Burning wood is not ‘renewable energy,’ so why do policymakers pretend it is?
Burning wood is not ‘renewable energy,’ so why do policymakers pretend it is?
The writer of this article is an idiot who doesn't understand that there is a difference between "renewable energy" and "clean energy".
Of course burning wood pellets is renewable energy. It's wood. We can literally grow it. We will not "run out" because we can just grow more, it takes like 2 years to grow trees for that purpose. Just because where we grow it may have changed doesn't mean it's not renewable.
What it isn't, is clean. Burning wood releases a shit ton of carbon. But it's still renewable.
Burning trees planted two years ago doesn't actually release any carbon that wasn't already in the atmosphere two years ago.
Yes and leaving trees alone rather than cutting them down to burn for wood just means they’re going to end up releasing that carbon when they die and rot on the forest floor.
The only way for trees to sequester carbon is turn them into a form that does not rot. In the distant past, that process was geologic. Temperature and pressure turned the wood into fossil fuels which were trapped underground until we started digging them up to burn.
To replicate that process today we’d have to bury a bunch of trees in deep mines or empty oil wells and cap them off to make sure the CO2 doesn’t escape.
I agree with you, but it's worth mentioning that a lot of goverments (such as the UK) are classing burning wood pellets as 0 carbon energy. The argument being that burning wood releases recently absorbed carbon (from the last 20 years or so) so doesn't increase overall levels of carbon in the same way as coal.
I kinda see the argument, but it does sound like a dangerous path towards "eco-accounting" like we've seen with offsetting, where calculations for carbon release are out of wack with the scientific reality.
Edit: I get that the writer is conflating two seperate terms btw, but think there's a version of this argument that makes sense.
It literally grows on trees !
Not just carbon, but a lot of other combustion byproducts that people shouldn’t breathe.
It’s a dirty fuel with no way to clean up the emissions and causes massive health problems. But it’s definitely renewable
That was basically the impression that I got. Depending on the wheres and hows, growing wood as fuel can degrade the ecosystem and make it more difficult to continue to grow it there, but that's more a question of "sustainability" of a particular practice than the renewability of the resource itself. The problems with burning wood for fuel are many:
Whatever the problem, "we can just cut down more trees" is not the solution. There is enough deforested land in the world, and letting native forests grow back is one of the simplest and most effective ways to stabilise the climate. Forests are worth so much more than their wood.
Depending on the wheres and hows, growing wood as fuel can degrade the ecosystem and make it more difficult to continue to grow it there, but that's more a question of "sustainability" of a particular practice than the renewability of the resource itself.
You also need to rotate crops or you slowly reduce yield to nothing over time. Is farm-grown food not renewable? 🤪
I wonder if ag waste or help is a better idea. that should be carbon neutral while also providing power during still wind nights
If we are looking at just the carbon though, that carbon is collected by the 2 year old trees, right? So it's net carbon-neutral in that sense.
The tree itself would in theory have consumed as much carbon as it releases when burned, but when you take into consideration harvesting and processing, then it's still a net producer.
Depends on what would be there if those trees weren't grown/cut for wood. Old-growth forest stores more carbon than young forest. This perhaps would have been a more important point for the author to have made.
I agree, the points in this article are about clean energy, not the ability to continuously refresh a resource as you deplete it, however, to play devil's advocate:
Wood, specifically, is not likely renewable at a sufficient rate. i.e. it is impossible to grow enough wood to meet any significant energy requirements. While it is technically renewable, if we treat it as such, we will deplete resources faster than we can replace them.
This is a silly argument I am making, and requires a narrow definition ignoring other bio-fuels which, while unproven at scale, would potentially remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
It's not really an article, it's more of an introductory text for the podcast. I think if you listen to it you will understand the perspective. It covers what you mention early on.
It's locally released though right, and removed from the air when you grow the tree up "again". I mean not perfect but it's not like burning oil.
The writer just doesn't know what the word "renewable" means, and is complaining solely about how dirty it is.
This is a podcast. At 4:20 it addresses what you say.
Holy shit, you're right! He literally thinks "renewable" and "green" energy are synonymous. That's middle school life science level knowledge. That's really embarrassing for him
There's a lot of comments here on efficiency and environmental impact. I'd like to point out that, like any energy source, biomass' efficiency and impact vary wildly with how you use it.
Solar/wind energy isn't a silver bullet for every scenario and combustion isn't always an outmoded relic. The impact and costs for each are actually quite complex. For an interesting read, I'd recommend these articles: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/12/too-much-combustion-too-little-fire/
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/09/how-to-make-biomass-energy-sustainable-again/
Nomenclature about clean vs renewable aside, there's some county towns in Australia that'r absolutely disgusting at night in winter from the woodsmoke from all the houses. Sure electricity heating is less effective, but we've paid the carbon cost for that infrastructure and electricity production IS becoming greener.
Not that long ago in New Zealand we had a lot of the same.
In Christchurch (which is a sprawling, flat, and low-lying city), the combination of smog from widespread wood fireplaces plus old sodium street lights, when driving in from the outskirts at night you'd see a grotty orange-pink cloud hanging low over the city.
https://www.canterburystories.nz/collections/archives/star/prints/1992-1995/ccl-cs-4765
It's improved a lot, partly due to policy, although a fair bit due to the city being extensively damaged by an earthquake, and fireplaces (which had their brick chimneys destroyed) being replaced by heat pumps.