer) . We burn through it in a fraction of that time.

Even then you are assuming that new trees are planted to replace the old ones; in the UK where I am they are not. As it happens I have a large garden by UK standards, about an acre with 25-30 large trees. Three blew down in a storm two years ago; these were ~ 30 ft trees, ~ 15" diameter trunks. I do have a wood burning stove and I have already burned their wood. At the rate trees grow you would need several acres of woodland for every house to achieve a steady state just for heating. Most houses have nothing like that, not even mine, and certainly not in the UK.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Shane_Optima]

Wood burning can be considered clean in this context because the CO2 that is released was captured from the air in the first place.

So no additional CO2 is released when burning wood.

What? Greenhouse gasses are fungible. It doesn't matter if the carbon was captured recently or (as with coal) in the distant past.

The only way this logic makes sense is if those trees were planted by humans for the primary purpose of burning.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[HuskyDog]

Back when dinosaurs where stomping about there was a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere than now and the world was a lot hotter (good news for giant reptiles obviously). Over millions of year the carbon from this CO2 ended up in fossil fuels (hence the name) and the average amount in the atmosphere went down and it was in this environment that mankind evolved. The name of the game to fight global warming is to keep this fossil carbon in the ground and not in the atmosphere or at least reduce the rate of release to one where society can adapt to the changes.

Burning 'modern' wood is a different matter. If you leave wood lying around most of it won't turn into coal and anyway not in a useful timescale. It will rot and the bacteria and fungi involved will release the carbon back as CO2 anyway. So you might as well burn it, extract the energy and thereby leave in the ground some fossil carbon which you would otherwise have released.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of factors you're failing to consider. A tree doesn't retain co2 per se but rather converts it into sugars via photosynthesis and as a product liberates the oxygen atoms producing clean air, as such it is a biological co2 scrubber. With that said unless they're only using dead trees which is perfectly viable it begs a few questions. Another point to be made is the collection and furthermore the transportation of substantial amounts of wood, they're still burning fossil fuels to gather and transport wood in addition to the release of co2 from the wood itself. On top of that wood is less energy dense than coal so essentially they're burning more fuel to collect less energy while still burning fuel. Electric energy is actually only a quarter of the problem in the first place whereas agriculture, industry and transportation take a far more substantial slice with 59% of GHG emissions (21%, 24%, and 14% respectively) according to the EPA. While the milestone is impressive it means very little especially given that the model is the UK which is a relatively small country the US holding a population approximately 5 times the size over a much larger region which demands far more infrastructure. Even this is short sighted given first world nations produce less GHGs than developing nations (63%).

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Jane_Dozey]

I'm rather skeptical as well (I'd hate to see wood burning become a long term "solution" to coal), but this should answer some of the questions in your post: http://www.pelletcouncil.org.u...

The source is likely to be biased as it's the uk pellet council, who have a vested interest in the fuel, but it does provide *some* useful information.

It looks like trees *are* replanted in the UK. It also seems that wood pellets are a tad different from tree wood, so you can't really compare your wood burner to an industrial burning plant. You may well still be correct about the fuel, but some of your post looks mislead.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Tx]

The only way this logic makes sense is if those trees were planted by humans for the primary purpose of burning.

Look up the Drax biomass generators;

The wood pellets used as biomass fuel at Drax are made from low-grade wood such as forest thinnings, tree tops and branches, as well as residue from sawmills and agricultural waste such as straw and seed husks.
[...]
If you burn wood pellets from the waste cuttings of the timber industry in a converted coal-fired power station, it should be possible to produce electricity that is largely carbon-neutral, provided the carbon of wood fuel is replaced by the carbon of growing trees – which Drax insists is the case.

What? Greenhouse gasses are fungible. It doesn't matter if the carbon was captured recently or (as with coal) in the distant past.

When the carbon was captured is not the issue, the issue is whether there is a net release of carbon. It does not matter whether the trees were planted specifically for power generation, what matters is that the wood is replaced at the same rate that it is used, as would be the case with wood from sustainably managed forests existing in many developed countries. This obviously wouldn't be practical on a huge scale, but there might be scope for a few projects like Drax, converting a coal plant to a renewable (or largely renewable) wood burning biomass plant.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[GLMDesigns]

Don't forget that CO2 levels 80 million years were not only good news for reptiles they were fine for mammals as well. Protomammals developed 120mya and mammals 80mya.

Cretaceous CO2 levels were just fine for mammalian life. In fact in the Paleogene, 10 mya, after the end of the cretaceous period CO2 levels were even higher.

Moral of the story? High CO2 levels are just fine for life on earth.

Let's focus our efforts on dioxins, PCBs and other toxic bi-products of industrial activities.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Shane_Optima]

what matters is that the wood is replaced at the same rate that it is used

You can artificially tie together those two things and call it "carbon-neutral", sure. And you could also plant trees after burning coal (let's say on a small scale) or running your car and claim that coal and gasoline are carbon-neutral as well.

This is missing the point. We're almost certainly not going to be able to grow enough trees or other plants fast enough to recapture all of the carbon we release through all of our hydrocarbon combustion. The ability to do this with wood burning is a consequence of its much smaller footprint as compared to other fossil fuels.

(There is another possible exception here that just occurred to me regarding forests that are prone to cyclical fires, but I suspect this excludes most of the UK.)

sustainably managed forests existing in many developed countries.

What else would they have done with that wood? To get a proper accounting, you have to compare this to the counterfactual situation where there is no wood burning. Some trees (fewer, one assumes) are felled for wood and replanted. People who clear land of trees can't sell them for burning, so it's either wood or whatever other means of disposal one uses for trees. This is an intrinsically carbon-negative state of affairs.

I'm not arguing wood burning is a huge issue; on the contrary, it's precisely due to its small-scale usage that this artificial accounting of carbon-neutrality could be realistically claimed.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Shane_Optima]

As far as Drax goes I'm astonished that they're trying it on a large scale. I strongly suspect it wouldn't work if widely applied for reasons already stated, and thus this is just a greenwashing scheme, but I'd need to hunt down their specific claims and technical data first.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[MightyMartian]

The difference being that burning wood is burning carbon that is still actively part of the carbon cycle, whereas burning coal and oil releases CO2 that was removed from the carbon cycle millions of years ago, and in fact is releasing millions of years worth of sequestered CO2 in the space of a few centuries.

Conversely, this is why claims of "greening up" due to higher CO2 PPM in the atmosphere isn't solving the increased emissions problem; simply because the vast majority of plants release the CO2 they've captured relatively quickly after they have absorbed it.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[hey!]

I think we can safely ignore carbon that was sequestered before Class Mammalia emerged in the fossil record when we're discussing the impact of environmental conditions on H. sapiens.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[MightyMartian]

Sigh. Of all the moronic talking points the pro-fossil fuel crowd bring up, this is somehow the dumbest and most infuriating. Dumbest because human civilization didn't exist 80 million years ago, and in fact only arose during the climate conditions found in the last 10,000 years or so, and infuriating because once you've adopted this idiotic statement, you've basically admitted we're fucking things up very badly, but are just trying to spin it as a positive "You see, the dinosaurs liked it!!!!"

I'm going to be charitable and suggest you're just doing a bit of trolling, and aren't in fact one of the most retarded human beings alive.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[skullandbones99]

However, don't forget that the Sun's habitable zone continues to move further out into space because the Sun's solar output is slowly increasing over millions of years. This triggered the thermal runaway of Venus due to the CO2 greenhouse effect. This means that as time goes by on Earth, the threshold level of the thermal runaway of the CO2 greenhouse effect slowly decreases. This means that for Earth to remain habitable, the CO2 level must be decreased to stay below the threshold. In others words, in the past a higher CO2 level was permissible as a bigger greenhouse effect (non-runaway) was needed to maintain global temperatures. We have 1 billion years left on Earth before the Sun is too hot and the Earth turns into a planet like Venus.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[hey!]

You're misssing the point in a spectacular way. We don't care about where the CO2 comes from, but we *do* about the net impact of the system on the concentration of CO2 over the course of our lifetimes.

Biofuels create a closed fuel cycle in which CO2 is continually sequestered and released in balance on a biological timescale. Fossil fuels form a system in which the CO2 is balanced on a geological timescale.

Yes, it is true that in a hundred million years switching from fossil fuels to biodiesel won't make any difference. But it will in the course of our lifetime and the lifetimes of our children.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[hey!]

Wood burning is not clean because it emits particulates. From a carbon standpoint it depends on what you are burning and especially what you replace it with.

If you burn bamboo from a bamboo plantation the carbon you emit will be offset within a year or two by carbon fixed in newly grown bamboo. If you burn giant sequoias and turn the grove you harvested them from into a parking lot, then that's a lot like burning coal.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Waffle Iron]

What? Greenhouse gasses are fungible. It doesn't matter if the carbon was captured recently or (as with coal) in the distant past.

The only way this logic makes sense is if those trees were planted by humans for the primary purpose of burning.

No, the only thing that matters is what ultimately happens to those trees.

Unless you're harvesting them then carefully warehousing all of the wood indefinitely so that it never rots, the CO2 is going to get released. Whether it's by burning or fungal digestion is irrelevant.

That makes the burning carbon neutral relative to what would have happened anyway.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Shane_Optima]

Sounds like you write their marketing pamphlets.

There are two SEPARATE actions here: the burning of a hydrocarbon, and the planting of trees to capture carbon from the atmosphere. "Closed fuel cycle" is nonsense; the CO2 captured by the plants isn't the same CO2 molecules released into the atmosphere, nor is it captured at the same time the other CO2 is emitted. Yes, atmospheric CO2 is pretty much fungible... and that's my entire point.

If I burn X amount of wood, leading to one metric ton of CO2 entering the atmosphere, and then plant enough trees to recapture one metric ton of CO2... ok, fine. Taken together, that's neutral.

If I burn X amount of coal or gasoline, leading to one metric ton of CO2 entering the atmosphere, and then plant enough trees to recapture one metric ton of CO2... that is no less carbon neutral than the above.

Timescales don't matter. This isn't a "closed looped"; it is two separate actions. There are subtitles here, like the amount of carbon emitted extracting, transporting and storing the fuel, the fact that burning wood makes it easier to plant more trees, the possibilities of forest fires, and it could be that the net result of these things make wood more attractive. But this stuff about timescales and closed loops is meaningless.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Anonymous Coward]

Srsly, you need to look up the carbon cycle. That's an embarrassing, grade-school level blunder.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Shane_Optima]

the fact that burning wood makes it easier to plant more trees

By this, I meant cutting down more trees obviously clears more land for planting, land which might be more accessible or otherwise economical. This is the only "cycle" present in this system: the cycle of using the same plot of land over and over. Which might be handy, sure, but that doesn't mean burning coal and planting the same number of trees in a different spot wouldn't accomplish the same thing.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[srw]

But what makes you think humans are so special? Dinosaurs were here before us. Maybe we're just getting the climate back to a point where the dinosaurs can re-emerge.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Shane_Optima]

You're saying most of these trees will die, decay and release the majority of their CO2 on a timescale likely to matter regarding global warming (the next hundred years or so) ? I'm not altogether sure I believe that.

If these are going to be human-planted trees primarily for wood burning purposes, this point is moot anyway. In our comparative scenario with coal, we could choose to plant long-lived and/or decay-resistant trees for our carbon offset, preferably in areas precisely like the UK (plenty of rain to prevent large forest fires, was historically deforested.)

There are other reasons to dislike coal; don't get me wrong, but this one seems pretty artificial.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Gonoff]

Moral of the story? High CO2 levels are just fine for life on earth.

Not so good for humans who increasingly want to live in vast concrete, steel and glass deserts.

Not so good for those deserts that will be flooded when the sea rises to levels not seen for millenia (or longer).

Not so good for the vast mega farms needed to support humanity as they are flattened by the stormier and unpredictable weather,

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[hey!]

If I burn X amount of coal or gasoline, leading to one metric ton of CO2 entering the atmosphere, and then plant enough trees to recapture one metric ton of CO2... that is no less carbon neutral than the above.

Sure, if you did plant enough trees. But in fact globally forest extent is shrinking and nobody is talking about offsetting coal with re-forestation. That's because coal wouldn't be economically competitive if you had to pay for the cost of offsetting the pollution it emits. It's barely hanging on as is.

You can argue for anything if you imagined that we did things that (a) we aren't doing and (b) we aren't doing because they aren't economically practical.

Timescales don't matter.

Economists and financial analysts would beg to differ. So would chemists, physicists, ecologists and evolutionary biologists. Time is literally the most important factor there is in just about every calculation we make. There's a big difference between a 4% ROI in a month and a 4% ROI in a decade. There's a big difference between a 4 degree warming in a century and a 4 degree warming in ten thousand years.

It used to be believed that gas equilibrium with the oceans would prevent any increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. That's why the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, which was proposed in the 1890s, wasn't believed by most scientists prior to the International Geophysical Year in 1958. In that year the oceanographer Roger Revelle demonstrated that the rate at which the oceans could absorb CO2 was physically limited. In other words the timescale of natural carbon sequestration was too long to prevent an increase in atmospheric CO2.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Mr D from 63]

While there is a cycle involved in CO2 sequestration and release that philosophically can be called carbon neutral, there is not doubt that because of Biomass burning there is more CO2 in the atmosphere at any given moment than their would be if that power were generated by a zero carbon source. The CO2 emitted by biomass is no different than the CO2 emitted by natural gas in how it acts after emission. By cutting down carbon sink plant life and burning it we are both releasing sequestered CO2 and destroying an active carbon sink. Also, there is much CO2 released by the farm machinery involved.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Tx]

You can artificially tie together those two things and call it "carbon-neutral", sure. And you could also plant trees after burning coal (let's say on a small scale) or running your car and claim that coal and gasoline are carbon-neutral as well.

There's nothing artificial about it. If x tons of carbon is locked up in a managed forest, and you burn and plant wood from that forest at such a rate than x tons of carbon continues to be locked up in that forest, then that usage is, both by definition and absolute and incontrovertible weight of fact, carbon neutral. That's what the term means; no net change in the amount of carbon released.

And yes, you could do the same with coal and oil, as long as the trees you plant are new growth, are never cut down, and never counted against any other carbon usage; that is the whole concept of "offsetting". However that is much harder to keep track of, and in my opinion not a great idea.

This is missing the point. We're almost certainly not going to be able to grow enough trees or other plants fast enough to recapture all of the carbon we release through all of our hydrocarbon combustion.

Nobody argued otherwise. The fact that wood burning can't practically be carbon neutral on a massive scale doesn't stop it from being carbon neutral on a smaller scale.

What else would they have done with that wood? To get a proper accounting, you have to compare this to the counterfactual situation where there is no wood burning.

Again, neutral means neutral; no net change in the amount of carbon. Sure, you could potentially do even better than neutral, if the wood is used in such a way that its carbon never ends up being released into the atmosphere, but that doesn't stop neutral from being a good thing to aim at. Solar power and wind power are only carbon neutral; they aren't scrubbing any carbon out of the atmosphere, they just aren't adding any. So sustainable wood burning is on a par with solar and wind power in carbon terms, and I think it's a bit fatuous to complain that that's not good enough.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[GLMDesigns]

First of all I didn't adopt it.

Second of all it is relevant because the hysterical chicken littles out there are talking about the survival of our species. Meanwhile these frauds compare the daily rise in temperature over the last 100 years. That's like comparing a stock chart displaying minute by minute price changes with one that displays yearly ticks.

Is human activity causing harm. Of course. But saying that a rise of CO2 levels, even a doubling of CO2 levels will cause an extinction level event. That, my friend, is brainless hysteria.

How do I know - because mammals survived just wonderfully with CO2 levels. Our species will as well, so will other vertebrate and invertebrate life. And, of course, so will plants.

I want solar and wind - not for CO2 levels but for pollution levels.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[HuskyDog]

Did you actually read my comment all the way through? Didn't you notice the bit where I said "...or at least reduce the rate of release to one where society can adapt to the changes"? Of course mankind could exist on an earth with the same climate as the dinosaurs liked, the problem is getting there from here at a price we can afford.

Simple example. Suppose that sea levels were 10m higher than they are today. There would still be enough dry land for mankind (consider that huge areas of the world aren't much occupied) and I am sure we would cope just fine. The problem is that many of our cities have been built on the basis of current sea levels and moving them all 10m uphill is not economically feasible. Now, cities aren't fixed things - the buildings slowly fall down and new ones are built. So, if the sea level goes up slowly enough we can just ensure that we build new building on the higher ground further from the sea and very slowly (with the emphasis on slowly) the city will move uphill. But, we need at least hundreds of years for such a process (the first hundred or so for politicians to agree that something needs to be done) and there is a danger that the sea will go up faster than that.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[GLMDesigns]

Very interesting argument.

I think we're going to arrive at fossil fuel independence sooner rather than later. The graphs point to us being able to supply our needs via solar, geothermal, wind, in a generation or so. We need fossil fuel only for this short period of time.

I'm more concerned about the particulate pollution and the bi-product of combustion much more than CO2.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[dbIII]

Those levels would be bad news for modern farmers though.
Of course you knew that but are just recycling a "talking point" dreamed up by a teenage political intern some years back who was far more clueless than you would have been even at the same age. You don't have to be that lazy.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[GLMDesigns]

Oceans rise and fall.

Coastlines ebb and flow

People build homes and cities in deltas and then wonder why nature works against them? Hello? They should look up the definition of a delta.

Even if there were no people, and no industrial activity, the oceans would rise and fall and the coastlines would ebb and flow.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[dbIII]

Wood burning is not clean because it emits particulates

I'm pretty sure they either have electrostatic precipitators or bag filters on something of the scale we are talking about. I'd say try another tack if you want to find problems with the project.
I see it as a waste of new wood. It's not as if they are burning branches, old pallet timber or whatever. It's different to the other biomass burning plants around the world that burn things like the waste left after sugar cane crushing.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Anonymous Coward]

The planet will definitely survive huge climate change; life as a whole will very likely survive; our species might survive; our current civilisation most likely will not survive. You may be ok with life as a small burrowing mammal, and you certainly appear to have the appropriate level of cognitive capacity for such a role, but most of the rest of us have higher amibitions.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[blindseer]

Burning wood releases a lot of CO2 and should not be considered clean.

You are correct, at least to a point. If not done correctly burning wood can produce soot just like coal. Depending on the quality of the land it can spread heavy metals into the air. If burning wood is such a good idea then I know of a place in the Ukraine with a lot of trees, near a place called Chernobyl I think. The CO2 released is just time delayed by a few years from what it took out of the air if we burn it. We have better uses for wood than energy though.

I remember someone that believed CAGW was a problem suggesting that we should grow trees and use them for lumber to sequester carbon. That person was run out on a rail for even suggesting anyone cut down a tree. It made sense to me. Seems like trees are very efficient in converting CO2 into a carbon dense material that we call wood, that is until it is mature. Grow trees to maturity, cut them down, plant more. The wood from the trees can be used for structures and the carbon is sequestered in the houses, barns, sheds, etc. Burning them doesn't help. It might not hurt either but if we use trees to sequester carbon then we gain.

To get our energy we can use carbon free nuclear, hydro, and wind, and we'll be carbon negative in no time. To replace oil we can synthesize hydrocarbons from seawater like the US Navy has been experimenting with. The synthetic oil wouldn't be carbon negative but carbon neutral, to make it negative we'd have to be pumping that synthetic oil into old oil wells or something and leaving it there.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[MightyMartian]

I advocate a carbon tax, because I believe free markets can solve the problem. But when fossil fuel profits are effectively subsidized by not having the damage they're doing factored into the price of their product then that's corporate welfare. Maybw youre the communist.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[MightyMartian]

Oh, and for your edification

http://iopscience.iop.org/arti...

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Shane_Optima]

That was the best defense of the concept "wood is intrinsically carbon-neutral" argument I've heard yet, by the way, and to the extent that trees will release most of their carbon atmospherically (a fact I haven't yet verified) during the decay process, it's a decent enough point... when talking about longer timescales.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Anonymous Coward]

The graphs indicate that at best these are supplemental methods of generation. Nuclear alone generated as much electricity as all of those sources with far less infrastructural development, which is an extremely important factor to consider.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Shane_Optima]

Economists and financial analysts would beg to differ. So would chemists, physicists, ecologists and evolutionary biologists.

You're just free associating important-sounding words. For the purposes of the specific question of whether planting trees can make wood burning and/or coal burning carbon-neutral, it wouldn't matter if coal was created yesterday by the coal fairy.

If you're arguing that wood burning is small scale enough for this trick to "work" and coal is too large scale, I agree except that I still insist that the accounting is artificial. Which isn't to say it's useless, just that it cannot be used to fairly say that wood is superior to coal or natural gas or diesel re: carbon without actually crunching those numbers and taking into account that we could just as easily pledge to plant a tree for every X pounds of Y hydrocarbon consumed.

That's because coal wouldn't be economically competitive if you had to pay for the cost of offsetting the pollution it emits. It's barely hanging on as is.

Economic competition is a tangential argument. I'm not a fan of coal; it's just an easy analogy to demonstrate why the "is carbon neutral" bit is misleading.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Shane_Optima]

And yes, you could do the same with coal and oil, as long as the trees you plant are new growth, are never cut down, and never counted against any other carbon usage; that is the whole concept of "offsetting". However that is much harder to keep track of, and in my opinion not a great idea.

I disagree that the accounting is going to be any better in practice. I mean yes, if you could have a single managed forest designated for a single power plant and they weren't allowed to use any other wood, that would be easy, but you know it's never going to work like that. Wood will be bought on the free market. Trees will have to be harvested and replanted everywhere or else there will be inefficiencies, shortages caused by forest fires or hurricanes or drought, etc.

In the end, the measure of enforcement would realistically have to be the same for each: X tons of wood means Y trees planted, X tons of coal means Z trees planted.

he fact that wood burning can't practically be carbon neutral on a massive scale doesn't stop it from being carbon neutral on a smaller scale.

Ditto coal.

Don't mistake me for a pro-coal guy. I'm not. I just think this is a disingenuous and extremely gimmicky thing that's going on here, and a distraction from non-combustion technologies that probably should form the backbone of our green energy efforts. Non-combustion energy has the easiest carbon accounting, I think you'll concede. (Though it's not zero.)

More than anything else it feels a lot like a psychological appeal to trees being natural and part of the environment, like the energy equivalent of Organic food.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[hey!]

You're just free associating important-sounding words.

I expect the irony escapes you there, but no. I am arguing that time and economics matter. I suppose if you insist on ignoring time and money as part of your calculations there's nothing anyone can do to stop you, butin he real world cost constraints limit what can actually get done, and there is such a thing as doing something so slowly it makes no practical difference.

I don't particularly favor burning wood, simply because if we are going to go the biomass route we should choose plants that fix carbon more quickly. Grasses can be harvested annually, making them more attractive from a carbon standpoint than most trees, although some trees can be harvested as frequently as every three years. Naturally burning trees that take a century or more to grow to maturity isn't much better than burning coal -- because the timescale is longer than the expected lifetime of a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere.

But even with grass economic considerations are important. In theory corn-derived ethanol could be carbon neutral, but it's not, because of the fossil fuels used to cultivate the corn (a grass by the way), process it, and transport the ethanol. In fact if you add the carbon impact of all that up we're actually better off burning natural gas. But the limitation is economic. It is physically possible to produce carbon-neutral corn ethanol, it's just too expensive at present.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Shane_Optima]

Naturally burning trees that take a century or more to grow to maturity isn't much better than burning coal -- because the timescale is longer than the expected lifetime of a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere.

That's not even... that has nothing to do with anything. The time frames that matter are the same: the time it takes us to plant new trees and have them grow to recapture carbon. That's it.

You're trying to turn everything into a cycle, when you should be thinking in transactions. Carbon neutrality matters in a transactional sense: planting Y trees for X pounds of a given hydrocarboned burned. That's it. Unless and until we start running out of space to plant trees, that is *all* you need to be thinking about. And the moment we start to run out of space to plant trees/grass/whatever (whether or not that would happen tomorrow or in 500 years), our little hydrocarbon burning + (re)planting scheme obviously becomes a very, very bad idea compared to literally any non-combusting option we *already* have at our disposal.

It doesn't matter if it is, as per your artificial parameters, cyclical (wood) or not (some other hydrocarbon). Assuming we're planting trees to offset either case, we run into game-breaking problems at the same time in either case.

Yes, burning wood allows you to reuse the same plots for growing trees. That might be a nice convenience, sure, but the advantage isn't significant if this were going to be done on a large enough scale to actually make a difference.

You have a point only in the sense that the amount of arable land on Earth is finite, so we could purposefully limit ourselves to wood burning on a scale not sufficient to meet humanity's demand, and then run that for the next 100,000 years in theory. Yeah, uh, ok. And technically coal and oil and natural gas are all renewable too. So fucking what?

The comparison of offset planting vs. 'cyclical' replanting should be made within the framework of real world concerns. If you don't want to frame them within the context of real world concerns, that's another conversation entirely... one where all our words need to be explicitly re-defined and one that will often just end up in some argument about the laws of thermodynamics.


One caveat: The natural decomposition of dead plant material into greenhouse gases is an interesting objection to my argument, the only genuine one I've seen so far, but there's a lot of research and pondering needed to determine whether or not it is a serious objection.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Anonymous Coward]

Coal/oil: carbon captured a million years ago and sequestered underground, leading to decrease in global temperature.
Wood: carbon captured, what, 100 years ago max.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[cheesybagel]

Actually burning wood is a lot worse than burning high grade coal. It's dirty as heck. It's even worse than burning lignite.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Anonymous Coward]

little hint for you, "wood and coal,oil gas" are not the only way carbon gets locked up, only a small amount is actually availiable to us to release from those sources.

And actually low levels of Co2 in the atmosphere is bad for plants, below 140ppm plants cannot grow and everything dies (us, animals, the whole lot), due to the multiple paths Co2 gets locked away we were actually well towards that point, the coal we burned pushed us about 25000 to 50000 further away from that point.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Anonymous Coward]

you might want to read what your using as a reference...

Looks like they have fucked with data using statistical methods (remembering to theorise why they did the fixes, which means bulshit) and probably allowed bias to adjust it until the answer wanted appeared,

So basically lets make bulshit up to prove our point, thats not fucking science

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[cbeaudry]

The "damage" has to first be demonstrated and second weighed against the benefits.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Anonymous Coward]

actually they would be better for farmers, more co2 the better plants grow..

africa is actually greening in areas that were barren.

15000years ago, the sahara was green and lush, higher temps mean more water vapour and more rain in that area..

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Barsteward]

and bigger floods in those places already suffering flooding

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[hey!]

You have no understanding of the dynamic nature of the atmosphere. Equillibria do not function instantaneously.

Until you understand more physics (and economics) there really isn't any point in arguing with you.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Shane_Optima]

You have no understanding of the dynamic nature of the atmosphere. Equillibria do not function instantaneously.

Until you understand more physics (and economics) there really isn't any point in arguing with you.

Lofty bullshit. There is no actual long-term equilibrium. The universe is headed towards heat death, assuming something else like the big rip doesn't get us first.

The conversation is thus about effective equilibria on shorter timescales, and you've chosen to retreat behind nonsensical pseudo-intellectualism than actually offer any real-world explanation of how the burning of coal + planting trees is any less carbon-neutral than the burning of trees + planting more trees.

If timeframes were actually important to your argument you could jot down some back of the napkin estimates of what happens when. Except, you don't actually have an argument.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[MightyMartian]

So you actually didn't read it either, but rather invented a narrative to fit your own bias.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[MightyMartian]

Insurance actuaries are already factoring in the damage, and what exactly are the benefits to rain belt shifts that could leave large tracts of currently arable land in a semi-arid state, or that plunges coastal areas where huge proportions of the human population live under a meter of water?

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Namarrgon]

Health costs of coal: $300-500 billion annually, in the US alone.
Health costs of gasoline/diesel: $40-200 billion annually for the US.

Huge annual costs like these are a constant drag on economic growth. And these costs, as the studies admit, are far from comprehensive - the first link lists numerous additional factors not considered in their analysis, saying "The true ecological and health costs of coal are thus far greater than the numbers suggest". Nor do they consider the human-life costs of the hundreds of thousands of premature deaths caused by particulate air pollution, mining & processing wastes etc.

These ongoing costs can be almost completely avoided by transitioning to clean energy, along with reducing other large burdens on the taxpayer such as fossil-fuel industry subsidies and military interventions (plus of course future climate change adaption costs).

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[cbeaudry]

There you go again, being an activist and only bringing up activist studies.

You cannot calculate the costs and come up with a meaningful number without also calculating the benefits.

You deliberately and disingenuously replied to me and did not mention the benefits.

Re:Wood burning is not clean

[Namarrgon]

What benefit does burning coal provide that *any* other form of power generation does not also provide? I'm most curious to hear your thoughts on this.

It's not like anyone's suggesting we cease all burning of fossil fuels - and not implement a replacement. We all know the benefits of energy, and nobody wants to give those up. We just want to switch to energy sources that don't do such widespread damage to our health and environment. We want to keep the benefits and just reduce the costs, so cost comparisons are appropriate.

P.S. if you don't like the results of the "activist" studies coming out of Harvard and MIT, feel free to cite more reliable studies, if you can find any.

Energy use should be self regulating, however:

[rmdingler]

As worldwide energy use increases, energy should get more expensive, prompting us to look for ways to use energy more efficiently and bring alternative sources online.

It's a self-correcting loop, but only as long as there is no market manipulation, such as massive pet industry subsidies or restrictive legislation that prevents new methods of generation from coming online to the grid.

Re: Energy use should be self regulating, however:

[Anonymous Coward]

Usage efficiency is already improving and has been for hundreds of years. If efficiency increases in a growing economy then potentially you can consume more energy for a smaller cost, as a proportion of GDP, as time goes on.

Energy usage is actually falling slightly in western nations at present, which is probably partly efficiency versus demand plus failing to account for the embedded energy in imported goods.

Re:Energy use should be self regulating, however:

[fbobraga]

The market invisible hand just grabbed my ass! Seriously (and I liked it)

And yet...

[Kierthos]

Just watch, Trump's response will either to be to continue to complain about the wind farm near his golf course in Scotland, or to promise that we're going to open more coal powered plants. Or both.

Or he'll get distracted and pissed because a B-list celebrity said something mean about him.

Re:And yet...

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

I'm still giggling over Trumps letters regarding that wind farm: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-38397644

The guy is absolutely bad-shit insane! lol!!

Re:And yet...

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

*bat-shit even!

Re:And yet...

[Gonoff]

Just watch, Trump's response will either to be to continue to complain about the wind farm near his golf course in Scotland

He can complain as much as he likes. I come from a very rural part of Scotland. My friends and relatives are pleased about the wind turbines and there are plenty. There probably won't be many more large ones for a while but there are plenty smaller ones going up the whole time.

They don't spoil the view and they don't pollute. Bring it on!

Wind/solar

[110010001000]

Um, no. According to the article the main driver was Natural Gas and Nuclear. Solar/Wind barely budged. Another mdsolar deceptive article.

Re:Wind/solar

[Mr D from 63]

Um, no. According to the article the main driver was Natural Gas and Nuclear. Solar/Wind barely budged. Another mdsolar deceptive article.

About 25% of Q3 power was from renewables. From the source document, about 4.5% was solar, 11% wind, 8% Biomass. Q3 is the best quarter for solar annually, it drops off significantly in the winter, so that annual averages are less than Q3. Wind production tends to be lower than average during Q3.

What is most interesting is that although the percentage increased, total consumption decreases significantly, allowing them to reduce coal burning. Natural Gas increased the most and Renewable's and Nuclear's percentages of the total increased more than their actual production percentages did.

https://t.co/WcF82BuKIu

Re:Wind/solar

[wbr1]

It mentions nukes almost favorably. Can't be mdsolar...

Re:Wind/solar

[Gadget_Guy]

Um, no. According to the article the main driver was Natural Gas and Nuclear. Solar/Wind barely budged. Another mdsolar deceptive article.

How can gas be a main driver of low carbon energy sources reaching 50% if it isn't considered part of that 50% by the government statistics that are being reported?

Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's put this in perspective.
The entire population of the UK is less than two Tokyos.

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire population of the UK is less than two Tokyos.

You fail at basic math:

UK population: 65.3 million

Tokyo population: 13.62 million

65.3 / 13.6 ~ 4.8.

Re:Perspective

[Jane_Dozey]

UK population = 65,299,992
Tokyo population = 13,620,000

That's more like 4.8 Tokyos

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Sneaky little non-AC thief! Don't you realise that mathematics are subject to IP restrictions these days? Pay up!

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Greater Tokyo = 37,832,892

Re:Perspective

[fbobraga]

for the @GP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conurbation

Re:Perspective

[Mr D from 63]

The entire population of the UK is less than two Tokyos.

You fail at basic math:

UK population: 65.3 million

Tokyo population: 13.62 million

65.3 / 13.6 ~ 4.8.

FWIW, the population of the greater metropolitan Tokyo area is more like 38 million.

Re:Perspective

[Bryan Ischo]

So the entire population of the UK is 1.7 Tokyo-greater-metropolitan-areas.

But the entire population of Japan is only 3.3 Tokyo-greater-metropolitan areas.

The greater Tokyo metropolitan areas is sizeable when compared to the UK, but it's also sizeable when compared to the entire population of Japan itself.

I'm really failing to understand what the point of all of this is, and what the O.P. was even trying to say.

Re: Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

The point was to try to make the amount of energy generated / size of population served seem trivial, thereby belittling the effort. Of course, saying "compared to the greater Tokyo metropolitan area which is 1/3rd the population of Japan" doesn't convey the same effect as saying "Tokyo", which was immediately assumed to be the city.

Pellet burning is not good for the enviroment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wood burning for power is a horrible practice. Calling it carbon neutral ignores all of the other bad aspects of the process so as to make people feel good.
Similar to hybrid cars and corn ethanol.....

Re:Pellet burning is not good for the enviroment.

[belthize]

Carbon neutral means carbon neutral, it says nothing about whether it's good or bad. Slave labor turning a windlass is carbon neutral but probably sub-optimal in terms of modern morality.

So saying wood burning is carbon neutral doesn't ignore anything, it's simply a statement. That said, yes, shifting to a wood burning energy stance is probably not optimal.

Not conincidentally, they're running out of power

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zqnyg82

Let him promise

[Anonymous Coward]

... to promise that we're going to open more coal powered plants.

The President has no power over that. So, let him promise and make the coal miners and coal mine owners feel good - only to have their hopes dashed.

We're in store a cheap natural gas for a long time - and I think long enough to where wind and solar and other "green" energy will be much more economical than coal.

And if there were an accurate way of measuring the health costs of coal, we'd might see that coal is much more expensive than it's market price would suggest.

And one of the unintended consequences of the decline of coal is mehtyl mercury release. There's less lead in fish now.

Re:Let him promise

[Kierthos]

I never said he had the power to do it. Just that he would promise it. You may have noticed that politicians promise all kinds of things that they are actually unable to do. And Trump is very bad about promising all kinds of things, and then walking back from those statements.

Hell, Trump _did_ promise coal miners that the jobs would come back. And they won't, for the reasons you mentioned.

Re:Let him promise

[fbobraga]

The President has no power over that.

Directly... but he can incentive it (like he already did in his campaign)

Re:Let him promise

[Anonymous Coward]

On the whole I agree with you. However, he and the Republican congress can, unfortunately, do a lot to try to halt the adoption of solar and wind energy.

How low is "low"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Clean" energy? We have had this since forever. The power outlets at home do not litter the floor or smell (unless they burn). Also, this "low carbon" thing sounds almost like a low calories soft drink, or low fat milk, so good indeed... But how low is "low"?

What a pitty we still do not have *sustainable* energy, because then I would be impressed.

Re:How low is "low"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thermodynamics guarantees no energy source is sustainable. Continue to be disappointed.

Re:How low is "low"?

[Anonymous Coward]

You may think you're being clever, but you're simply misunderstanding "sustainable" to mean "infinitely sustainable."

Coal is dying as a power source

[calexontheroad66]

But not hidrocarbons, people forget that in western europe and the us it was common to have acid rains.
Now for some time every coal fired power station has to have a scrubber for it sulfur and particulate emissions.
That is expensive to operate, specially if competing fuels have little or no sulfur content, or generate very little particulate emissions.
The problem that the coal industry has is that it is a very dirty fuel, it has a massive direct impact as we are seeing in China.
Because, most people are by nature ignorant of the historical facts this gets discounted or we get a nice green narrative.

On the other side, solar and wind are another nail in the coffin for coal. Mostly cause they mess-up with the break even points on the operation of a power plant.
A coal plant can't be put on and off all the time, it has a lead time before it starts generating power, equipments will tear up if put into too many cooling off and power on cycles.
Also, wind and solar costs are centered on the fixed cost of financing the installation and maintenance, no extra fuelled required. So they have an incentive to sell power at any price available once built.
Even if the first operator gets bankrupt, the next one buying the assets for peanuts can make a killing.
Unless it is bought by an adamant coal operator that has an ideological bent on destroying everything not emitting carbon.
That doens't mean hidrocarbons are dead, it is just shifting from fuel sources that require high priced installations and have very low flexibility, hence natural gaz.
Now, if solar and wind keep growing at the same rates, we will see more displacement of hidrocarbon fuel sources. Though we will have to deal with baseload problem on energy sources that are intermittent.

"Wood burning and nuclear reactors"

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if they added a hyphen, I could get one o' those fancy wood-burning reactors!

Fossil fuels are carbon taken out of circulation

[sjbe]

And where do you think the carbon in coal and oil came from?

They came from plants and animals that died millions of years ago. That carbon has essentially been taken out of circulation. By digging it up and burning it we are adding it back to the ecosystem. Burning wood is roughly carbon neutral if you are not burning it faster than the wood grows because it just circulates carbon already in the ecosystem.

Burn no faster than the wood grows

[sjbe]

Firewood comes from treesthat take decades to grow (if not longer) . We burn through it in a fraction of that time.

We can but we don't have to. The trick is to burn it at a net rate no faster than it grows. That is a choice we make. If we burn the wood faster than the sources of it grow then it is no longer carbon neutral.

Re:Liberal whining farms

[aicrules]

While I somewhat agree with the OP, the liberal whining, while significantly stronger now will not doubt taper off too dramatically to prove to be a viable energy source. Now if we could just harness power from the tears they'll cry alone in their basement...then we'd have a sustainable resource.

Re:Liberal whining farms

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but the conservative whining could not power much of anything. Liberal whining has ~1000 times more energy output.

Re:Not conincidentally, they're running out of pow

[fbobraga]

This kind of media coverage turned viable the contruction of Belo Monte hydroelectric dam complex (that destroyed several lands inhabited by indigenous peoples and raises several environmental issues: I call it "FUD")

ugh; solar farms

[WindBourne]

Please, for the love of god, would you ppl QUIT DOING SOLAR FARMS. Building this over land is about as stupid as it gets. Do it over parking lots or roofs. Those sites convert light into heat. Lands convert light into sugars. If you are worried about AGW, then you need to reduce the FUCKING HEAT. If you are not worried about it, then quit subsidizing solar.
Fucking idiots.

For years we were told that it couldn't be done.

[pjv936]

Well, we are doing it anyway. Since the growth is exponential, we will be near 100% soon.

Nuclear power is a good thing now?

[blindseer]

Wow, look at that. Someone saying something good about nuclear power for once. Of course they will if it let's them hit a milestone like this. I thought nuclear was expensive, dangerous, and if you look at it wrong it will explode and melt your face off.

Here's the milestone I see, nuclear power is being recognized for what it is, carbon free, inexpensive, plentiful, and safe. This is a big deal to me because it is so rare to see anyone say anything good about nuclear power. With this announcement they may not say explicitly that nuclear power is safe and cheap but it is implied, at least they recognize it as carbon free.

I've done the math and it would be exceedingly difficult for any nation, especially one as small as the UK, to be energy independent without nuclear power. I've read some rather crazy claims that we can put solar panels in Africa to power the UK but at the same time we cannot build nuclear power in the UK. Well, if nuclear power is too dangerous to put in the UK then put them out in the African desert and run the wires to the UK, that way you'd get your energy night and day and not have to worry about looking at it wrong and it exploding in your face.

Re:Nuclear power is a good thing now?

[Anonymous Coward]

I support nuclear power, but don't mistake it for being inexpensive. Some nuclear units in deregulated markets in the US for example are getting shutdown because they can't compete with combined cycle natural gas units. Some units are being saved by bailouts.

Um. no.

[Anonymous Coward]

The headline is 50% from low-carbon sources, not from carbon-free, so your complaint is entirely self-manufactured error. Another nuke fluffer deceptive post.

Solar along highways

[Okian Warrior]

Please, for the love of god, would you ppl QUIT DOING SOLAR FARMS. Building this over land is about as stupid as it gets. Do it over parking lots or roofs. Those sites convert light into heat. Lands convert light into sugars. If you are worried about AGW, then you need to reduce the FUCKING HEAT. If you are not worried about it, then quit subsidizing solar.

I've often wondered if we could put solar panels along the highways here in the US. There's a lot of places where the median between lanes is 40 feet or so, and a lot of those stretches have guard rails on both sides. Some stretches have 40 feet or more of guarded dales along the sides, up to a chain link fence.

I once estimated that to supply the entire country's electrical needs (simple, back-of-the-envelope thing without taking into account peak load and other issues) we'd need solar panels along about 5,000 miles of highway, given some assumptions. We currently have about 45,000 miles of highway, and many of those lead straight into or through cities and towns, so power cable routing and right-of-way shouldn't be that bad.

(To compare power cable losses, consider how far high tension lines already have to go to bring electricity to places.)

To take an example, I80 or I70 through Nebraska and Kansas go through (or near) multiple small towns and has a very wide median. All of the bridges have wide, sloping expanses with guarded sections that could host a solar panel already.

Is there any reason we shouldn't just be planting solar panels along highways?

Re:Solar along highways

[blindseer]

Is there any reason we shouldn't just be planting solar panels along highways?

I'm not saying it is a bad idea but some issues need to be addressed.

Solar panels don't take in all the light, they are flat surfaces that can reflect a good portion of the light that hits them. If placed poorly they can blind drivers from the sunlight. If placed over the roads then the roads cannot benefit from the sunlight that make vehicles, debris, and other hazards more visible. In cold weather the sun would not melt off ice and snow. Even in sub-freezing air temperatures a dark asphalt or concrete road surface can be warmed enough by the sun to melt ice and evaporate the water.

Being large flat surfaces they can divert wind and/or get damaged by it. In places with a lot of snow it is common practice to put up snow fences to keep snow from piling up on roads. The solar panels themselves could act as a snow fence, which might mean they'd be buried in snow for much of the year. They could also divert the surface winds and make the snow problem worse. In extreme winds they could be torn free of their structures and become projectiles and/or road debris.

I've driven I-80 through Nebraska and other states and the wind and snow can be brutal. The winds have been known to take large trucks off the road. Sand and snow storms can be blinding, not good for solar power production. Once out of the cities the wind has a lot of room to pick up speed. Those panels would be sandblasted constantly, also not good. This needs to be taken into account and be part of the maintenance plan.

Those large spaces on either sides of these roads are there for a reason. I'm not sure what all of those reasons might be but if we fill this space with solar panels then we could lose whatever we gained.

Re:Solar along highways

[WindBourne]

over the highways makes more sense.
However, if the median is say rocks, or concrete, then by all means go for it. After all, animals really do not live there to any great degree.
BUT, doing an automated install on parking lots really makes a lot of sense. It can be set up so that the cars are under the panels. That protects them from the elements. In addition, light->heat now becomes light->electricity.
Interestingly, I am going to guess that asphalt gives off a lot of chemicals as it heats up. That would include CO2, but also things like methane. After all, asphalt is simply LONG CARBON hydrated chains. heat provides the energy needed to break it up.

Physics fail

[Anonymous Coward]

[solar farms] convert light into heat... If you are worried about AGW, then you need to reduce the FUCKING HEAT

Not Even Wrong

I assume the "fucking idiot" bit at the end is you projecting.

Mods, be ashamed of yourselves

[Shane_Optima]

Sad that this tripe got modded up.

There's a big difference between a 4% ROI in a month and a 4% ROI in a decade. There's a big difference between a 4 degree warming in a century and a 4 degree warming in ten thousand years. [Emphasis mine]

This has nothing whatsoever to do with the question of planting trees to offset the carbon emissions of burning coal vs. planting trees to offset the carbon emissions of burning trees. It doesn't matter where the coal came from or how long it took to be created. Only the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere matter, along with their rate of decrease/increase. The trees that grow to offset coal carbon don't grow any slower than the trees used to offset tree carbon. And do I really need to point out that carbon from burned coal does not enter the atmosphere two goddamn orders of magnitude faster than the carbon from burned trees?

Economics are not relevant at all to the scientific and mathematical question of carbon emission or net carbon emission, except to the extent that methods of tree planting, coal/tree harvesting and transport probably involve carbon emission.... which is a tangential argument and involves a lot of variables to conclusively solve (and that solution would likely vary by geography and climate.)

Yeah, but...

[Doghouse13]

It's easy to get to "good numbers" by just shutting down all the bad stuff. Unfortunately, that basically leaves us with 50% of Not Enough.

Re: Liberal whining farms

[billdale]

How the hell is complaining about liberals in such a whiny, childish manner any less troll-ish than someone pointing out the original pouting and foot-stomping? This is as blatantly biased and one-sided as can be imagined.