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Energy efficiency beats renewable energies: report

How to save energy through both societal and individual actions.

Re: Energy efficiency beats renewable energies: report

Unread postby Zarquon » Mon 07 Nov 2016, 14:17:22

vtsnowedin wrote: Here in Vermont wood pellets are selling for $250 to $270 a ton


I just looked it up: October prices were about 230€/t in Germany, that's $250. Although I'm not sure how many farthings or stones your tons have.
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Re: Energy efficiency beats renewable energies: report

Unread postby Subjectivist » Mon 07 Nov 2016, 14:37:55

Zarquon wrote:Pellet heating:
http://energytransition.de/2014/09/is-e ... s-forests/

Pellet heating took off in Germany in the late nineties. Going green was one thing, taking advantage of cheap wood waste was another. A sweet deal, for a while. Last thing I heard was that prices are pretty low at the moment, but were close to natural gas a few years ago. That's because the whole thing became so successful that we quickly ran out of wood waste and began importing freshly cut Canadian lumber for our "green" heating. No reforestation of course, that would ruin the economics.


When pellet stoves hit this part of Ohio in the early 1980's the big selling point was using yellow dent corn as fuel. Something on the order of two bushel of corn being equal to one bushels of wood pellets. The idea was the farmers in Ohio could grow and harvest just a few acres of their land as field corn and replace all their heating fuel needs with total renewable fuel.

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/ ... _200394625
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Re: Energy efficiency beats renewable energies: report

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 07 Nov 2016, 21:07:37

ROCKMAN,
I did a silviculture self study course after buying our land in Cape Brenton. They talked about managing the land over the growth cycle.

They said that as a clear cut forest begins to grow out you can harvest heavily thinning the trees, the first cut or two of saplings, they are too small for any commercial use. But you cut them to encourage the remaining trees to grow faster and better.

Latter selective thinnings get you trees that are useful for firewood. Then latter the trees become useful for structural uses. Finally the forest is at climax stage and the remaining old trees, high quality, are harvested and you start over again.

According to this source this selective thinning actually increases the overall biomass of the forest as it encourages maximum rate of growth.

But very few do that, mostly it's just industrial clear cut.

So to add even MORE complexity its HOW youharvest.
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Re: Energy efficiency beats renewable energies: report

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Mon 07 Nov 2016, 21:36:12

Not all whole trees are the same so simplistic ratios of whole trees to waste wood are meaningless. I routinely cut trees that are dead or dying from either disease or just being out competed by the trees around them. In either case they will be down and rotting on the forest floor in a few years and might as well be burned for fuel before that. Sound whole trees get cut for their saw logs and the remainder gets chipped and perhaps turned into pellets depending on the local market. Smaller trees without a saw log in them would only be cut and pelletised if they were inferior in some way that would keep them from ever producing saw logs.
A good maple saw log might go for $750 dollars. A whole twisted or diseased tree with the same stump size will bring in just $10.00.
The loggers doing the work make sure each tree goes to it's highest use or sale price. The hard part is getting the land owner the right value for the trees they have sold.
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Re: Energy efficiency beats renewable energies: report

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 07 Nov 2016, 21:48:55

Potential shipping effiency

http://gcaptain.com/view-not-fight-clim ... g-edition/

View: How Not to Fight Climate Change, Shipping Edition
By The Editors

(Bloomberg View) — The shipping industry accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than airplanes, buses or trains. Yet it was not included in last year’s Paris accord — and an attempt last month to redress this failure manages to be both unambitious and impractical.

The world’s 90,000 shipping vessels burn about five million barrels of petroleum products each day, and their emissions are expected to increase as much as five-fold by 2050. In part because it’s not clear which countries should be accountable for the emissions of any particular ship, the industry has not been part of any recent international climate agreements.

So a United Nations agency recently announced a deal: Countries promised to aim to agree on a strategy for cutting carbon emissions from shipping — by 2023. No word about when emissions might actually start falling. Or how much. Or how. It is an agreement to seek an agreement.

That lethargic pace ignores the easy and relatively inexpensive steps that ship operators could take right away to reduce their emissions. Simply polishing a ship’s propellers, for example, which makes ships run more efficiently, can reduce emissions by as much as 8 percent. And the simplest way for ships to cut their carbon emissions is just slowing down. So-called “slow steaming” increases the time it takes for products to reach market, obviously, and could also increase costs. Yet it also cuts wind and water resistance and fuel use, reducing carbon emissions by as much as 30 percent.

QuickTake Cost of Carbon

If the UN were serious about combating climate change, it could set speed limits by ship type, monitored by transponders and enforced by countries whose flag each vessel flies.

Ultimately, the most efficient way to cut global emissions is for countries to adopt a carbon tax, equal to the cost of the environmental damage done by each ton emitted. Putting a price on carbon can be a complex undertaking, but it is by no means impossible. And a sensible carbon tax would give companies in every part of the economy, including shipping, an incentive to seek the most affordable changes to how they operate.

–Editors: Christopher Flavelle, Michael Newman.

© 2016 Bloomberg L.P
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Re: Energy efficiency beats renewable energies: report

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Tue 08 Nov 2016, 00:31:27

Newfie - No doubt there are carbon neutral biomass methods. But that report by those liberal ecologists indicating that some of the large scale commercial wood pellet operations (especially those shipping from the US to the EU) were less climate friendly the some coal burning was a shock. But I hadn't thought about how long it would take for future bio growth to offset the rapid release from the pellets. Essentially heavily "front loading" the CO2.
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Re: Energy efficiency beats renewable energies: report

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Tue 08 Nov 2016, 00:41:56

The world’s 90,000 shipping vessels burn about five million barrels of petroleum products each day, and their emissions are expected to increase as much as five-fold by 2050.

I don't believe this. The world population will not be thirty billion by 2050 and even if it were there would be no need for five times the sea transport above current levels.
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Re: Energy efficiency beats renewable energies: report

Unread postby Newfie » Tue 08 Nov 2016, 09:52:56

VT
You don't believe it, I don't believe it, but a bunch of CEOs and Board Directors and Economists and Market Analyst do.

The inmates are running the asylum. And they are planning to make it happen!
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Re: Energy efficiency beats renewable energies: report

Unread postby Subjectivist » Tue 08 Nov 2016, 11:01:05

Newfie wrote:VT
You don't believe it, I don't believe it, but a bunch of CEOs and Board Directors and Economists and Market Analyst do.

The inmates are running the asylum. And they are planning to make it happen!


They should take the USS Enterprise and convert it into a container ship. Think of all the containers they could move without CO2 going up a bit.

http://nation.time.com/2013/01/07/obit-for-a-carrier/
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Re: Energy efficiency beats renewable energies: report

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Tue 08 Nov 2016, 11:36:28

Subjectivist wrote:
Newfie wrote:VT
You don't believe it, I don't believe it, but a bunch of CEOs and Board Directors and Economists and Market Analyst do.

The inmates are running the asylum. And they are planning to make it happen!


They should take the USS Enterprise and convert it into a container ship. Think of all the containers they could move without CO2 going up a bit.

http://nation.time.com/2013/01/07/obit-for-a-carrier/

Too much classified material and equipment in the reactor room.
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