<
https://medium.com/the-new-climate/burning-biomass-for-electricity-is-worse-than-coal-a51db480b20d>
"Burning biomass has long been misclassified as ‘renewable energy’. The
reasoning was always overly simplistic, and amounts to little more than: “we
can always grow more trees, amirite?!” In reality, the biomass industry
destroys forests, harms health and communities worldwide (especially in North
America), and emits a shed-load* of CO2 and PM10 pollution (*not a scientific
term — precise quantities to follow).
The story as to how — and why — this happened is a little more complex. The
industry for forest-derived wood pellets for electricity generation is barely a
decade old, over which time it has dramatically increased. Since 2012, the UK’s
biggest coal power station, Drax, received more than £4 billion in public
subsidies to convert four out of its six boilers to burn wood pellets instead
of coal to produce electricity. In 2019, the UK imported 8.5 million metric
tons of wood pellets — astonishingly, given its small size, more than any other
country in the world. By 2022, Drax’s giant wood pellet boilers generated 11%
of the UK’s overall ‘renewable power’, at times peaking at up to 22%. Drax
closed its two-remaining coal-fired generation units in March 2021.
But is it really ‘renewable power’? Drax chooses to import its wood pellets
rather than invest in UK forestry. According to figures from Friends of the
Earth, 4.6 million tonnes of its wood pellets come from the USA, 1.2 million
tonnes from Canada, 0.8 million tonnes from Baltic states, and the rest from a
handful of other European countries. Drax says that 60–80% of this wood pellet
feedstock comes from sawmill residues, “thinnings” (small trees removed),
branches, tops, and bark. But Friends of the Earth claim that more than
one-third of the wood it burns is from large whole trees. They also say that
Drax, an old power station that opened in 1974, has a terrible thermal
efficiency of around 38%, which means for every 10 trees burned, 6 are wasted
as uncaptured heat.
Logging and transporting the trees from halfway across the world is anything
but ‘carbon neutral’. Drax’s own figures claim that for every kilowatt hour
(kWh) of electricity it produces it releases around 124g of carbon dioxide
(albeit other research suggests the true figure may be 4 times as much).
Transportation of the wood pellets to Drax accounts for around a half of this.
But if you compare this with truly renewable energy, it is more than ten times
that of offshore wind or solar power, which produces electricity at around 8g
CO2e per kWh (yes, even including the manufacture, construction and
maintenance)."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
