[Stoves] Off-topic news: Biomass power is not climate-neutral

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

>This is about US wood being exported to the Drax station in England.

"The growing transatlantic trade is being financed with billions of dollars in European climate subsidies<http://reports.climatecentral.org/pulp-fiction/1/> because of a regulatory loophole that allows wood energy to count as if it’s as clean as solar or wind energy, when in reality it’s often worse for the climate than burning coal.”

That contains several embedded false claims. So I looked at the source document and then at the group Southern Environmental Law Center. They are helping to organise opposition, presumably based on the same false claims:

The subsidy part is correct – burning imported biomass is being subsidised.
There is no ‘regulatory loophole’. That is false.
Wood energy, whether used for cooking, space heating or power generation, is CO2-neutral if it is harvested sustainably according to the rules of the UNFCCC. That is not a loophole, that is a scientific fact and forms the basis of the CDM carbon trading market that finances stove and other projects.
Burning wood is not ‘bad for the climate’ in the first place, let along ‘worse’ than something else.
The implication that ‘burning coal’ is ‘bad’ is assumed in the same sentence.

>Only the pollution released when wood pellets are produced and transported is counted on climate ledgers.

They are referring of course to CO2 emissions. The reason the production and transport emissions are counted (and they could be carbon dioxide neutral – it depends on a number of things) is because sustainably harvested wood is CO2-neutral. It that were not so, the concept of ‘renewable’ would have to be reconsidered.
There is no ‘climate ledger’. This is an officious term that I suppose can mean whatever you like. No doubt they will tell us what to think in the next sentence. Why, yes, they do:

>Actual pollution from the smokestack — by far the greatest source of carbon pollution from wood energy — is overlooked."

What is ‘actual pollution’ compared with other ‘pollution’?
‘Carbon’ is not a form of pollution.
‘Carbon dioxide’ is not a form of pollution.
We all know they mean ‘carbon dioxide when they say ‘carbon’, right? So the carbon dioxide released from biomass is by UNFCCC definition is neutral provided it is not causing net-deforestation. As the Eastern US forests are expanding dramatically, the trees harvested qualify as sustainably sourced.
The CO2 emitted by burning biomass is not overlooked, it is counted coming out and going back in. That is why they have to assess its sustainable nature. All wood pellets imported into Europe are checked, and they qualify as sustainably harvested. Therefore the claim that the emissions are ‘overlooked’ and the implication that the accounting is incorrect, is a false claim.

The title of the article ‘wood energy is not carbon neutral’ is correct – because there are emissions of CO2 from the ships that take the fuel to the EU. To suggest that the net CO2 emissions are higher than that of coal is plain silly.

So who are these people organising this ‘protest’? A quick look at their projects and funding reveals they received over $20,000 in no-earmarked funds to spend as they please. They have picked certain projects to oppose and certain to promote. Clearly they are opposed to all forms of biomass production and consumption for fuel. They are paid by someone to oppose that. It appears they are fundamentally opposed to biomass stoves.

They are strongly in favour of wind energy projects, particularly off-shore. That is the most expensive for me renewable that I know of. It is more expensive than large hydro dams and geothermal in terms of energy return on energy invested and running costs. On the face of it, the Grist article is a paid placement promoting fake news that the Drax power station would be better off burning coal, if CO2 accounting is considered. Given the huge amount of money SELC receives to do the bidding of its funders, and because they are cited as an authoritative source of such information, we can assume they are working in concert with SELC.

From the article:
“Cutting down trees to produce so-called biomass energy also reduces a forest’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide.”

This is totally false. Completely untrue – another example of ‘fake facts’. A forest’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide is raised by harvesting trees.

“A Climate Central analysis last year<http://reports.climatecentral.org/pulp-fiction/1/> found that switching from coal to wood increased carbon dioxide emissions at Drax power station in rural England by 15 to 20 percent for each megawatt produced.”

Hilariously, the report is titled “Pulp Fiction”. In the background is a video of water cooling towers emitting water vapour with the setting sun low on the horizon. As soon as you see such a blatant misrepresentation of ‘carbon pollution’ you know you are reading a fake new site. Oh, I should have mentioned the same thing appears in the Grist article. It is standard fare for ‘the carbon biz’.

There is absolutely nothing contain in the referenced article supporting the claim that switching from coal to wood increases the CO2 emissions. Zilch. As coal is typically 85% carbon and wood is typically 50%, the claim is false. It is well known that switching from a high carbon and low hydrogen fuel to a higher hydrogen and lower carbon fuel (for example coal to natural gas) decreases the CO2 emissions.  This error undermines the entire argument in the Grist article.

“A forest isn’t instantaneously renewable,” said Oregon State University professor Mark Harmon<http://fes.forestry.oregonstate.edu/faculty/harmon-mark>, an advisor to the EPA<http://yosemite.epa.gov/sab/sabproduct.nsf/0/2F9B572C712AC52E8525783100704886> on measuring climate pollution from wood fuel.”

Well, they will have to start by overturning all the agreements that underwrite the Kyoto Protocol, the UNFCCC and the CDM contract rules. That would include rewriting the Copenhagen Agreement and the Paris Agreement.

“Pound for pound, burning wood releases less energy but more carbon than a fossil fuel.”

Clearly they are not fully informed about what gets burned and how much net energy there is available from fuels.  Germany is presently building 23 lignite-fired power stations. They are doing that because the H:C ratio in lignite is higher than in hard coal. The energy available from lignite is no better in most cases than wood pellets. Wood has an even higher H:C ratio than lignite. Lignite and coal are, after all, compressed and devolatilised wood.

In part 2 of the ‘supporting document’ http://reports.climatecentral.org/pulp-fiction/1/ there is another photo of water vapour rising out of cooling towers. These guys are shameless!

“Shortly after the mill began operating in the mid-1990s, the booming market for home heating pellets in the Pacific Northwest tanked — undercut by cheap natural gas flowing from the fracking boom.”

They got their history wrong and falsely attribute the problems faced by a pellet mill owner to a fracking boom. There was no fracking boom in 1995. Wood pellet making was never a very attractive deal. Over-production, because of the enormous amount of biomass available, remains a problem.  Pellet burning stoves can take advantage of this – the fuel is cheap and homogeneous. Perfect.

“The wood pellet trade wouldn’t exist were it not for those generous subsidies — the fuel can’t compete with coal or gas on price.”

This is not general a true statement.  It depends on where you are. There are wood pellets sold all over the world. In many cases there are no subsidies involved at all. That doesn’t make the cross-Atlantic trade profitable, it is just not a true statement.

That the system at Drax requires subsidies is true – it is a stupid scheme that wastes money and produces no sensible benefits, but it is not stupid because Drax ‘emits more CO2 than burning coal’. It doesn’t. Here is another accounting error:

“In 2015, Drax expects to burn through more than 6 million tons of them — which would be produced by dehydrating about twice that much fresh wood.”

Wood is measured on a dry basis for all accounting reasons. What they are talking about is that the wood harvested is 50% water by mass. The total harvest from all UK forests is about 12m ton p.a. and this is held to be an equivalent. Say what? Are the UK’s forests sustainably harvested or not? What difference does it make how big the UK’s forests are?

What matters is whether or not the production of forest products is well managed and efficiently applied. Wood combustion emits less CO2 than all coals per MJ on a dry basis because it has a higher H:C ratio. That is just a fact of life. Hydrogen has four times the energy per kg than carbon. Thus the chart titled: “Wood Pellets Emit More Carbon Than Coal” makes a false statement. (They mean carbon dioxide, of course).

To sustain this claim, they plot the emissions of a ‘modern coal plant’ (meaning a modern coal-fired power plant) and ‘biomass, whole trees’. Perhaps they mean, biomass burned in an old-fashioned inefficient power plant, compared with a new, modern combined cycle coal-fired power plant. If so, then the comparison is misleading.  But that is not the claim in the title, which makes a false statement, not a misleading one. The photos of a cooling tower emitting clouds of condensed water vapour headlining a discussion of ‘carbon pollution’ is obviously misleading. The claim that sustainably harvested biomass is putting more CO2 into the atmosphere than burning coal per MW of power generated is false.

Any claim that wood stoves emit, net, more CO2 than coal stoves over any meaningful time period, say, a human lifetime, would be false if the source is regrown.  As the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere rises the wood regrows faster and faster. At present CO2 fertilisation drives growth about 10% faster than it did 50 years ago. This global greening is well-documented in satellite photos. Formerly unsustainable harvesting is slowly becoming sustainable.  The total mass of all living biomass is increasing year by year.

Finally: “Like many of Europe’s power plants that also run on wood, Drax doesn’t require that its pellet producers source from forests certified by sustainable forestry programs.”

First, prove it. Second, I believe this to be another false statement in that it implies that the fuel is not sustainably harvested, which is an EU requirement for entry. Maybe Drax doesn’t have to because the EU does it for them.  However always look between the lines when dealing with propaganda: it says ‘sustainable forestry programs’. Maybe they have their own definition of who is or has such a ‘program’ and as they were not paid to ‘certify’ it, it is not’ legitimate’.

It is clearly the intent of the authors to communicate that governments and international policies should be supporting wind and solar power generation facilities and not renewable biomass power.  Sounds to as if the whole lot of them are shilling for Big Wind. Big Wind is in trouble. Ontario, the UK, Denmark, Germany and Spain are all cutting back on wind power investments. We should therefore expect more attacks on the use of biomass for cooking and heating, power generation and processed biofuels.

Regards
Crispin

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