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

[richyrich]

What happened to all the schemes for willow biomass powerstations- i think the subsidies were removed on them maybe?

[openspaceman]

3 hours ago, richyrich said:

What happened to all the schemes for willow biomass powerstations- i think the subsidies were removed on them maybe?

It was largely promoted for ARBRE a gasifying generation plant, when that failed to materialise...

[openspaceman]

9 hours ago, Paddy1000111 said:

or removing forests. 

I  think you're splitting hairs a bit deciding whether you count  net carbon zero as you fell the tree or from the point you plant it, the issue is that the sustainable bit is that as much tree biomass is growing each year as is harvested (or falls down and rots back to water and CO2).

 

In fact we know that in many places forests are being replaced by grazing land or other uses so their wood is not sustainable.

 

The was a book written by a senior forester with the FAO maybe 40 years ago where he points out that man has been turning virgin forest  to agriculture since the stone age and at the time he thought half IIRC the excess CO2 emitted into the atmosphere (and by implication the 45% of that that is in equilibrium with surface waters of the seas)  before the industrial age came from forests that were felled in the tropics  from Tudor times onward to grow things like sugar for us in the north. The inference is that the climate was being modified by man before he discovered fossil fuels but the fossil fuel era has only taken off in the last 100 years.

[Paddy1000111]

10 hours ago, openspaceman said:

I  think you're splitting hairs a bit deciding whether you count  net carbon zero as you fell the tree or from the point you plant it, the issue is that the sustainable bit is that as much tree biomass is growing each year as is harvested (or falls down and rots back to water and CO2).

Net carbon zero means that a process from start to finish has not released more co2 into the air than what you started with.

The only reason I split hairs is that we only have a finite amount of forest in the UK, that's getting less and less with new house builds, train lines etc etc. If your process as a business is to go in and remove trees that would have otherwise remained standing, say clearance work for a new build, then it's a carbon positive process. That co2 wouldn't have been released into the atmosphere if that area was left alone. 

The other option as that you do forestry and the trees were effectively a crop, solely planted to cut down and make timber from then be replanted again which would be carbon neutral, infact carbon negative if you're doing it for timber as you have changed co2 from a gas to a solid in the wood which will be stored in a building.

 

I really don't think you can class ARB waste from trees cut down in gardens or removed from an area and burnt for heat as carbon neutral as your process is to take a carbon sink and destroy it releasing the CO2. That isn't carbon neutral, it doesn't matter that the co2 was absorbed origionaly, if you continued doing that on a mass scale the atmospheric co2 level will rise substantially as you are deforesting...

 

My point really is that wood isn't carbon neutral unless the process of acquiring it is carbon neutral. You can't go and chop down trees, burn it and call it carbon neutral because the tree absorbed co2 in its life so it's okay to release it again

[Rob_the_Sparky]

Imagine we have a demand we have to satisfy for electricity that is likely to rise given the pressure to use electric cars and heating.  If we can not get enough capacity from solar, wind, etc (no chance) then we need power from other sources.

 

Would we rather that was from coal, gas, biomas, nuclear, etc?

 

While biomass may not be as carbon neutral as it is cracked up to be (down to marketing) it is a heck of a lot better than coal or gas.  Personally I'd prefer not to have to look after nuclear waste for a few thousand years so while we don't have enough carbon neutral power what are we going to use?

 

Rob

 

P.S. the trouble with wind, solar, wave etc. is that they do not provide power on demand.  Once they become significant producers of power you will need to store huge amounts of power to cover the times they are not producing power...

[Paddy1000111]

7 minutes ago, Rob_the_Sparky said:

Imagine we have a demand we have to satisfy for electricity that is likely to rise given the pressure to use electric cars and heating.  If we can not get enough capacity from solar, wind, etc (no chance) then we need power from other sources.

 

Would we rather that was from coal, gas, biomas, nuclear, etc?

 

While biomass may not be as carbon neutral as it is cracked up to be (down to marketing) it is a heck of a lot better than coal or gas.  Personally I'd prefer not to have to look after nuclear waste for a few thousand years so while we don't have enough carbon neutral power what are we going to use?

 

Rob

 

P.S. the trouble with wind, solar, wave etc. is that they do not provide power on demand.  Once they become significant producers of power you will need to store huge amounts of power to cover the times they are not producing power...

I completely agree that I would rather biomass than coal or gas etc! I just think there's no point in us doing biomass in the UK unless we start allocating biomass forests and actually make it sustainable. I'm not sure how long they grow the trees for before they harvest them but lets for argument sake say 30 years? How many tonnes of forest is burnt as biomass a year what about 30 years? How many acres of forests would it take to go full circle? 

 

It also seems to me that by burning the wood we are releasing it into the atmosphere but its going to take 30 years to level out and go full circle? We're going to raise the CO2 level in the atmosphere until we hit that full circle in my mind? The carbon from a tree is released in a few hours when burnt, it goes into the atmosphere, a few small saplings at the time aren't going to be able to absorb the CO2 from acres of mature forest? Surely the CO2 is going to rise until we hit the full circle point?

[doobin]

21 minutes ago, Rob_the_Sparky said:

Imagine we have a demand we have to satisfy for electricity that is likely to rise given the pressure to use electric cars and heating.  If we can not get enough capacity from solar, wind, etc (no chance) then we need power from other sources.

 

Would we rather that was from coal, gas, biomas, nuclear, etc?

 

While biomass may not be as carbon neutral as it is cracked up to be (down to marketing) it is a heck of a lot better than coal or gas.  Personally I'd prefer not to have to look after nuclear waste for a few thousand years so while we don't have enough carbon neutral power what are we going to use?

 

Rob

 

P.S. the trouble with wind, solar, wave etc. is that they do not provide power on demand.  Once they become significant producers of power you will need to store huge amounts of power to cover the times they are not producing power...

The problem is, you’re advocating biomass as a complete replacement for every other fuel source. Have you any idea of the calorific content per kg dry matter of wood vs coal? That’s the crux of the matter. 

 

Coal is technically biomass. Trouble is it’s the accumulated and concentrated biomass of thousands of years of sunshine over a massive area.

 

Biomass will only ever be a small scale solution for individuals or small communities, and of course, a diversionary tactic for governments and corporations. 
 

So you can add biomass to your initial list of ‘things that will never supply UK electricity needs’ 😂

[Paddy1000111]

Another thing that I find confusing. According to the interwebs (various sources) a tree in a lifetime of 100 years absorbs about 1 tonne of co2. Other sources go on to say that for 1000g of wood that's burnt it releases 1900g of co2(?) So for each tonne of tree burnt we need to plant two trees for 100 years? That doesn't add up? 😂

[Khriss]

15 minutes ago, Paddy1000111 said:

Another thing that I find confusing. According to the interwebs (various sources) a tree in a lifetime of 100 years absorbs about 1 tonne of co2. Other sources go on to say that for 1000g of wood that's burnt it releases 1900g of co2(?) So for each tonne of tree burnt we need to plant two trees for 100 years? That doesn't add up? 😂

Its way more than a tonne of CO2 in hundred years, think  the science of measuring this is quite new but worth following, but as ever its funding to R & D all of it. K

[spuddog0507]

Does anybody or organisation really know how the biomass thing works ????? for example when Covid started we had all these so called experts telling use what was going to happen and how we where going to deal with it and how we where going to get it all under control and all would be back to normal by summer, well thats been and gone and look where we are now !! up shit creek again, we have all these so called Dr,s not the ones we need in hospitals the ones i call a Dr of **************** all,one who plays about with rocks and tells us about a dinosaure bone being about 80,000 year old ! your guess and my guess is just as good as there,s, I think the same goes with the biomass one body will tell you different than the next and just the same when you read about it on the net, if we all listened to the so called experts we would all end up tied in knots with our heads stuck up are arse, this is my view yours might be different, The met office will be telling use next week that we could be entering another ice age because we have had a bit of frost & snow they did in 2010,,,,