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Old November 7th, 2021 #21
Dawn Cannon
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Default UK has ‘real problems’ with burning wood for electricity, says Zac Goldsmith

Environment minister acknowledges environmental concerns that large-scale use of biomass is harming forests and producing carbon emissions

There are “real problems” with the burning of wood pellets for energy, an environment minister has admitted, after the Telegraph revealed Britain will continue to burn the equivalent of 25 million trees a year, despite a pledge to end the destruction of forests.

/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/06/uk-has-real-problems-burning-wood-electricity-admits-zac-goldsmith/

You don't say. Your lot has known this since the population of these islands was an unsustainable 30 million back in the 1960's, and what did you do? Yes, you brought MILLIONS more here.

So who's fault is it? It's not MINE, that's for sure.
 
Old December 18th, 2021 #22
Dawn Cannon
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Default It's madness that burning wood shipped in from America is counted as green energy

My bet is that when you hear the term ‘renewable energy’ the first thing that pops into your head is images of wind turbines or solar panels. Actually, no. I think of the chimneys of Drax Power Station in South Yorkshire pumping out clouds of smoke from the burning of wood pellets sourced from trees felled thousands of miles away in North America and the entire croplands and tiny forests of this country used in ethanol production, because I'm not a fucking television watching, government believing npc)


What you don’t think of is the chimneys of Drax Power Station in South Yorkshire pumping out clouds of smoke from the burning of wood pellets sourced from trees felled thousands of miles away in North America.

Yet as 50 MPs of all parties pointed out in a letter to the business and energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng this week, government policy perversely counts this scenario - which happens day after day at Britain’s biggest power station - as a zero-carbon form of energy.

The MPs, led by Conservative Peter Bottomley, Father of the House of Commons, have demanded that the Government withdraws subsidies for wood burning - and stops trying to pretend it is contributing to Britain’s efforts to become ‘net zero’ by 2050.

‘Biomass’ - as we are supposed to call wood and other vegetable matter nowadays - accounted for 29 per cent of what the Government calls ‘renewable’ energy in 2019.

Drax is the world’s largest biomass-burning power station and alone supplies 12 per cent of the UK’s renewable energy.

Yet to call burning wood ‘zero carbon’, as the government does, flies in the face of reality.

According to a report by the think tank Chatham House in October, burning wood pellets in the UK sourced from U.S. forests emits between 13 million and 16 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year - equivalent to the amount emitted by between six and seven million petrol cars.

In fact, for every unit of energy produced (measured in kilowatt-hours), burning wood in a power station emits about ten per cent more carbon dioxide than burning coal.

How on earth have we arrived at the crazy situation where, in the name of achieving net zero emission targets, we are burning a fuel transported halfway across the world that’s even more polluting than the coal it’s replaced?

Huge sums were lavished on Drax by the Government to convert from coal to wood pellets - money paid by all of us through our energy bills.

As the MPs say in their letter, they ‘cannot understand why it was decided to give Drax £4 billion of subsidies in electricity bills to create even more carbon dioxide’.

Last edited by Dawn Cannon; December 18th, 2021 at 12:22 PM.
 
Old December 18th, 2021 #23
Dawn Cannon
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Default

And while government handouts for new biomass plants have been reduced in recent years, existing contracts mean we will be subsidising biomass plants until 2037, through our bills.

The point is that wood burning is only carbon-neutral if you fall for the government conceit that the carbon dioxide emitted in the process will eventually be re-absorbed by trees which are planted in place of those felled for wood pellets.

But it takes minutes to burn a tree - and decades for one to grow in its place and re-absorb all that carbon dioxide.

A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018 concluded that the ‘payback time’ for this carbon debt ranges from 44 to 104 years, depending on forest type.

Some argue that wood burning is carbon-neutral if you burn thinnings, offcuts and unwanted branches in that they would be left to rot anyway.

Yet as the Chatham House study revealed, just over half of the wood pellets imported to be burned in UK power stations come from whole trees - not just trimmings.

If the forests being felled for biomass were in Britain there would be outrage. We would be able to see the environmental destruction for what it is.

But as the forests are in North America the Government perhaps hopes it is a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’.

As well as emissions from burning the wood itself, there are also emissions from machinery used to fell the trees, to turn wood into pellets, and from the ships used to transport the material across the Atlantic.

Nor are carbon emissions the only problem. Wood burning is also a major source of particulate pollution - tiny specks of matter which can damage the heart and lungs.

It is true that particulate pollution from burning wood at the very high temperatures of power station boilers is much lower than burning wood in domestic stoves or an open fire.

But the government has been subsidising us to install wood-burning stoves, too. Some of them qualify for payments under the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), which pays homeowners thousands of pounds to heat their homes with wood rather than fossil fuels.

According to the Government’s own Air Quality Expert Group between six and 25 per cent of particulate pollution in urban areas in winter comes from wood-burning.

London and other cities are punishing drivers of diesel cars with eye-watering daily charges on the grounds that they are polluting the air - yet at the same time the Government is paying homeowners to buy filthy wood stoves.

It is nothing short of madness.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/a...energy-UK.html


The above is from a pro-nuclear piece. BritZOG wants to go nuclear for everything, which again is totally ridiculous, but as we now belong to the third world, no-one will consider give it any money (except China).

Last edited by Dawn Cannon; December 18th, 2021 at 12:21 PM.
 
Old February 6th, 2022 #24
Dawn Cannon
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Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawn Cannon View Post
The few trees we had in England are currently being felled at an alarming rate and seem to be destined for export (and of course the biomass "market" here)

Please post if you have any info.
Dawn,
I heard that the Global Satanists are storing all those forests in their vast, underground bunkers.


The curious thing is, you see as many lorries going down the freeway loaded with forests, as you see them travelling up the same freeway loaded with forests of the same size. 2020 was crazy.

Last edited by Dawn Cannon; February 6th, 2022 at 06:51 AM.
 
Old February 6th, 2022 #25
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Default Portugal becomes the fourth EU country to stop using coal to generate electricity

Portugal shut down its last remaining coal plant over the weekend, ending the use of the polluting material for electricity generation. It becomes the fourth country in the European Union to do so.

Environmental group Zero said in a statement the Pego plant in central Portugal had been the country's second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, adding that "freeing ourselves from the biggest source of greenhouse gases was a momentous day for Portugal".

https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/...te-electricity (20/11/21)

MEANWHILE...

Big biomass in Portugal
OCTOBER 2021

“Large-scale energy generation
and wood pellet production are
an increasingly significant use of
Portugal’s forest resources”

Driven by a supportive policy framework
and generous subsidies, large-scale
energy generation and wood pellet
production are an increasingly significant
use of Portugal’s forest resources.
Legislation stipulates that only “residues”
can be used, but under current EU rules
this term can include any type of wood1
.
Given that Portugal has experienced an
abrupt rise in harvested forest areas2
alongside a rapid increase in biomass
power generation and wood pellet
production capacity, a close examination
of the industry and its impacts is badly
needed. After forest fires badly affected
large areas of the country in 2003, the
use of so-called residual forest biomass
to reduce fuel load in forest areas was
encouraged as a way to reduce fire risk.
The success of this strategy is debatable,
especially given the fact that less than 15
years later even more devastating fires
tore through central and northern regions
in 2017. However, the policy did result in
the construction of a large number of
electricity-only biomass power plants.

Alongside this, in recent years the
development of biomass-based domestic
heating systems and the conversion of
coal-fired power stations to burning
biomass in Europe have led to the
exponential growth of the wood pellet
market. In Portugal as in other European
countries, the strength of the pellet
market has led to the construction of
numerous pellet mills across the country
which has had a direct impact on the
demand for biomass.
Another significant recent development
is the planned conversion of Portugal’s
remaining coal-fired power station to
burning biomass. At 628MW, Pego power
station has the potential to dwarf all
other requirements for forest biomass,
and would undoubtedly also lead to
significant imports of wood and/or
pellets.
Put together, these projects based around
direct or indirect energy generation
require a considerable amount of
biomass. This document seeks to analyze
the current national context of the use of
forest biomass for bioenergy generation,
particularly in the production of pellets
and for burning in dedicated biomass
power plants.

https://zero.ong/wp-content/uploads/...n_Portugal.pdf

Last edited by Dawn Cannon; February 6th, 2022 at 06:54 AM.
 
Old February 6th, 2022 #26
Dawn Cannon
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Default Chipping Trees in Portugal for Energy in the UK

Biofuelwatch UK has recently published a short investigative article about Pinewells pellet mill in Central Portugal, which supplies pellets to the massive Drax coal-to-biomass conversion in the UK.

Location of the mill: N 40º15’47.80” W 8º04’26.06″

The bioenergy industry argues that forest biomass used for energy is largely residues and secondary wood products. The Biofuelwatch article reveals that this isn’t true, and “over 80% of its feedstock was from primary forestry (i.e. logging) operations.”

According to the article the Pinewells plant produced around 120,000 tonnes of pellets, which required 243,000 tonnes of wood. Based on the conversion factor of Forest Research UK website, this equals to 367,000 cubic meters (m3) of wood. This translates to 2.6% of the total Portuguese roundwood removal in 2019 (wood in a rough, under bark, EUROSTAT file “for_remov”).

https://forestdefenders.eu/chipping-...rgy-in-the-uk/
 
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