BC is subisidizing an industry dirtier than coal!

[Glacier]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -coal.html

[Snman]

I assume BC means British consumers.

[Glacier]

I assume BC means British consumers.

We are doing the same!

[Fancy]

I believe this is the paper being referred to:

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.10 ... aaa512/pdf

In sum, although bioenergy from wood can lower long-run CO2 concentrations compared to fossil fuels, its first impact is an increase in CO2, worsening global warming over the critical period through 2100 even if the wood offsets coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel. Declaring that biofuels are carbon neutral as the EU and others have done, erroneously assumes forest regrowth quickly and fully offsets the emissions from biofuel production and combustion. The neutrality assumption is not valid because it ignores the transient, but decades to centuries long, increase in CO2 caused by biofuels.

[Queen K]

Yet, it is claimed that the Drax plant produces millions of tonnes more greenhouse gases using wood pellets than coal.

Footage shows the US forest being chopped down and taken to a factory owned by US firm Enviva, which grinds logs into pellets. As one of Enviva’s main customers, a large proportion of these are shipped to the UK. The power station giant claims that burning pellets instead of coal reduces carbon emissions by more than 80 per cent.

However, Dispatches conducted a simple experiment at a laboratory at the University of Nottingham which found that to burn an amount of wood pellets generating the same amount of electricity as coal, it would actually produce roughly 8 per cent more carbon.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z5CqnDwwC0
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[Snman]

I assume BC means British consumers.

We are doing the same!

Oh, I was unaware of that Glacier.

[The Green Barbarian]

Yet, it is claimed that the Drax plant produces millions of tonnes more greenhouse gases using wood pellets than coal.

what are Greenhouse gases in this context? I'm just curious. If this plant produces CO2, then that's good, as it's a harmless gas required by all plant life to live.

[Queen K]

Google "British Columbia and wood pellet industry" like I did Snman

I assume BC means British consumers.

We are doing the same!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c ... -1.3898129

We are and what I'm discerning from your original post is that the image of the wood pellet industry as being cleaner than coal is in fact "green washing".

It's like the whole "paper or plastic bag" debate and will come right down to how the raw material was originally extracted in the first place.

[The Green Barbarian]

We are and what I'm discerning from your original post is that the image of the wood pellet industry as being cleaner than coal is in fact "green washing".
.

I don't understand the concept of "clean" here. What particulates are these wood pellet industry people putting in the air? Coal I agree creates a lot of smog when proper scrubbers aren't in place, but is the same amount of particulate pollution created by wood?

[Queen K]

I am reading the article Glacier provided a link for and will be exploring this further.

Yet, it is claimed that the Drax plant produces millions of tonnes more greenhouse gases using wood pellets than coal.

what are Greenhouse gases in this context? I'm just curious. If this plant produces CO2, then that's good, as it's a harmless gas required by all plant life to live.

https://thinkprogress.org/too-much-carb ... c2a240619/

A google search on "overabundance of Carbon gases" produces quite a few articles on why too much of a good thing is exactly that. Too much.

[Queen K]

This one is for you GB

Clean energy, big bills
Household energy bills are increasing by an average of £23 this year to reflect the rising cost of switching to green energy, says industry regulator Ofgem.

This takes the figure up to £135 on a typical household bill of £1,100 for a standard variable tariff.

Under a scheme known as the Renewables Obligation, energy companies are required to buy a certain proportion of their electricity from renewable sources, which could be a so-called biomass plant burning wood, such as Drax, or wind farms.

These energy supplies are typically more expensive than the cheapest form of power, which most often comes from gas- fired power stations.

The bill for this scheme, which is passed on to customers through bills, is rising by £700million this year to reach £5.4billion. And a so-called Contracts for Difference scheme pays low-carbon generators to develop new projects.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z5CqqbVx46
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[Fancy]

I liked this conclusion:

The conclusion is that to mitigate climate change it is better to store wood than use it as a fuel.

From the research article referenced in the above research paper.

[Queen K]

I liked this conclusion:

The conclusion is that to mitigate climate change it is better to store wood than use it as a fuel.

From the research article referenced in the above research paper.

Store wood? As in, in its live form, still standing? Because young trees take in more carbon than old trees.

[Fancy]

Here's part of the article that was cited:
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ate_change

[erinmore3775]

I am not trying to burst anyone's bubble hear, but there is a clear distinction between pellet producers in British Columbia and pellet producers in the United States. Pellet producers in British Columbia produce their product almost exclusively from waste wood and sawdust from local sawmills. This is in contrast to many American plants that use raw lumber to produce their pellets.

http://www.eaglevalleyfuelpellets.com/index.php
Eagle Valley Wood Fuel Pellet

https://pinnaclepellet.com/about-us/
Pinnacle Renewable Energy
Please examine the February 11, 2018 CEO Interview

British Columbia pellet manufacturers are part of the "green" solution not part of the problem. They take a "waste" sawmill product and process that into a value added energy product that is renewable. The use of these energy based products release approximately the same amount of greenhouse gases as would the natural decomposition of the sawmill waste product. The advantage over a petroleum based energy sources is that these are totally renewable. The other advantage is that many of the pellet manufacturing facilities are located in areas that provide employment to small resource based communities.

Most of the pellets produced in British Columbia are exported to Asia as an alternative energy source to coal. Since pellets burn "cleaner" than coal and are renewable they are part of the environmental solution not a problem. While a comparable amount of pellets produces about the same amount of GHG as coal, their combustion does not produce the same amount of smog producing components.

This is a clean, value added industry that was supported by the previous government. It was part of an overall plan designed to improve our provincial environment and support the economy in regions outside the lower mainland. The current government would be better disposed to concentrate on the economics and job creation based upon the development of value added resource, manufacturing, and construction projects than spending all their energy on the opposition to projects that will benefit the BC economy.