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THE Biofuel Thread pt 6

Discussions of conventional and alternative energy production technologies.

Re: THE Biofuel Thread pt 6

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sun 08 Jan 2017, 09:01:35

pstarr wrote:
vtsnowedin wrote:Before you worry about which nine percent of the worlds oceans to convert to kelp farms you might try a single square mile somewhere easy and prove the concept start to finish. Kelp taking CO2 out of the water is simple enough but how you keep the carbon from re entering the atmosphere and how that saves any oil or oil companies is not clear.

You do not keep the carbon from entering the atmosphere. It happens all on its own.

Kelp is cellulose, a carbohydrate. When a kelp dies its carbs remain. Just like a tree. Another example of carbon-dioxide fertilization, aka 'global greening'.

What happens to the kelp after it is harvested matters. If allowed to rot on the surface the carbon it contains get released or if it is burned or processed into fuel the carbon it contains returns to the atmosphere as CO2. So no gain there. Tilled into the soil as a fertilizer directly or as biochar temporarily stores the CO2 in the soil but would end up in the crops grown on that soil and follow that path back to the atmosphere. An 80 year half life would be an excellent result for biochar as a farmer would only need to treat a small percentage of his land each year to get ahead.
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Re: THE Biofuel Thread pt 6

Unread postby eclipse » Mon 23 Jan 2017, 00:40:31

We forgot to discuss the fish! This works out to be about half a kilo of fish per day per person in a world of 10 billion!

All the protein we could want, all the fossil-fuel replacement we could want, all the NPK fertilisers we could want, and all the biochar we could want, all from one gigantic industry. Anyone already know an industry that basically runs the world? 8) Basically, if big oil ever get onto this, I say let them at it!

“The most exciting, if least well understood, of all the biological options involve the marine environment. Seaweed grows very fast, meaning that seaweed farms could be used to absorb CO2 very efficiently, and on a very large scale. The seaweed could be harvested and processed to generate methane for electricity production or to replace natural gas, and the remaining nutrients recycled. One analysis shows that if seaweed farms covered 9% of the ocean they could produce enough biomethane to replace all of today’s needs in fossil fuel energy, while removing 53 gigatonnes of CO2 (about the same as all current human emissions) per year from the atmosphere. It could also increase sustainable fish production to provide 200kg per year, per person, for 10 billion people. Additional benefits include reduction in ocean acidification and increased ocean primary productivity and biodiversity. Many of the technologies required to achieve this are already in widespread use, if at a comparatively minuscule scale.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/ ... m-flannery
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Re: THE Biofuel Thread pt 6

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 23 Jan 2017, 11:49:00

My understanding is kelp forest will only grow on the continental shelf, so forget the whole surface of the ocean stuff. Then you have to add in the fact that Kelp do have water temperature and sunlight requirements that limit how much of the ocean shelf could viably be used to farm kelp. Third, not all wildlife does well in kelp forest regions, so you need to reserve good size chunks of the shelf for sea grass where the Manatees can graze and all the other variations that you get in the continental waters.

Put all those factors together and MAYBE you can grow Kelp forest on 10 percent of the continental shelf or about half a percent of the total ocean surface. That is still an admirable thing to do because Kelp is a great food source, not just for human beings but also for grazers like cattle and omnivores like swine. Counting on it to replace all fossil fuels? Not so much.
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Re: THE Biofuel Thread pt 6

Unread postby eclipse » Mon 23 Jan 2017, 17:14:27

My understanding is kelp forest will only grow on the continental shelf, so forget the whole surface of the ocean stuff.

Why will it only grow there? Tim Flannery is a biologist.

Then you have to add in the fact that Kelp do have water temperature and sunlight requirements that limit how much of the ocean shelf could viably be used to farm kelp.

We would obviously build floating frames that they could attach to, keeping them up in the sunlight zones even in deep waters.

Third, not all wildlife does well in kelp forest regions, so you need to reserve good size chunks of the shelf for sea grass where the Manatees can graze and all the other variations that you get in the continental waters.

Of course! Respect the mangroves and wetlands and many, many other threatened ecosystems. But build the kelp out in deeper waters - if possible. That's the key. That's what we have to establish. Why would a biologist like Tim Flannery put so much emphasis on something that was intrinsically impossible?

Put all those factors together and MAYBE you can grow Kelp forest on 10 percent of the continental shelf or about half a percent of the total ocean surface.

But we haven't established the first, main factor - that kelp cannot be intentionally farmed in deep waters - with peer reviewed sources.

That is still an admirable thing to do because Kelp is a great food source, not just for human beings but also for grazers like cattle and omnivores like swine.

Yes, there is even a strand of kelp that cuts cattle methane burps by 99%! A special seaweed can be fed to cows to supplement their diet a little with drastic results: it eliminates their methane burps, which have been shown to lose 15% of the cow's potential growth gains! https://goo.gl/J27gw0

Counting on it to replace all fossil fuels? Not so much.

I'm not. I'm counting on high EROEI breeder reactors that eat nuclear waste, and can generate all the diesel we need from the CO2 and hydrogen in seawater. (Recyclable boron powder is another contender as an energy carrier to replace oil).
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So this is not some desperate fallback. We have dozens of today's designs of nuclear reactors that can keep us going, and dozens of viable designs of future breeder reactors to eat all today's waste. That's not the problem here. I'm just asking... what if? What if I've been wrong for 6 years, and nuclear is NOT the only way? What if a renewable grid could actually be backed up by a carbon-tax funded seaweed industry that produces fuel AND food?

Bottom line?

I haven't found a peer-reviewed source that says we cannot grow kelp in 9% of the world's oceans.
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Re: THE Biofuel Thread pt 6

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 23 Jan 2017, 22:36:44

eclipse wrote:Bottom line?

I haven't found a peer-reviewed source that says we cannot grow kelp in 9% of the world's oceans.


That is an exercise in futility called trying to prove the negative. If someone says we can go to the moon and you say I don't see any evidence we can not that is all well and good, but you need evidence we can before you should accept the idea. I know we have gone to the moon because I was alive when it happened and one of the things we did in physics class way back when in college was look at the films the astronauts brought back, provide conclusive evidence that they were walking around in vacuum in a gravity field about 1/6th that of the field of the Earth.

It is all well and good to say you have not seen any proof we can not grow kelp over 9 percent of the world ocean surface, but lack of evidence against is a very great distance from evidence it can be done. Has anyone built a set of these kelp grow frames you wrote of and placed them in deep water covering even a few dozen acres? Have they proven to be robust over several years of service and demonstrated a high productivity rate over those same several years? A theory by anyone is a good place to start, but science requires actual proof of the separate steps of the theory and proof that all the steps work together as expected.
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Re: THE Biofuel Thread pt 6

Unread postby eclipse » Mon 23 Jan 2017, 22:57:46

So these Professors are just making it up?
Seaweed farms alone have the capacity to grow massive amounts of nutrient-rich food. Professor Ronald Osinga at Wageningen University in the Netherlands has calculated that a global network of "sea-vegetable" farms totaling 180,000 square kilometers -- roughly the size of Washington state -- could provide enough protein for the entire world population.

The goal, according to chef Dan Barber -- named one of the world's most influential people by Time and a hero of the organic food movement -- is to create a world where "farms restore instead of deplete" and allow "every community to feed itself."

But here is the real kicker: Because they require no fresh water, no deforestation, and no fertilizer -- all significant downsides to land-based farming -- these ocean farms promise to be more sustainable than even the most environmentally-sensitive traditional farms.
http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... ge/248750/
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Re: THE Biofuel Thread pt 6

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 23 Jan 2017, 23:45:26

eclipse wrote:So these Professors are just making it up?
Seaweed farms alone have the capacity to grow massive amounts of nutrient-rich food. Professor Ronald Osinga at Wageningen University in the Netherlands has calculated that a global network of "sea-vegetable" farms totaling 180,000 square kilometers -- roughly the size of Washington state -- could provide enough protein for the entire world population.

The goal, according to chef Dan Barber -- named one of the world's most influential people by Time and a hero of the organic food movement -- is to create a world where "farms restore instead of deplete" and allow "every community to feed itself."

But here is the real kicker: Because they require no fresh water, no deforestation, and no fertilizer -- all significant downsides to land-based farming -- these ocean farms promise to be more sustainable than even the most environmentally-sensitive traditional farms.
http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... ge/248750/


By definition until someone builds an example and proves it actually works; yes they are proposing actions based on theories, not showing concrete examples of proven systems.
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Re: THE Biofuel Thread pt 6

Unread postby eclipse » Tue 07 Feb 2017, 03:31:35

OK, I've finally found it. It's a free PDF download, and well worth an hour of your time. It certainly sounds feasible to me!

The peer-reviewed paper claims that they have submersible digesters out in the ocean that slowly draw in the kelp when it is ready to harvest, biodigest it, release the energy gases off the top and then recycle all the nutrients back out to the kelp farms in big tea-bags that slowly release nutrients, fertilising the next round of kelp! That's only required out in the open oceans, or about 7%.

They even claim we could return CO2 to 350ppm and reverse ocean acidification THIS CENTURY! goo.gl/aTtfW

The other 2% closer to the coast have their own nutrients from upwelling and coastal sedimentary runoff. This 2% has the potential to feed the human race in seafood and seaweed, act as fertiliser for farms etc, all without a single drop of fertiliser required. 2% of our oceans is a VAST area of seaweed, and already full of nutrients, sometimes over-nutrient rich resulting in dead zones. This TED talk is by another guy, and is 15 minutes you MUST invest to comment on this topic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8ViaskDSeI
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Re: THE Biofuel Thread pt 6

Unread postby Tanada » Tue 07 Feb 2017, 08:42:43

Ah yes, I saw him on TV a while back. I think this was the version I saw released 18 months or so ago.

https://youtu.be/Wz4dhgT0uEY

I like what he wants to do and I wish him the best. I still have serious doubts it will succeed the way he thinks or hopes it will, but who am I to destroy other peoples dreams?
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Re: THE Biofuel Thread pt 6

Unread postby eclipse » Tue 07 Feb 2017, 18:27:07

Hang on, he's already doing it. He has an open source model for others to replicate.

But he's not the peer-reviewed paper I'm discussing about the 9% of the world's oceans. He's definitely in the shallow, nutrient rich farming environment. Nutrients are simply NOT a problem for this guy's farm! ;-)

The open ocean farms are here, and it's a doozy of a read. If replicated across 9% of our oceans, it's ALL our energy and ALL our CO2 emissions solved. If you don't imagine 9% of the oceans being farmed, just add whatever mix of renewables and nuclear you think will make it reasonable: half and half, a third of each, whatever. Read the paper. It's amazing how energy efficient their seaweed conversion to energy system is. They don't want to waste energy dragging the seaweed out of the oceans, drying them, and cooking them up. Not at all! And there I was thinking they'd dry it out and biochar it. They're got something far more energy efficient in mind!
http://www.psep.ichemejournals.com/arti ... 57-5820(12)00120-6/abstract
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Re: THE Biofuel Thread pt 6

Unread postby eclipse » Sun 26 Feb 2017, 03:05:30

The peer-reviewed paper below shows that we could farm 9% of the world's oceans because the nutrients are recycled in situ. Only 2% of the oceans are nutrient rich, so how is kelp farmed across an extra 7%, which is obviously in the 'oceanic deserts', the nutrient poor areas of the open ocean? The kelp is farmed with a view to using some of the vast space and time of the oceans, for the most energy efficient, easy to collect manner. So when the kelp is ready for harvest, it is slowly hauled in a 6km radius to massive submersible bladders where they are biodigested over 135 days. Then the methane is collected from the top, and the kelp 'compost' is recycled in situ with drip hoses and little nutrient rich 'tea-bags' that are used to grow the next harvest of kelp. So obviously this starts in the nutrient rich 2% of the oceans, and gradually expands out, crop by crop. Thus kelp can be grown in what are now oceanic 'deserts', the nutrient poor areas of the majority of our oceans. The following bullet points then emerge:-

* half a kilogram of seafood per person per day, to feed a world of 10 billion people!
* all the biofuels and biogas we could need to replace fossil fuels and provide the ultimate backup to wind and solar power
* remove ocean acidity
* restore our atmosphere to 350ppm by 2085
In other words, seaweed is a silver bullet to feed the world, save the oceans, and save us from climate change, all in this free PDF. "Negative carbon via Ocean Afforestation". Just register, and download it for free.
http://www.psep.ichemejournals.com/arti ... 57-5820(12)00120-6/abstract

On top of all this, such a VAST amount of kelp would also give us other benefits. OK, so vat-grown meat is a thing.
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/02/la ... opped.html
But what if the feedstock is unsustainable? Could we use processed kelp as a feedstock for all our meat and chicken and turkey needs, so that we would never have to kill real live animals for protein again? Anyone know any biochemists that might work in this field?
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California Cars Are Running on Restaurant Grease

Unread postby AdamB » Tue 24 Oct 2017, 10:48:26

California’s battle against climate change is being fought more fiercely in fast food restaurants than in Tesla Inc.’s car factory in Fremont. Seven years after the Golden State began offering credits to producers of low-carbon fuels, cities and companies across California are using diesel brewed from fats and oils to fuel everything from fire trucks to United Parcel Service Inc. delivery vehicles. Now, the value of the credits exceed those from electric vehicles fourfold and are second only to ethanol. The company that’s benefited most from California’s embrace of renewable diesel is based 6,000 miles away in Helsinki. Neste Oyj started sending tankers of the fuel from its refineries in Singapore and Europe around 2012. It’s now the biggest supplier, according to Ezra Finkin, policy director at the Diesel Technology Forum, a Frederick, Maryland-based advocacy group. The market “is definitely growing,” Dayne Delahoussaye, Neste’s head


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Re: California Cars Are Running on Restaurant Grease

Unread postby jedrider » Tue 24 Oct 2017, 14:03:55

A benefit of 'trickle-down' economics.
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Re: California Cars Are Running on Restaurant Grease

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Tue 24 Oct 2017, 15:43:58

Why bother with such nonsense instead of focusing on EV's, batteries, solar, wind, etc?

To bring this (biofuels) to meaningful scale re the size of the global demand for transportation would take so much land and energy that it would compete with the resources needed to feed the world.

But CA loves headlines that "show" they're green, regardless of the real world costs.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: THE Biofuel Thread pt 6

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 16 Dec 2017, 12:55:50

As has been known for quite some time
It's Final -- Corn Ethanol Is Of No Use
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca ... 6ebe9567d3
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Re: Biomass Thread

Unread postby Tanada » Tue 09 Jan 2018, 16:49:38

Graeme wrote:Here's a little more on the history of the Drax power station.

'Converting Drax to burn biomass required new supply chain'

Graham Backhouse, head of supply chain and logistics at the UK’s largest power station, said it was necessary to create new port facilities, new rail wagons and extra storage facilities.

Backhouse said the move was driven by the government’s stated goal to move away from coal and Drax started experimenting with biomass fuels in 2003.

“It was the right thing to do, to consider the future and the skills and infrastructure at the power station, which lent themselves to biomass,” he said.

Backhouse joined Drax in 2008 after it was decided to ramp up the use of biomass. In that year the station used a couple of hundred thousand tonnes of biomass – a mixture of timber and agricultural by-products – but by 2010 it was burning more than one million tonnes a year.

At that time the company’s intention was to convert its six boilers to run on a mix of coal and biomass, known as co-firing, to take advantage of government renewable energy subsidies. This would require around seven million tonnes of biomass and five million tonnes of coal each year.

However, in 2012 government policy changed and subsidies for co-firing were cut. This meant to get the same level of subsidy as before, Drax would have to convert boilers to run purely on biomass. “On that day our share price tumbled immediately by 25 to 30 per cent within an hour of the government announcement, because no one had ever converted boilers on the scale Drax has here,” said Backhouse.


supplymanagement


In light of the above have a look at this, much more plus pictures and graphs at link below quote.

A loophole in carbon-accounting rules is spurring a boom in burning wood pellets in European power plants. The result has been a surge in logging, particularly in the U.S. South, and new doubts about whether Europe can meet its commitments under the Paris accord.

It was once one of Europe’s largest coal-burning power stations. Now, after replacing coal in its boilers with wood pellets shipped from the U.S. South, the Drax Power Station in Britain claims to be the largest carbon-saving project in Europe. About 23 million tons of carbon dioxide goes up its stacks each year. But because new trees will be planted in the cut forests, the company says the Drax plant is carbon-neutral.

There is one problem. Ecologists say that the claims of carbon neutrality, which are accepted by the European Union and the British government, do not stand up to scrutiny. The forests of North Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi — as well as those in Europe — are being destroyed to sustain a European fantasy about renewable energy. And with many power plants in Europe and elsewhere starting to replace coal with wood, the question of who is right is becoming ever more important.

Since 2009, the 28 nations of the European Union have embarked on a dramatic switch to generating power from renewable energy. While most of the good-news headlines have been about the rise of wind and solar, much of the new “green” power has actually come from burning wood in converted coal power stations.

Wood burning is booming from Britain to Romania. Much of the timber is sourced locally, which is raising serious concerns among European environmentalists about whether every tree cut down for burning is truly replaced by a new one. But Drax’s giant wood-burning boilers are fueled almost entirely by 6.5 million tons of wood pellets shipped annually across the Atlantic.

Some 200 scientists wrote to the EU insisting that “bioenergy is not carbon-neutral” and calling for tighter rules to protect forests and their carbon.

In September, some 200 scientists wrote to the EU insisting that “bioenergy [from forest biomass] is not carbon-neutral” and calling for tighter rules to protect forests and their carbon. Yet just a month later, EU ministers rubber-stamped the existing carbon accounting rules, reaffirming that the burning of wood pellets is renewable energy.

Under the terms of both the UN Paris climate agreement and Europe’s internal rules, carbon losses from forests supplying power stations should be declared as changes to the carbon storage capacity of forest landscapes. But such changes are seldom reported in national inventories. And there is no system either within the EU or at the UN for reporting actual changes in carbon stocks on land, so the carbon is not accounted for at either end — when trees are cut, or when the wood is burned.

Wood burning is turning into a major loophole in controlling carbon emissions. The U.S. could be the next country to take advantage. A federal spending bill that passed the House of Representatives earlier this year directed the Environmental Protection Agency to establish policies “that reflect the carbon neutrality of biomass” and to “encourage private investment throughout the forest biomass supply chain,” paving the way for a boom in American pellet burning.

I have tracked these developments for the past two years; first traveling with Drax to see its U.S. pellet operation, and then investigating the criticisms leveled by European and U.S. forest campaigners. The debate is not clear-cut. Burning wood may be close to carbon neutral in some situations, such as where it is clear that cut trees are replaced with the same trees, one for one; but in others it can emit even more carbon than coal. The trouble is that regulators are ill-placed to tell the difference, which will only be clear decades after the presumed emissions have been tallied — or not — in national carbon inventories.

The one certainty is that if things do not go according to plan, Europe’s promises for meeting its Paris climate commitments will go up in smoke. And the U.S.’s own CO2 emissions could resume their upward path even quicker than President Donald Trump intends.

Europe’s forests have for centuries been cut for household fuel and, in the past century, for local heating plants. But what is happening now is on a very different scale. The change has been fueled by new technology that converts timber into wood pellets that have been heated to remove moisture and compressed, which makes long-distance transportation practical and economic.

Roughly half the cut wood in the EU is now being burned to generate electricity or for heating. And there is growing evidence that the logging is damaging forests and reducing their ability to store carbon.

One region at risk is the Carpathian Mountains, stretching from Austria to Romania. It contains the continent’s largest surviving old-growth forests outside Russia, which are home to up to half the continent’s brown bears, wolves, and lynx.

Widespread illegal logging has been reported in Romania, with the timber exported for burning in power stations in Austria and Germany.

In Romania, Greenpeace and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) have reported widespread illegal logging, with much of the timber exported for burning in power stations in Austria and Germany. The EIA has accused Schweighofer, a company owned by one of Austria’s richest families, of processing illegally-harvested wood from Romania. Its investigator Susanne Breitkopf told me there is “a clear link between illegal logging in Romania and the EU wood pellet market.” The company says it “makes all possible efforts” to keep illegal timber out of its supply chain.

On a visit to the region, I saw strong evidence of a threat to forests in eastern Slovakia, where there was widespread felling of beech forests inside the Poloniny National Park. The roads to the park were all being widened, using EU infrastructure funds, to improve access for heavy vehicles that bring out the timber.

My guide was Peter Sabo of Wolf, an NGO campaigning to protect the country’s forests. He estimates from Slovakian government data that 10 million cubic meters of wood is logged in the country each year, against a sustainable yield of 6 million cubic meters. The difference is almost entirely accounted for by the 3.5 million cubic metres burned for Slovakia’s energy and heating. Yet nowhere do the carbon emissions from this burning turn up in the carbon accounts of Slovakia or the EU.

Sabo and I tracked logs from Poloniny to a power station in the medieval town of Bardejov. The station’s owners insist that, like Drax, the plant only burns low-grade timber that would otherwise go to waste. But on the day I visited, the yard adjacent to the power plant was full of logs a meter or more in diameter being chipped and placed on a large pile within meters of the station’s boilers. Later, in an email, the company’s manager, Stanislav Legat, insisted that “we only use chips. Logs whom you see on the courtyard is not ours [sic].”

Forest cover in Europe is increasing, and the forests are acting as a growing carbon “sink.” But an EU report last year forecast that the growth of Europe’s forest sink will be reduced by more than 30 percent between 2005 and 2030 because of cutting for pellet burning and other changes in land use. It said that “biomass and land use change can be identified as key drivers” in the predicted decline, with pellet-burning plants clearly playing a large part. Yet so far, the resulting releases of carbon to the atmosphere are not included in EU carbon accounting.

Foreign forests have also been targeted to fuel European power stations. For several years, the Swedish state power company Vattenfall imported wood chips from old rubber trees on the giant Firestone rubber plantation in Liberia. The project, part-funded by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a U.S. federal agency, had originally promised to light homes in the West African nation. But that never happened, and after the project collapsed in 2012, the wood chips began being shipped to Sweden.

Drax buys on a small scale from Canada and has plans to buy Brazilian wood. But the U.S. has become Europe’s biggest foreign supplier, and Drax has become the test case for whether wood pellets can be a genuine low-carbon energy source. So how does the case stack up?

The Drax power station, which converted from coal to wood fuel, has become a test case for whether pellets can be a low-carbon energy source.

Following conversion of its boilers, two-thirds of the power from the 4,000-megawatt power giant on the east coast of England now comes from burning pellets. The pellets mostly come from three American mills run by the Drax Group — at Amite in Mississippi, and Morehouse and LaSalle in Louisiana — and purchases from other U.S. suppliers, notably Enviva, which has in the process become the world’s largest producer of wood pellets.

Drax says the only carbon footprint from burning those pellets is from the harvesting, processing, and transporting of the wood. It reckons that, overall, converting its power plant from coal to wood saves 12 million tons of CO2 emissions a year, making Drax “the largest carbon-saving project in Europe,” according to its CEO Andy Koss.

The EU and the U.K. both accept that analysis. The British government last year gave the company the equivalent of about $720 million in subsidies to make further conversions to burning wood so as to reduce the country’s carbon emissions in line with the 2015 Paris climate agreement.


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Re: THE Biofuel Thread pt 6

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 18 Jan 2018, 15:18:04

BIOMASS UNDER FIRE
Is wood a green source of energy? Scientists are divided.

..Yet moves by governments around the world to designate wood as a carbon-neutral fuel—making it eligible for beneficial treatment under tax, trade, and environmental regulations—have spurred fierce debate. Critics argue that accounting for carbon recycling is far more complex than it seems. They say favoring wood could actually boost carbon emissions, not curb them, for many decades, and that wind and solar energy—emissions-free from the start—are a better bet for the climate. Some scientists also worry that policies promoting wood fuels could unleash a global logging boom that trashes forest biodiversity in the name of climate protection.


http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/wood-green-source-energy-scientists-are-divided

Cleaner Than Coal? Wood Power Makes a Comeback
Converting from power plants from coal- to wood-fired may not deliver environmental benefits as advertised.


Canada already sends wood pellets abroad for power generation, but it is now leveraging the resource on a large scale in its own backyard. Atikokan will be the largest commercial power plant in North America to convert from coal to biomass, a trend that has caught on worldwide, especially in Europe.

The retrofit is part of Ontario's plan to be the first jurisdiction in North America to shut down its coal fleet. In Europe the drive to retrofit coal-fired power plants to biomass comes from the European Union Renewable Energy Directive, which calls for 20 percent of energy to come from renewables, including biomass, by 2020. Much of Europe's wood pellets are being imported from private forests in the southeastern U.S. as well other parts of North America.


https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wood-power-makes-comeback/

North America appears to be exporting a considerable amount of carbon to Europe in the form of biomass chips and pellets. Unfortunately this is thinning the forest floor and removing even more carbon in the soil, which becomes another source of atmospheric carbon dioxide not being accounted for in power plant emissions calculations.

As with uranium mining/refining and coal production and transport, biomass and wood chip production will abruptly cease when petroleum fuels become unaffordable. As attractive an idea as it is to convert a coal plant to biomass burning, it is in fact merely setting us up for an even more intense crash when petroleum fuel production tapers off. (Or "crashes to near zero" if you favor the Seneca Cliff scenario.)

It seems to me that a case can be made for local consumption of the waste biomass after the usable wood is fashioned into structures and furniture, effectively sequestering carbon for the life of such durable goods, and minimizing the fuels used to transport the wood. But the biomass ashes and remaining nutrients need to be returned to the forest after being treated to reduce acidity, and fertilizers are needed to replenish those lost to burning. Just how much fertilizers are diverted to forests versus food crops is an interesting calculation.
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