Is biomass usage sustainable and as green as it is made out to be?

[spuddog0507]

I think the biomass thing is about the biggest scam there is in the world, i think if you can afford the initial payment for the boilers and get on a RHI payment your on a winner, bloke in yard next to me has 2 glen farrow boilers that cost him around 90k and he has allways said they paid for themselves in 18 months now they are paying a ten year mortgauge on a £750k house, 

there is tip sites for chip all over the place now and some people are doing ok out of it the arb lads go in tip a tonne off and at some sites there will be 10/15/20 lads tip off every day, 2 sites i know of, one takes about 70-80 tonne of log and chip per week, all the decent hardwood he has 2 lads sorting it out and splitting in to logs the rest goes throughtt a big chipper, this guy was farming 10 year ago and now rents the land out sells the chip and firewood all year round and he says he has never had as much money with so little worry, 

A few years ago they where shipping logs in to Hull from Sweaden and Finland to feed dracks power station most of this wood went to dracks but if you can make sence of this bit and understand how it can be green energy, some of this log was chipped on the dockside and loaded on to a smaller ship and taken back across the north sea to Holland ? the logs came past Holland the week before on the way to the UK ??

Then in the house of commons there is one bloke ticking boxes who is giving RHI payments out for people to create green heat,, and the bloke opposite him is ticking boxes for reductions in Co2 emmissions and global warming ,,,Its all wrong and same old thing the left hand dont know what the right hand is doing, but thats the people who are paid 10s of 1000s pounds to do the job ,,,,  the only green energies we really do have are wind, water and sun and 2 of them we have used for many many years with great success, but are they not good enough for todays needs ??? we have had rain here for nearly 48 hrs now the river is nearly at the top of the bankings, we could of used some of that with out harming anything, i could go on about several other things related to biomass but as i said at the begging its all a massive scam,

[trigger_andy]

Just now, Paddy1000111 said:

Because carbon neutral means that the whole process from start to finish nets as 0 carbon at the end.

Im not 100% sure thats correct. The fuel itself, ie Logs, is Carbon Neutral. All fuel carries an additional Carbon Footprint, but logs themselves are Carbon Neutral. 

 

Just now, Paddy1000111 said:

Thing is, by using "arb waste" you are taking that carbon and releasing it but without planting more trees to suck it up you are only releasing carbon.

I dont agree. The carbon has been captured in a relatively short period of time and released again.  This is why its described as Carbon Neutral. Its akin to popping outside on a winters day and chipping a bit of ice off for your Rum and Coke. The Ice has been recently formed and then quickly re-melted. Fossil Fuels is carbon captured in the distant past and over a vast period of time and released over a very short period of time creating an unsustainable build up of CO2. This would be like harvesting Ice Bergs or Glaciers for your Ice Cube. Ice thats been formed over millennia and used/released back into liquid form over a very short period of time creating an unsustainable rise in sea levels. 

 

3 minutes ago, Paddy1000111 said:

Crude oil etc is all trapped CO2 from organics centuries ago, by the logic that "It absorbed it so it can be released again" all fossil fuels would be carbon neutral too.

See above.

 

4 minutes ago, Paddy1000111 said:

The process to be carbon neutral is release and absorb not absorb and release.

Is that a personal opinion or something you can back up? And why is it not absorb and release? 

 

5 minutes ago, Paddy1000111 said:

You can't cut down trees and burn them and call it carbon neutral,

Yes you can. Its Carbon thats been sucked outta the atmosphere in a very short period of time and released again in a short period of time. Carbon Neutral.  

 

6 minutes ago, Paddy1000111 said:

you have to clear up the carbon you released ie you have to plant trees to replace the ones you cut down or it's just a carbon positive process

I dont agree. The tree's that are capturing the carbon over a very short period of time will release that carbon again when they die anyway. We're talking about a microscopic period of time compared to the millions of years involved in creating and storing the fossil fuels and the extremely short period of time we're consuming it. 

 

Im not saying we should not be re-planting tree's, and we are. But that does not chance the fact that burning a tree and not replacing it is still Carbon Neutral. It would be an environmental crime if we did that of course. 

 

 

[Doug Tait]

12 minutes ago, Paddy1000111 said:

 a metric sh*t tonne

Like the unit of measurement used there Paddy

[Paddy1000111]

What is carbon neutrality and how can it be achieved by 2050? | News | European Parliament

WWW.EUROPARL.EUROPA.EU

---

With the European Climate Law, the EU will commit to carbon neutrality by 2050. What would that mean in practice?

 

Hopefully European parliament is a good source, finding reliable sources for info is a pain in the arse! 

 

In summary(from the above link): Carbon neutrality means having a balance between emitting carbon and absorbing carbon from the atmosphere in carbon sinks. Removing carbon oxide from the atmosphere and then storing it is known as carbon sequestration. In order to achieve net zero emissions, all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions will have to be counterbalanced by carbon sequestration.

 

I know what you are saying but carbon neutrality is a process not an item. CO2 is in issue because its in the atmosphere. If we just cut down trees and burn them as wood is "carbon neutral" then we would release all that stored co2 back into the atmosphere. Our main causes of CO2 like coal, oil, gas etc are all stored CO2, we don't call them carbon neutral so why are trees any different. I think you are confusing a process with a label. If cutting down trees without replacing them was carbon neutral then all the rainforest deforestation (minus the machinery) would all be carbon neutral? 

 

Let's say you have 5 trees and they have absorbed 500kg of CO2 (forget the reality of measurements here). If you cut those trees down because a customer has asked you to and then you split them, dry them and burn them you have released 500kg of co2 into the atmosphere. If you don't plant any trees to replace them then you are carbon positive, it doesn't matter that the Co2 has been absorbed and released again as you have destroyed a carbon sink. The only way for it to be neutral is for you to cut down those 5 trees and get an end product (heat) and then plant 5 more trees as carbon sinks to achieve carbon sequestration. 

 

Carbon neutrality is the process of releasing carbon to get an end product and then absorbing that CO2 into a carbon sink like a tree or with carbon scrubbers. This is why so many companies are part of a plant a tree foundation. If you go and cut down all the forests they plant and burn it then you have released the Co2 they have created in the first place so the process isn't carbon neutral. 

 

[trigger_andy]

3 minutes ago, Paddy1000111 said:

then we would release all that stored co2 back into the atmosphere.

Its been captured over a short period of time and regardless if burned or decaying its getting released in a short period of time as well. Its getting released, not stored. 

 

4 minutes ago, Paddy1000111 said:

Our main causes of CO2 like coal, oil, gas etc are all stored CO2, we don't call them carbon neutral so why are trees any different.

Its vastly different and I explained why in my previous post. 

 

5 minutes ago, Paddy1000111 said:

I think you are confusing a process with a label.

I think we both think the other person is confused here.  

 

5 minutes ago, Paddy1000111 said:

Let's say you have 5 trees and they have absorbed 500kg of CO2 (forget the reality of measurements here). If you cut those trees down because a customer has asked you to and then you split them, dry them and burn them you have released 500kg of co2 into the atmosphere.

No, you've captured carbon in a very short period of time and again released it in a very short period of time. This is called Carbon Neutral.  '

'

 

[Paddy1000111]

I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree 😂 

 

A carbon positive process by all accounts is a process that takes stored co2 and releases it as a gas into the environment. If you cut down a 200 year old tree and release the co2 as a gas into the environment it's not a carbon neutral process. A tree, if left to decay naturally would only release a fraction of its solid co2 as a gas and the dead tree would also provide nutrients to another tree which would replace it and absorb the co2 the dead tree releases. 

 

Co2 is only an issue as a gas in the atmosphere and that's the only type of co2 we monitor. When it's stored in trees for any amount of time it's not an issue. You can't cut down a tree and burn it and call it carbon neutral, it's not what that term means! 😂

 

By cutting down a tree (a carbon sink) you release carbon into the atmosphere to get an end product (heat) if you don't replace that tree with another one you are carbon positive

[Paddy1000111]

I think we may be confusing processes though. If you plant a tree with the sole intention of burning it then it's net zero in a way. I'm on about be a tree company going round and removing trees for people or removing forests. 

[arboriculturist]

28 minutes ago, Paddy1000111 said:

I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree 😂 

 

A carbon positive process by all accounts is a process that takes stored co2 and releases it as a gas into the environment. If you cut down a 200 year old tree and release the co2 as a gas into the environment it's not a carbon neutral process. A tree, if left to decay naturally would only release a fraction of its solid co2 as a gas and the dead tree would also provide nutrients to another tree which would replace it and absorb the co2 the dead tree releases. 

 

Co2 is only an issue as a gas in the atmosphere and that's the only type of co2 we monitor. When it's stored in trees for any amount of time it's not an issue. You can't cut down a tree and burn it and call it carbon neutral, it's not what that term means! 😂

 

By cutting down a tree (a carbon sink) you release carbon into the atmosphere to get an end product (heat) if you don't replace that tree with another one you are carbon positive

The 'Key' point to remember is that felling a 100 year old Oak and planting another Oak does not  = 'Carbon Neutral'.

 

After 20 years the replacement Oak tree probably will still only have 10-15 % of the foliage area of the 100 year old Oak felled.

 

I am uncertain of the ratio of how many trees are required to be planted to =  'Carbon Neutral', when a felled tree is burnt for fuel, but I would be very interested to know and it should be common knowledge IMO.

 

We need to have the knowledge to at least attempt to do what we can to save the planet.

Edited January 14, 2021 by arboriculturist

[Paddy1000111]

10 minutes ago, arboriculturist said:

The 'Key' point to remember is that felling a 100 year old Oak and planting another Oak does not  = 'Carbon Neutral'.

 

After 20 years the replacement Oak tree probably will still only have 10-15 % of the foliage area of the 100 year old Oak felled.

 

I am uncertain of the ratio of how many trees are required to be planted to =  'Carbon Neutral', when a felled tree is burnt for fuel, but I would be very interested to know and it should be common knowledge IMO.

 

We need to have the knowledge to at least attempt to do what we can to save the planet.

That's the thing with net neutral trees. You can cut down a 100 year old oak and replace it with a sapling to be carbon neutral but that sapling has to be there for 100 years before the cycle would be complete. That's where theses carbon offset tree planting programmes are good in theory but it's going to take 10-20 years for carbon created by a company during whatever process to be balanced out.

 

A typical mature hardwood absorbs about 21kg of carbon a year so an acre of forest absorbs the carbon from roughly 2 cars...

[AHPP]

2 hours ago, spuddog0507 said:

I think the biomass thing is about the biggest scam there is in the world, i think if you can afford the initial payment for the boilers and get on a RHI payment your on a winner, bloke in yard next to me has 2 glen farrow boilers that cost him around 90k and he has allways said they paid for themselves in 18 months now they are paying a ten year mortgauge on a £750k house, 

there is tip sites for chip all over the place now and some people are doing ok out of it the arb lads go in tip a tonne off and at some sites there will be 10/15/20 lads tip off every day, 2 sites i know of, one takes about 70-80 tonne of log and chip per week, all the decent hardwood he has 2 lads sorting it out and splitting in to logs the rest goes throughtt a big chipper, this guy was farming 10 year ago and now rents the land out sells the chip and firewood all year round and he says he has never had as much money with so little worry, 

A few years ago they where shipping logs in to Hull from Sweaden and Finland to feed dracks power station most of this wood went to dracks but if you can make sence of this bit and understand how it can be green energy, some of this log was chipped on the dockside and loaded on to a smaller ship and taken back across the north sea to Holland ? the logs came past Holland the week before on the way to the UK ??

Then in the house of commons there is one bloke ticking boxes who is giving RHI payments out for people to create green heat,, and the bloke opposite him is ticking boxes for reductions in Co2 emmissions and global warming ,,,Its all wrong and same old thing the left hand dont know what the right hand is doing, but thats the people who are paid 10s of 1000s pounds to do the job ,,,,  the only green energies we really do have are wind, water and sun and 2 of them we have used for many many years with great success, but are they not good enough for todays needs ??? we have had rain here for nearly 48 hrs now the river is nearly at the top of the bankings, we could of used some of that with out harming anything, i could go on about several other things related to biomass but as i said at the begging its all a massive scam,

Everyone involved in this sort of thing should be put to death.