@@jimmyb1451 If we didn't have a lockdown you'd be able to book an Arctic ocean sea cruise this summer and you would be able to see for yourself how dire the situation is. There are lies but they tend to tbe the reassuring ones - such as "build a wind turbine and all will be well."
@@proudhon100 I completely understand how "dire" the situation is. What I don't understand is the complete lack of action, given that we have the tech to remedy the problem.
@@jimmyb1451 We don't have the tech to draw down large quantities of CO2 on a timescale menaingful to human civilisation, and even if we did it would require a huge amount of energy and other raw materials which could only be powered and processed by fossil fuel energy (which would kind of defeat the object of the exercise).
I have to admit I was naive in believing the biomass propaganda as being carbon-neutral. Thank you for this very interesting and enlightening presentation.
The important thing here is that biomass energy COULD be carbon neutral. If the rate of planting and combustion is equal, the system is in equilibrium and is therefore carbon neutral. The trouble is that by burning forests now, and promising to plant them later, we imbalance the equilibrium in the "short" term and leading to net emissions. Once again, businesses take a "loan" from the environment instead of giving back first. That being said, biomass could be a useful source of energy in certain situations - such as fueling ships at sea, where batteries would be wildly impractical.
It entirely depends on how you manage it, where the biomass comes from and your plan for recapturing the CO2 released by the biomass. Unlike with fossil fuels, you could theoretically figure out a sustainable operation. But there's a lot of smoke and mirrors. Also burning fuel for heat is one of the lowest grade uses for biomass. The sugar cane industry burns cane waste (bagasse) in its plants and that is actually carbon neutral when you look at the sugar cane growth cycle. However much of the process heat being delivered could plausibly be delivered by renewable electricity and heat pumps. The bagasse could then be used for fibres, pulp/paper, feed for mushrooms, or even as an alternative to the dubious wood pellets this video is about.
@@chalichaligha3234 Not accurate Chali...you are missing the fact that trees decompose leaving some of their carbon in the soil...the only way to offset is to plant more trees than are burned....not sustainable.
Live in BC and am appalled and angry seeing our forests cut down for biofuel sent to other countries. Watching the old growth forests decimated is distressing
@@Chimel31 That is hopefully happening here in Finland aswell. Some of the alternatives aren't that great either, but still better than semi fossil peat. That is how progress happens, little by little.
Here in Brazil biomass is usually referred to as biogas energy burners from the poultry and swine industry, and the sugarcane bagasse resulting from the ethanol plants. Since these industries here usually just burn these byproduct dejects into the atmosphere or throw into the water streams, the few who harvest it for biomass are usually applauded.
Largato, the biomass (Wood pellets) for power stations is made by clearing forests, processing the timber, and, in the U.K.'s case shipping them from America and Canada to the U.K.. It is not a waste product that is being used here. It is a dreadful and ineffective way to produce power, but it qualifies for 'renewable' subsidies, nice work if you can get it.
@@iareid8255 yes, i got that from the video. I mean that this term "biomass" in Brazil usually refers to methane from composting these byproducts of animal farming and ethanol plants.
Here in China it is mostly farmers crop's waste (like the corn core, peanut shell, etc...) and many construction wood waste (like the one to encase cement for instance). The energy produced is used locally (so most of the powerplants are located in the country-side). The main area for such production in China is Shandong province which has very limited forests anyway so wood pellet is not even considered an option. Also many such "biomass" powerplants are located near industry producing large quantities of biological that are not so valuable and even require destruction by fire anyway (since they are considered as hazardous wastes) so those plants are burning a mix of crop's waste and industry refuse which allows to have a better control on the fuel quality itself (too dry it overheats and too wet it doesn't provide enough heat). Last but not least, the ashes are used in a new form of cement production which improved properties that reduce the pollution level of cement factories. All in all, and the biomass can be a sensible addition to fight against global emissions... The problem, as it is with many industries, is that a lot of people are only thinking of the short term gain and don't think with a real "green" mind. It is a pity... BUt the problem is not with the technology, it is as always with people and regulation and therefore politics...
There's definitely a role for using agricultural and forestry waste as an energy source. For example using sunflower hulls as fuel in a sunflower oil processing plant is a reasonable thing to do. But cutting down trees to replace coal just to massage your carbon emission figures is outrageous.
If only it were as simple as, "thing bad" or "thing good" the Daily Mail would be able to list everything that causes or prevents cancer and teenage boys would be able to definitely know which things are, and aren't gay. The problem isn't the pellets, it's the implications and erroneous conclusions that have lead to governments paying for deforestation in the name of renewable energy.
LOL Ya, that will certainly make a difference, why didn't I think of that thousands of times over the last 40 years..Oh, wait, I did....And things just continue to get worse...No one cares what you or I think..I know you must believe you live inside some sort of democracy, but, you don't...It's a plutocracy, kleptocracy, corporatocracy,
I was not. He was defiantly put on in depended political media algorithm. Look on his view history. It fall from 300 000 view to 200 000 then 100 000 and now 30K. Left political commentators saw same numbers when they were put on this algorithm.
Now a few days passed. Look on number of views and compare it with number of view on videos about 4 month old. Near 1 mil compare with less then 100K for last 3 month. more like 50 K last month. He is clearly shadow banned for last 3 month.
I must admit, when I first heard about this biomass energy system, I couldn't make sense of it. Donkey's years ago, there had been one installed at a monastery not far from me, and I did ask the monks there - where does the wood come from to make the pellets? They had merely repeated what they must have been told: that it's from all the little leftover bits trimmed off trees at the time they're felled or at the sawmill. The reason I found that confusing was - I live amidst vast plantations of trees. They're everywhere around here! And when those trees are felled, all those leftover 'bits' are just piled up to rot. Never, ever have I seen any trucks arrive to remove the stacks of abandoned cut branches, roots, dead or thin trees, or felled 'weed' trees with no commercial value. Nor have I seen woodchippers arrive on site to even begin processing all the dead material to make it easier to ship. No, they push them into piles, into rows, bury them, or - worse still - burn them. I expect a lot of other people living near plantations can report the same. As for the sawmills local to me - well, none of the waste from my 2 closest sawmills goes into the production of wood pellets. It's all snapped up by the agricultural or horticultural industry in the shape of sawdust and woodchips. It makes more money that way (that from the mouths of the sawmill owners themselves). So there must be entire forests being felled purely for manufacture into wood pellets, because it would be way too expensive, complicated and time consuming for wood pellet producers to collect a little bit of wood waste from one sawmill and a little bit more from another mill 30 miles away, etc, etc.
It makes my blood boil and just have a think! Rather akin to when we were told 15 years ago (here in the UK)to buy diesel cars because they emit less CO2. It has an element of truth but ultimately we are being conned and for who's short term benefit? How on earth can it be financially viable to chop down trees in North America, make them into a suitable format, transport them in ships to Europe, get them to Biomass burning facilities and then use them to produce energy to generate electricity? I assume everyone in that chain is taking a slice of the profit ultimately all propped up by the poor consumers at the bottom. I blame the term renewable-energy which has quickly come to mean anything that isn't coal, gas or nuclear produced. While Biomass hides a multitude of production methods, ranging from better to worse, according to this report worldbioenergy.org/uploads/191129%20WBA%20GBS%202019_HQ.pdf, in 2017, 70% of renewable energy (n.b. not purely electricity) worldwide was produced by Biomass.
I’ve been telling my friends about this Drax scandal for years. Thanks for confirming it. If it had continued on coal the CO2 per kw would have been less!
Greetings from an American in the Philippines. My idea about biomass use a useless waste product, rice husk that the rice mill is happy to give us, use it as flooring in our Piggery. Every few weeks change it out, compost it and use to improve what little good soil is here to grow fruit trees and vegetables. Win win all around and with the rice husk down in the pig pens, people are amazed; no bad odor at all.
@@Flumstead True but with natural rice husk we have found it is very effective at eliminating odor and after a few weeks in the pig pen composes extremely well. Please be safe and remain well during these difficult days.
Yes. Thank you. I love how nobody mentions this because engineers rarely see above the walls of their cubicles. Hemp regrows every year, in crap soil. Burning hemp produces less ash than wood. Pellets can be made from depleted stalks after the fiber and oil has been removed for other purposes. We can scrub the exhaust of hemp-fired power plants with converter‘s to capture the CO2 for repurposing in agriculture.
Whats the cost compared to using wood? If your electricity bills doubles or triples do you think you would be pushing for hemp? Follow the money friend!
First, I love your videos; they are well researched and clearly explained for most audiences. I do think in this case, there have been a few too many generalizations. I have been involved in studies related to biomass combustion for thermal energy, and have learned about many of the issues you have raised in this video. What is not fully covered are the mitigations that some regions have implemented to minimize or eliminate the issues. In my region, we have regulations and enforcement for forestry management, something that is, for the most part, taboo in the US. That's not to say it's perfect; there are always those who put profit first and take the risk of not getting caught, but on average, our forestation exceeds our deforestation. Rules to consider for biomass: 1. Source biomass must be from new growth, managed forests or cycled crops (i.e. for each plant removed, one or more equivalent plants are planted to create a cycle). 2. Biomass must be locally sourced (e.g. < 200 km transport distance). 3. Ensure a hierarchy of biomass usage based on maximizing sequestration period (e.g. construction lumber - furniture - pulp & paper - agricultural charcoal - combustion). Even with these rules, there is still the issue of the carbon debt (initial carbon released at the beginning of the cycle). There are a couple solutions for this; specific forestation or carbon capture. Planning for advanced forestation prior to the beginning of combustion can offset the balance of carbon emitted. Large amounts of land that have a low sequestration factor are necessary, and the new growth must be given ample time to reach a level of development to ensure adequate CO2 absorption (> 5 years). Carbon capture can be used to make the process carbon negative (carbon sink) if done correctly. The end use of the CO2 is important in this process. If it goes to something like the bottling industry or greenhouses, most of the CO2 is released back to the atmosphere almost immediately. Long-term storage in the ground, or infused in concrete are examples of effective sequestration. I'm still on the fence, based on principle, whether I support the oil industry using the CO2 to help extract oil, but it is another long-term storage option. With all this said, the first solution in our 30-year plan is to use hydroelectricity, preferably run-of-river, to supply our production equipment. Combining run-of-river, reservoir (dams), solar, and wind, the operating emissions are about 2g/kWh compared to about 180g/kWh for natural gas, and lifecycle emissions are about 22g/kWh (lifecycle emissions for NG are not easily determined). (note, the numbers are extracted from my aging memory so forgive me if they are wrong and feel free to reply with corrections)
Once again, another great video! I'm going to try to comment on every video even if I have nothing really to say just to increase the comment numbers 'cause this is a great channel. Thanks!
Great video. I still don't think biomass itself is a scam, we still have a lot of biomass waste! No need to destroy our lands for wood pellets, we could just use WCO or food waste.
While I whole heartily agree that cutting down living trees and burning it for fuel is not carbon neutral, I do think that there is a place for certain biomass energy technologies. Specifically I am talking about biochar optimized pyrolysis. This converts up to 50% of the carbon stored in biomass into a recalcitrant (a.k.a. doesn't breakdown and release over time) form of carbon. If this were used to convert forestry waste (read this as forest fire fuel reduction), agricultural waste, woody construction debris, etc. into biochar you can sequester carbon for hundreds or thousands of years, while harvesting energy and heat from the process that can displace fossil fuels. That said you have to be extremely careful to make sure that the process you use is optimized for biochar production (carbonization/torrefaction), and not energy (such as gassification technology), otherwise you basically are just burning it, which does no one any good. I would love to see you do a video on biochar, not only looking at its carbon sequestration potential but also the soil amendment properties it has. Cheers!
Absolutely! I'm a big fan of biochar and biogas, where the benefits to soil health and resistance are even more important than the energy generated. But even then there are stupid applications of these processes, especially if the material to be digested and/or charred is trucked any significant distance.
Yes, incentives can have perverse consequences, so I can somewhat understand a scheme for domestic use like Korea's getting out of hand... But holy smoke how can anyone look at a 4 Gw project running on burning wood and think "yup, that's sustainable." !?
Biomass is a big issue here in Nova Scotia, Canada. We are cutting down forests to make wood pellets to ship to Germany and Europe. The answer here is to require all biomass burning be done as part of the process to create biochar. Creating biochar does not allow for the same level if energy production, and still has emissions, but we have to sequester as much carbon as possible. Our future holds a level of forest management that has yet to be fully understood, but there will be lots of biomass to deal with. Wood as a building material is highly favoured over steel and concrete, so there will be sawdust for pellets too. All the assessments I have seen show that localizing the sourcing of building materials is important. The production of biochar must be local as well, as shipping this carbon material is antithetical to the idea of sequestration. The idea that we can create wood pellets in Canada, enrich this material with the fossil fuels required to ship it to Europe, is the crazy talk of a pre-transitional period. The future of sourcing power sources, building materials, and biomass to be sequestered must be local. Looking at the breakdown of biochar production shows that the degree of localization required, prohibits the domination of large power companies. These companies will fight hard to retain control over the means of production. The math will win, I have no doubt. But how long they retain control, is up to us.
Shipping logs across the pond from the U.S. to Europe to make wood pellets makes no CO2 reduction sense at all. I know from working on ships that they burn at least 200 BARRELS of heavy fuel PER DAY while underway. How is this good for CO2 reduction? I hope biomass power generation and corn ethanol both get phased out. The only way corn ethanol survives in the U.S. is with MASSIVE government subsidies and biomass plants too often need more than just tree waste to power them so they cut down whole trees which are a valuable carbon sink.
Yes, but under this argument solar doesn't make no CO2 reduction sense either. Many of these solar panels and batteries are made in China and shipped all over the world using barrels of heavy fuel every day. With this "shipping" factor removed as a variable, biomass as a fuel is much better than fossil fuels and certainly has CO2 reduction effects.
@@RUclipsChannelsNearMe You have to compare the energy density. A 20kg 400W PV module in Spain produces 12000kWh of electricity in 20 years. A 20kg sack of wood pellets only produces 80kWh of heat or 40kwh of electricity. Many pv panels are also constructed locally (glass and aluminum frame) and only the 60 modules per panel are shipped around the world with a size comparable to a shoe box.
Walking around in the clear-cuts and fir plantations here in Sweden, I know about the forest industry's traces and tricks. Here is a video that dives deeper into what Dave touches upon in this excellent video ruclips.net/video/q51FMbTOn_Q/видео.html
thanks for the referral to what is a very informative movie. I’ve always known the term “sustainable forestry” to be a lie. Its like saying a natural meadow is the same as a planted flower bed.
From a purely materialistic rationale that growing your carbon is better than digging up carbon - and always having a profit motive. But as completely locked tight materialistic thinking goes, it completely missed the wood from the trees - ignoring the externalities of cost of ecocide from single crop plantation forests/corn/rapeseed oil as well as the end goal of the first being cut down to recoup cost.
How have they convinced everyone that trees will capture carbon? How have they convinced everyone that cows emit CO2 when they actually are the best way to put it into the soil?
The civilization we build is like a huge train at high speed and with no brakes. We are voracious consumers of wood, coal, gas, and oil products. The other sources of power generation also have major impacts on the environment. The only possible solution is to decrease the world population and this will happen in one way or another.
As a forest management specialist in the U.S. I have to correct you on some of your information. Widespread clear cutting for the sole purpose of wood fuel is exceedingly rare in the United States. Mostly because we have a thriving paper industry the utilizes pulpwood grade timber for paper which keeps carbon out of the system for a period of time as the fiber is recycled. Clear cutting entire stands for biomass production is reserved for unhealthy stands of low production as a means for public land entities to regenerate the stand naturally hoping for greater vigor in the next crop of trees. Many of these stands have small diameter trees of poor fiber quality. Generally planting is not required as the trees reproduce vegetatively through root suckering and stump shoots. In other words the stumps left behind facilitate the regeneration. Clear cutting is in fact an excellent way to regenerate hardwood species. We don’t harvest solely for the production of biomass because biomass is worth roughly a quarter of what construction material is. It simply is not a common practice. In addition biomass harvesting is not allowed on sites which are nutrient poor. Rich mesic sites with low water infiltration are not harmed by harvesting limbs for biomass. Worldwide carbon uptake in forests is dropping because worldwide forests are predominantly older and as trees age they sequester less carbon. I caution you in using vague descriptions of special phenomena. People dislike the forest industry in the U.S. too much as it is because they are emotionally charged and uninformed. Videos like this with half truths don’t help matters any. I however agree that power production by biomass is not economically feasible. Rather supplying individual homeowners with wood pellet boilers would take a significant strain off of petroleum resources
Would you please tell me where did he say this is happening in the US? From what i understand the point he was making was (but i didn't have the patience to re-listen the entire video to confirm), the problem with importing wood from the US to Europe is the fuel burned for transportation of biomass which kind of defies the purpose of "zero" emissions.
Why the hell are these wood pellets being considered as green energy/carbon neutral? It takes the carbon from on the ground, and in the trees, and puts it in the air. And like you said, the trees take decades to grow, and unlike corn and other ethanol based fuels, tree fuel does not have a net positive impact due to its demonstrated unsustainability, and it requiring more and more trees chopped down to meet the ludicrous demand for wood-fuel.
To meet the demand for corn, sugar cane etc. forests are cleared and destroyed. So what's the difference? There is no 'green' biomass fuel. All 'sustainable energies' (Biomass, wind, solar...) are destroying the environment and are not 'green'. Just think of the horrendous environmental impact of Neodymium mining in China! f you want to avoid CO2, the only option is nuclear. It has by far the least impact. Just have a think: One nuclear power plant has the same output as 5000 wind turbines and can deliver electricity 'on demand' when it's needed and where it's needed!
@@TheSpecio true on all accounts, but the point I was trying to make is that trees would be the literal worst way to do "green" energy. Yes, to meet demands with the other biomass fuel like corn and sugar cane and whatnot you would need to take much more land than feasible, but the difference between them is that corn and the others take maybe a season to grow, whereas a wooded area takes many times that. Any kind of "green" energy that uses a burning fuel (Hydrogen itself excluded), whether it's ethanol, plant oil/gas, or whatnot, at best, it would be carbon neutral, not even taking into account all the energy and resources it takes to grow these things. (I'm not counting the energy required to produce the hydrogen because there are clean ways to do it.) Good point on the resource mining needed for the renewables damages the environment as well, but keep in mind that the damage is a different type of damage, rather than the standard CO2 emission. So yes, we should definitely look for a different way to make the renewables, and make them more efficiently, but the way you phrase it makes it sound like we should just cease all production of it. I would love it if that were possible, but to even start scratching the surface of higher efficiency and larger distribution of renewables, we need to start yesterday, rather than today. I'm a big advocate for Nuclear energy, and I would love it if all of earth's civilizations could be run off of it, but the drawbacks of nuclear (minor operational safety risks aside) are things that need to be better optimized before world and local governments "take up the torch" of nuclear power. These being the waste materials and dealing with them, along-side the ever present problem with renewables, energy storage and distribution. (I'm not counting any operational safety risks because they've been planned for, mitigated, and practically made a non-issue) The only thing keeping us from a nuclear future at this point, is finding a way to effectively re-use the nuclear waste, (not talking about just depleted uranium, but also the heavily radiated materials used to moderate the reactor.) and to move the power around better. (corporate/governmental corruption aside of course) I would rather "meet our CO2 reduction goals by 2050" in 2025 if we could do it.
@@Theminecraftian772 There IS a way to deal with radioactive 'waste': Fast neutron reactors like the IFR (Integral Fast Reactor - Our present reactors use slow or moderated neutrons) 'Fast' neutrons can 'burn' anything above Lead in the periodic table; They are often called 'Actinide Burners'. Actinide Elements are Uranium (Yes, depleted uranium too), Plutonium, Americium, Curium etc, all the 'bad boys' of nuclear technology are destroyed and transformed into energy. What's left are very short-lived Isotopes, which decay in just 200 - 300 years and such a timespan is manageable - Just think of the pyramids which are many thousand years old. In fact, the dry cast containers used today for intermediate storage would be sufficient for safety. In such Reactors, the DU (Depleted uranium) 'Waste' in Paducah, KY would be sufficient to generate all electricity in the USA for more than a thousand years! Look for 'Integral Fast Reactor Ardenne Labs' in YT!
@@TheSpecio That's fantastic news!! But there's other radioactive waste to take care of other than the depleted uranium. The first one that comes to mind is the Graphite that's used as a moderator. (among many other things in the reactor) After a certain point, the graphite gets so irradiated that it stops being effective and needs to be changed out, and after a bit of research, I found this paper that says that 30% of the nuclear waste in the UK was the irradiated graphite. (indico.ictp.it/event/7633/session/1/contribution/17/material/0/0.pdf) I saw some videos a few years back about "Radioactive Diamond Batteries" where they take the graphite, turn it into a gas, then grow a diamond out of it, then grow some more diamond around it made of regular carbon sources, as to trap the radiation. This little device produces a small current and it's extremely interesting, but I haven't seen much on the tech's development recently. So to effectively use up the graphite waste, we would need to advance this avenue of technology much further to create larger power crystals and at a much faster rate. I'd say that if this gets made well, we would actually run out of the radiated graphite and have to find other ways to make it.
Agreed, it's a style I appreciate & am attempting to emulate as I speak with others about the issues. Limited success to date as our Federal politicians in Australia are total fukcwitz.
That's called free market economy and has little to do with capitalism. The freedom to screw over everyone else and the freedom to take away freedom of others. Just like the freedom to set up monopolies in order to kill off competition. In a free market economy, it's about cutting corners in order to be a few steps ahead of the competition - similar to cheating a game in order to win. In a properly managed capitalist system, the ecological costs - just like any other cost - are part of the pricing of the goods or services a business provides.
@@QoraxAudio What people have been mistakenly calling a free market economy is nothing more than a power vacuum. An actual free market requires some strong regulations to protect that freedom.
@@JakXLT Free market is basically an euphemism for financial anarchy. The most powerful business(es) has/have all the freedom by means of monopolies, price fixing, corporate espionage, political power through lobbying and legal power through expensive lawyers, while every other independent entrepreneur is at the mercy of those businesses. Long ago, free market economy used to be generally known as a bad thing and was called "laissez-faire economy" because of that. But since of the rise of communism after the second world war and the cold war fear that came along with it, managing the economy has become incorrectly associated with communism by people who are vulnerable to fearmongering.
I can't speak to industrial wood pellets, but when I had a pellet stove I got oak pellets. I doubt if anyone is clearing forests for oak to make pellets. Oak is worth a lot more for other uses. Oak pellets should be a true waste product that is being put to use.
Sadly in Atlantic Canada people do burn oak for fuel in home wood stoves. It's insane and a few people make money trying to intercept these logs and swap them for equal BTU in dried softwood. But it's still rampant and also maple and birch and cherry ...which is just nuts given their value to carvers and finish woodworkers.
I'm from New Brunswick Canada and there is a wood pellet plant not too far from here .. they ship all there pellets to EU and I can tell you that It is non sense, follow this. A 1million dollar machine cuts the trees in the forest (feller buncher) .. another million dollar machine delimbs cut to length and put into small piles (multi processor).. another million $ machine brings it all to the side of the logging road in big pilles( forwarder) and then a truck with a trailer equipped with a log loader , picks up the wood and hauls it to the mill( 1/2 million $truck / trailer). Then the mill makes wood chips with the timber true a huge wood chipper... The wood chips then go true a dryer powered by BURNING WOOD CHIPS.and are presses into pellets which are shipped acrosed the freaking ocean to Europe in a boat that burn fuel... then its mixed with coal and burned....... all of these machine burn fuel and they run 24/7.... its Total nonsense.. ITS DESTROYING THE ENVIRONMENT..
The Drax power station burning biomass produces 80% less emissions than coal. That is taking into account emission along the entire production process.
@@Flumstead good to know! the funny thing is that the wood pellet plant I'm talking about is less then 1km from a NBpower coal burning power station, who to my knowlege burns exclusively coal . 🤔 strange how things work sometimes
@@Flumstead To me it just seems like a made up excuse to keep burning stuff to boil water to turn a turbine tu supply the electric grid.. If there is a immediate solution to replace coal ,i would really like to know what it is.. but my personal opinion is that Burning something to avoid CO2 emission is like trying to put out a fire with....more fire ....🤔
All carbon emitted out from the burning process is carbon taken in by the tree through its growing stages. 1 tree equals 1 carbon, we burn it & 1 carbon goes out, we plant another tree -1 carbon is taken in.Thus equals net 0 carbon emissions. Biomass is still more renewable then solar.
You've convinced me on this one. I didn't want to believe it was this bad. Aerobic decomposition turns a large portion of the carbon into soil carbon, hummus which can sink anywhere from inches to meters deep into the soil, sequestering carbon permanently and promoting soil fertility and biodiversity for decades. It's absolutely not comparable to burning
I have a cabin in the woods in northern Saskatchewan and what I see is that if you leave to many dead trees rotting in the woods they ferment into ch4. The forests are also host to many inhabitants and important creatures. Farming forests is a difficult balance. We certainly shouldn't be doing anything industrial scale in them ever. Just let people live in them and be happy that they do.
If the policy of growing forests for biomass is to continue, it should be done in specifically planted areas, where trees like black locust, which has the highest BTUs of any wood, are grown in a coppice. With a coppice the trees can be planted once, harvested in winter, then in spring the stumps put out new shoots. On each trunk one shoot is selected to grow big and the rest are cut off. That single shoot grows quickly into a full sized tree in a much shorter time than planting conifers, because it is growing from established roots, which then it can be harvested again. Coppicing can be done for centuries to the same forest. Bamboo would be another crop that could be used like this. A better choice would be to use compostables for power generation. Compost heat to power turbines or methane digest compost to make natural gas for power and heating. Both processes leave a high quality soil amendment, and don't produce atmospheric carbon.
Indeed, burning wood and food doesn’t make much sense but I think there is much more to biomass: Bioenergy infeed such as manure, wastewater sludge, household waste, and industrial by-products can be processed into biogas and biomethane. This can help replace coal and oil as sources to supplement wind and solar when the weather isn’t good enough to meet electricity demand. Furthermore, digestate is a biogas by-product and is used as a fertilizer in agriculture. All this can be produced locally on farms which means less transportation is needed.
@@JustHaveaThink ow a few days passed. Look on number of views and compare it with number of view on videos about 4 month old. Near 1 mil compare with less then 100K for last 3 month. more like 50 K last month. You are clearly shadow banned for last 3 month. Many of my political independent channels are shadow banned for much longer, last few weeks they were completely demonetized, preventing from getting any income from YT in any way. Your channel about 4 years behind. Long time subscribers still notified and/or recommended, but no one else does.
There is a ban for cutting tree for biomass in Europe. The problem is that Europe allows pellets from unknown sources being imported to Europe. Also, there is a loophole allowing local wood pellet producers using good quality wood whereas the original idea is to use only wood scrap. For statistical comparison, 87% wood pellet producers in Lithuanian used better quality wood than scrap, and only 17% wood scrap (which is the original idea behind sustainable biomass). In sum, there is still a lot of possibilities legally tightening the use of biomass as sustainable energy, disallowing clearly unsustainable use of good quality wood being turned into biomass.
Yay! it's great to see you again! I've missed your videos. This video is a grim revelation, though. I had absolutely no idea all this burning of wood pellets was going on. Though given our local government's continued enthusiasm for opening new coal mines in 2021, they'll probably discover "biomass" a couple of years from now and dive in feet first. It seems like the remedy for biomass carbon loopholes has to be legislative. The industry is going to continue to promote itself, so it has to be made clear to all of our governments that their citizens do not find this acceptable.
Interesting and valuable video but I can't fully agree, the title should focus on high-energetic crops and pellet technology. The idea of promoting biomass as renewable source of energy is strongly dependent of the distance from its source (in the video it seemed as transport via the ocean is the main method), and it was told very little about the residual biomass sources. Moreover the vast majority of big power plants use biomass as supplement to their basic power supply, power industry based only on biomass is as bad as any other single source power industry... Pelletization leads to indirect energy loss, but in some cases it is necessary to avoid problems with combustion - boilers need to be prepared before using unprocessed biomass thus you don't have to always use pellets. That's the next thing that didn't appear in this video. To sum up, we can't tell that something is bad only because it's used in the wrong way in some areas of the globe. Please forgive me if I misunderstood some part of the video, but I felt like some of the people are afraid of biomass-only vision of the world which has no place today and will not ever in the future. Feel free to discuss, no hate ;)
Residual biomass: I'm still waiting for that to appear as was promissed about twenty years ago. Problem is that it is tightly bound within fibre and it takes a lot of energy to release it aand the enzymes to do that haven't been developed yet. So up to 50%, depending on country, are permitted to be mixed in. This means that the energy yield is rather low and we're basically burning food for a simplistic idea. What also rarelly gets mentioned is by-products of combustion. Any fuel you burn with air will give out some nitrogen oxydes, besides other nsaties, even if you'd burn hydrogen. In my book any energy production that requires burning with air is rather accellerating the problem than helping to solve it and should be abandoned.
@@heggedaal yeah it exist, however not in all cases a proper way to use it has been developed yet. I'm talking about straw, bagasse, orchard branches, beet pulp, corn stalks (and similars coming from agriculture), sewage sludge, animal poop :) These are the examples. Some of them are suitable for direct co-combustion, some of them are used to gain biogas and some of them are waiting to be used in the future. *yeah poop is also classified as biomass
@@fabianszymanski2660 as I said: in my book any energy production that requires burning with air is rather accelerating the problem than solving it. I just don't see biomass energy conversion on an industrial scale without causing major problems. E.g. a couple of years ago in Europe a sludge tank burst and the poop, sewage etc. ran into a river. Most of the fish died. A year later the same accident happened again to the same farmer with the same results. This is what I'm concerned with. In order to scrap up even small qantities of energy every farmer needs to service and maintain industrial machinery besides his farm work. Having thousands of tanks like this is a disaster waiting to happen.
EU ..... let's go green, by allowing Germany and Poland to burn enormous amounts of coal.......whilst telling UK to stop and shut down our options. Good bye EU happy we left.
Wood is natures supreme sustainable construction material and it should absolutely be humanities too, but our appreciation and understanding of it has been degraded by industrial history promoting the disasterous alternatives instead - plastics and underpriced metal and concrete. Burning waste wood is not a problem in itself (notice that nature does it too) It just needs to be a sensible proportion of overall production for construction grade and pupling grade wood. Wood habitat management and harvesting just needs to be done intelligently for it to be the foundation a sustainable economy which protects and restores nature and our living and working connections to it.
..just when you think we are all going to die of climate grief, along comes Just Have a Think and confirms it. ..just when you think we are all going to die of climate grief, that smile appears on your face because you know its what you want, bastards all of them.
@@huwwiliams8426 yers, and we can do it a la normal, individually, or we can aspire to be part of a bigger thing and 'go out with the brotherhood of man'. We may not be able to choose the circumstances of our birth, but if we align with others, I believe we can do this. Take out humanity :) 0h shut it all down R2!
Good to see you back. :) There are other issues with burning any biomass and that is the reduction in available nutrients. You are harvesting energy but also nutrients from an area. If you keep removing the biomass eventually you also reduce the productivity and also guess what? Soil carbon stores go away too. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Then imagine what has to be done with all those ashes at the other end? Still more problems to deal with like coal ash piles.
Best way to help is to build a wooden house. A forest is cut to lumber and carbon stored for 50+ years, while a new forest will be planted to start storing carbon. But to grow lumber grade wood the forest must be managed with thinnings that produce smaller wood (pulp/burn/degrade on the ground). If the forest owners income from the thinnings is decreased, the incentive to plant trees decreses as well, and the forest total stored carbon will start to decrease. Non managed forests grow slower and store less carbon.
Their doomsday prophesies are going to backfire. Either more people will stop believing them or they will insist we must use geoengineering schemes that will cause real problems.
In Denmark it has dawned on politicians that cutting down trees is not the way to reduce footprint. So they have transitioned to trash burning! However the demand for power and for distributed heating has meant that we are now importing household waste from Germany! The whole notion that distributed heating is an environmental benefit, has been shot down as it means now that we are forced to burn stuff and some coal for heating in winter, even when we have wind power surplus. That surplus is sold off, so in the grander scheem, it might not be as bad as it sounds, as this helps reducing other countries footprint. But it shows that yesterdays environmental solutions are todays curse.
A couple of thoughts: burning wood can be a good idea. In small scale and local in rural areas where there are lots and lots of wood. You know, the kind of villages - as an example - in north Scandinavia, Russia etcetera where there are a tradition to go out and cut your own firewood for the comming winter. Thing is, that is allways very localized, with very short transports and will never be about getting electricity and energy to vast amounts of people. As an example from my own country, the total amount of people who live in places like that are smaller then any decent sized town in UK. But as soon as you start to doing the same for millions in a country? There are - as stated in this video - lots of problems with that. There are also some problems with the idea that wind power has zero emission, by the way. But that is kind of a different topic all together.
Cornahol subsidies here in the states are a bonanza for Midwestern farmers. The corn yields are so high now that you can distinguish cornahol crops from those grown for food by the extreme density of the plantings. Cornahol production, like all other monoculture crops lessens biodiversity and removes arable land from food production - in a world where millions of children die from hunger every year. At least we can hold their wakes in climate controlled funeral homes. Biomass for energy is perhaps the most egregious example of first world problems that cascade their most negative aspects down the socioeconomic ladder. Yes, we industrialized nations have finally figured out how to capitalize on and export misery and human suffering - bloody fantastic!
Thanks , this was very enlightening. I’m surprised that wood pellet biomass is seen as carbon neutral - the main issue here is the time period for renewal of the resource, and the destruction of diverse habitat for monoculture forests. It seems the driver for wood pellet biomass is 60% of milled log mass becomes waste, which would otherwise have to be disposed of. Perhaps a compromise may be to deem only wood pellet production from milled timber as carbon neutral, although that will likely introduce verification issues. In Australia, about 67% of biomass energy is annual sugar cane crop waste. I received a notification for this video, so hopefully the RUclips IT guys have fixed your problem.
I am very glad to have watched this video. I had no idea. The only argument I would have to some of what you said was that the leftovers being left to rot in the forests would have a better impact than felling them and removing. I believe this is exactly the issue the US is having with these massive wildfires - all the dead and decaying material left to degrade without proper forestry management. I wish I knew the best possible way to accomplish the forestry management AND keep as many trees as possible. I have often wondered what happens to all the trees and such that are felled for road projects, new developments, and all these massive solar and wind farms. I guess now I know.
I don't really think you do know. Of the examples you listed off the majority would go to saw mills if a logging firm was hired to do the clearing....otherwise they would likely just be bulldozed out of the way. The rate at which wood chips are needed to feed these commercial operations for home heating, electricity generation etc requires very efficient processes to make big money which means clear cutting for the majority. While it is possible trees are cut for solar and wind farms I suspect that would be for road and platform access for windmills (so not huge) and I think it unlikely that this would be done for solar as it wouldn't be cost effective unless the solar is going in after a wood chip company has clear cut the forests...then it becomes a chicken and egg argument...but I think it unlikely that all the clear cut land would be used for solar so it becomes a case of using otherwise destroyed landscape effectively. Replanting trees will take decades before they have any appreciable impact on the carbon lost to the atmosphere by destroying the forest in the first place. At least the solar will reduce the need for as much biomass generated electricity.
@@Flumstead And mass deforestation and mega fires have increased due to climate change releasing megatons of Co2 which is very very far from carbon negative. Simple.
The only way the UK Govt can get close to CO2 reduction agreements is if shipping pellets across the Atlantic for burning is allowed to be recorded as carbon neutral when it is no such thing.
Need to replace combustion with pyrolysis. If you return the char made from the pyrolysis to the soil you sequester a lot of carbon and promote plant growth.
@@heggedaal carbon is the battery of the soil. It holds water, chemical nutrients (nitrate, phosphates, minerals) and provides habitat for beneficial organisms. Look up biochar. The issue with using mined coal as char is that it can have more free heavy metals than a manufactured char but in theory, yes you could use it.
It's interesting how so many comments indicate suprise at this revelation. Again this is more informative and balanced content from JHAT. Does it not however make more sense to start looking at how Policy is being developed and invest energy in influencing that. You do some very revealing stuff, would it make sense to understand and explain or at least note where such items of interest fit into the wider framework and where we as individuals could best invest our own energies. This is not meant as criticism, many people viewing your excellent videos would I'm sure like to change their behaviours and influence the macro picture, the big question is how leaders in driving opinion such as yourself can help society become more invested and less fatalistic. Of course we all have to overcome our pet biases which I think you do very well. Thanks and keep up the great work.
Hi Derek. Good feedback. I'm hoping that's the sort of thing that these new 'Just Have Another Think' videos will start to delve into. All the best. Dave
We used to coppice trees instead of chopping them down too, which is way more sustainable. It doesn't take decades between harvests. With rotation, you can harvest the same plot every three years.
Must be written with fossil fuel funding. Plenty of pellet companies operating and selling pellets in the US and NA for home heating at competitive pricing without subsidy. The pellet industry can thrive on just cleaning forests without clear cutting and most forests need severe cleanup do to beetle infestation. Like most RUclips videos it assemble opinions, and non-peer reviewed data to create the argument. France has so much woody biomass available it is put to unproductive uses.
I think the critique of energy systems you are doing is really invaluable. I noticed some factual inaccuracies in the presentation that I'd like to draw attention to because I think they might complicate the narrative on offer somewhat. First, the pellet market in the USA is not really as old as you are suggesting, nor as widespread. Pelletization is a technology that has traditionally been reserved for home heating applications. Industrial plants have co-fired their boilers for a long time with residuals from the milling process, this is true, but the pellet market has largely been confined to hardwoods, and largely geographically limited in scope to places that have winter. So the US Southeast where the initial round of industrial pellets were coming from had never been a major source of pellets previously because a) there was a robust paper sector, b) the climate, c) these are largely mono-cropped pine plantations since the 1930s. Second, the pellets that are going to service the UK coal plants are not the same as the typical pellet you see in a hardware store. Home heating pellets are mostly made from residuals like sawdust because they compact easily without additional processing. A lot of pellets historically were made from the residue of flooring mills because they're using hardwoods, and using very dry ones at that. The pellets getting exported for electricity generation are "black" pellets because they are made from green wood and include the bark and branches in some cases. they have a much lower energy density and produce more soot. They are coming from the forest where, since people stopped reading newspapers, the paper.mills that used to use these small diameter trees either needs to re-invest in new technology to produce things like board-type papers for packaging you see in amazon and other shipments, or simply shudder. Sawmills became anxious as the growth of these forests was slowing and therefore raising their costs - they wanted a new partner to help manage the pine plantations. These states looked at other uses: biofuels, bioplastics, manufactured woods...pellets were chosen for a variety of reasons, but had they not been another industry would likely have made use of the forests given that the US South had some of the cheapest material in the world and many people looking to continue to work in a sector their families had for generations. Finally, I think that there are many reasons to question the emissions impacts of these changes. As soon as the ink was dry on some of those contracts DEFRA ran new LCAs that showed how questionable those decisions were...should we be shipping wood half way around the world to incinerate in a few seconds when it offers so many properties that would 'store carbon' for much longer if used as a building material? I share many of the concerns of this video and channel in general, however, I am not certain that I share the cynicism that the only thing to take away is that the state has been captured or hoodwinked. There will always be trade offs in any scenario, and the science and our understanding of how these systems interact will continue to improve. I feel like many of the comments reflect a takeaway of "biomass = bad" which runs the risk of simply advocating for the status quo or a hope for some idealized alternative which (even if it were actualized) would contain its own trade-offs. Anyway - glad to have found your channel. I hope you keep engaging with the complexities of energy!
Over here in the Netherlands, biomass from trees is very big, because of the pressure of multinationals like Vattenfall on politics. People who care about the environment call the biomass power stations "tree crematories".
I have serious issues using trees, korn for burning or biogas. The problem is politicians have no clue and they have feel good policies that distort reality with subsidies
Thanks indeed, these issues you've raised are so interesting and important to address. Seems like few in government or the wood-pellet industry have any ecological understanding - its very frustrating and sad.
Fact: ex Brit, 30 yrs.proud British Columbian.ex tree planter. The pandemic has unleashed the forest destruction here. The government has decided that any monetary short falls can be fixed by wood harvest. Near and above my ranch a once beautiful and, planned national park reserve is now just pay dirt for loggers. Chainsaws are old world now from 1am every morning the fancy mechanized tree cutters cut trees 20.seconds apart. I have one old timer I think of, at least 700 yrs old wider then my huge ATV 7 ft across, 4000 ft up, good luck old guy, hoping greed doesn’t take you.
this video has a very bad assumption - it claims, that biomass should be harvested from forests and forests takes decade to grow. In reality forest is a bad source of biomass. The forests provide around 3 tons of dry biomass per hectare per year. The hybrid trees plantations, like willow or poplar are providing around 10-15 tons of dry biomass. You can harvest them after two years from planting. You also save a lot of fuel for transportation, because its easier to harvest and you can make the plantations very close to the power plant
I have often wondered why pine needles aren't used as biomass. Properly managed and ventilated needle fires (as in a burn barrel) burn for a surprisingly long time with almost no smoke. It seems to me that we have a potentially great source for heating energy which would, at the same time, mitigate the danger of forest fires.
Here in Australia we could collect our dry wood from forests and make electricity from it before it is wasted in bushfires. We could even target areas around towns and cities to keep them safer from fires.
seems odd that they count it as zero, shouldnt the country doing the export subtract it from their total? this might give other bad incentives, but it makes more sense than the person burning it counting it as zero.
Just analyzing the UK's 6th Carbon Budget now to unpick the assumptions made. They propose the whole range of energy renewable energy production but also some BECCS, so bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration to give, not just zero but, negative carbon. This only works with managed forest control, which we still don't have, but forest at the agricultural level is needed. By the way, plastic bags were patented by a Swede to stop unsustainable forestry. Now there is an outcry to use paper bags or agricultural products to replace plastic bags!
i believe that the eu announced that directive regarding the biomass coming from garbage, as a measure to promote recycling, but this way it seems to be getting out of hand
Many Thanks for another insightful video. Dave, with regard to the arguments made in this video, how do other biomass sources such as willow coppicing and cellulosic biomass (e.g. Miscanthus) and particularly chipped waste wood compare? Though none are carbon neutral (unless the transport and processing were accomplished by renewable energy means), they must be preferable to what you've shown?
Other biomass sources do have a low energy content. There is a reason why only a few bacteria and termites canlive on cellulosis. Low energy yield and hard to get by.
I work in forestry industry. I agree that burning a tree emits CO2. However it is quite a complcated topic. And in different countries there are different aspects. If it stops the renewable energy(wind and solar) usage, it could be considered bad. However in my country-Estonia we use it mostly for heating and much less for electricity. We get electricity as a side product of using it for heat. Before we used fossile fuels for heat. And yes burning timber emits more co2 than fossiles but ourforests are well manged. Most of biomass actually comes from the forests that were planted 50 or 100 years ago and after harvestig we replant them. When we use the harvesting residues we don't burn fossiles. Now part of the CO2 of the residues would go back to soil but if I remember correctly most of it would still be released to the atmosphere and it would be released within 2-3years. In addition to that in private houses and in the before oil era people used timber for heat. We need to heat our houses 6 to 7 months per year. The carbon that my grandfather released to atmosphere 100 uears ago has alreadybeen through 2 to 3 cycles considering the harvedting age of our most common firewood. If he had used coal, we would have released even more co2 from that time. In additon... if we make a solar farm, we need to turn forestland into an area that can not be used by many species. In forest they can live many years and our forest practises shos ensuesomewhat good oportunities for them the survive the cuttings. This is only for my country and thereare manybig and small "but-s" even here. However we should understand that renewable energy cant give us all energy yet and building renewable takes land away from nature. Therefore i suggest to consider trees as a form of stored solar energy. And if you compare the efectiveness of solar plant and a tree, you mightat first find that solar parks are about 5times more energy efficient. However it depends on the trees, latitude and many other aspects. Therefore I don't know exactly how much more the solarcpanel is effective.
I do enjoy how the calm man describes ways we are fucked.
Perhaps we are not fucked.
Perhaps it's all a scam.
We live in an age of greenpainting not in an age of responsible change.
@@jimmyb1451 If we didn't have a lockdown you'd be able to book an Arctic ocean sea cruise this summer and you would be able to see for yourself how dire the situation is. There are lies but they tend to tbe the reassuring ones - such as "build a wind turbine and all will be well."
@@proudhon100 I completely understand how "dire" the situation is.
What I don't understand is the complete lack of action, given that we have the tech to remedy the problem.
@@jimmyb1451 We don't have the tech to draw down large quantities of CO2 on a timescale menaingful to human civilisation, and even if we did it would require a huge amount of energy and other raw materials which could only be powered and processed by fossil fuel energy (which would kind of defeat the object of the exercise).
"Just have a think" and "Just have another think"? At this rate I'll have to think all the time!
who'd have thought it!
Polish Guy I try an think but nottin happens
Ow. That would make my brain hurt.
Judging by how little thinking we see in today's decision making, it's probably not such a bad thing/k!
Coming soon : "No, seriously, just step back a moment and really mull it over"
I have to admit I was naive in believing the biomass propaganda as being carbon-neutral. Thank you for this very interesting and enlightening presentation.
I fell for it too!
The important thing here is that biomass energy COULD be carbon neutral. If the rate of planting and combustion is equal, the system is in equilibrium and is therefore carbon neutral. The trouble is that by burning forests now, and promising to plant them later, we imbalance the equilibrium in the "short" term and leading to net emissions. Once again, businesses take a "loan" from the environment instead of giving back first.
That being said, biomass could be a useful source of energy in certain situations - such as fueling ships at sea, where batteries would be wildly impractical.
It entirely depends on how you manage it, where the biomass comes from and your plan for recapturing the CO2 released by the biomass. Unlike with fossil fuels, you could theoretically figure out a sustainable operation. But there's a lot of smoke and mirrors.
Also burning fuel for heat is one of the lowest grade uses for biomass. The sugar cane industry burns cane waste (bagasse) in its plants and that is actually carbon neutral when you look at the sugar cane growth cycle. However much of the process heat being delivered could plausibly be delivered by renewable electricity and heat pumps. The bagasse could then be used for fibres, pulp/paper, feed for mushrooms, or even as an alternative to the dubious wood pellets this video is about.
We’re all human and learning. Just be a student not a follower. 😉
@@chalichaligha3234 Not accurate Chali...you are missing the fact that trees decompose leaving some of their carbon in the soil...the only way to offset is to plant more trees than are burned....not sustainable.
Live in BC and am appalled and angry seeing our forests cut down for biofuel sent to other countries. Watching the old growth forests decimated is distressing
Biomass makes perfect sense in a timber rich area like BC. Don't fall for this funded garbage.
Canada's forest cover has remained incredibly steady for decades meaning that the percentage of forest cover is remaining virtually the same.
@@lrn_news9171 these people don't like reality, logging in the west is a more sustainable is probably the most environmental sound material source.
@@lrn_news9171 in nova scotia they have clear cut from side to side bottom to top and now they have heatwaves and droughts , no replanting
Wonder if clear cutting whole forests the size of Vancouver, led to the 2021 floods in B.C. costing $17 billion
Madness. One step forward, two steps back
If anyone has heard about Northern Ireland's biomass "renewable heat incentive" scheme, you'd know how ridiculous management can be.
I remember the government scandal. Some years ago now.
There was a similar scheme in England with people still receiving payments for burning biomass for unused heat.
Well at least they shut down the peat power plants in Real Ireland. Very renewable, it only takes a millennium to grow one meter of peat...
@@Chimel31 what has replaced it? Have another think......
@@Chimel31 That is hopefully happening here in Finland aswell.
Some of the alternatives aren't that great either, but still better than semi fossil peat. That is how progress happens, little by little.
Me watching JHAT: Feels greatful for the information but also rolls eyes at how stupid we are at a specie.
💯👏 I wonder if will be the only species to cause our own extinction. Thoughty2 has good video on why stupid people think their smart.
Not stupid. Dangerous.
Here in my city they burn the garbage and now we have air quality alerts every day , what a grand idea it is
Here in Brazil biomass is usually referred to as biogas energy burners from the poultry and swine industry, and the sugarcane bagasse resulting from the ethanol plants. Since these industries here usually just burn these byproduct dejects into the atmosphere or throw into the water streams, the few who harvest it for biomass are usually applauded.
Largato,
the biomass (Wood pellets) for power stations is made by clearing forests, processing the timber, and, in the U.K.'s case shipping them from America and Canada to the U.K.. It is not a waste product that is being used here. It is a dreadful and ineffective way to produce power, but it qualifies for 'renewable' subsidies, nice work if you can get it.
@@iareid8255 yes, i got that from the video. I mean that this term "biomass" in Brazil usually refers to methane from composting these byproducts of animal farming and ethanol plants.
Interesting. Thx for the info.
Here in China it is mostly farmers crop's waste (like the corn core, peanut shell, etc...) and many construction wood waste (like the one to encase cement for instance). The energy produced is used locally (so most of the powerplants are located in the country-side). The main area for such production in China is Shandong province which has very limited forests anyway so wood pellet is not even considered an option.
Also many such "biomass" powerplants are located near industry producing large quantities of biological that are not so valuable and even require destruction by fire anyway (since they are considered as hazardous wastes) so those plants are burning a mix of crop's waste and industry refuse which allows to have a better control on the fuel quality itself (too dry it overheats and too wet it doesn't provide enough heat).
Last but not least, the ashes are used in a new form of cement production which improved properties that reduce the pollution level of cement factories.
All in all, and the biomass can be a sensible addition to fight against global emissions... The problem, as it is with many industries, is that a lot of people are only thinking of the short term gain and don't think with a real "green" mind. It is a pity... BUt the problem is not with the technology, it is as always with people and regulation and therefore politics...
There's definitely a role for using agricultural and forestry waste as an energy source. For example using sunflower hulls as fuel in a sunflower oil processing plant is a reasonable thing to do. But cutting down trees to replace coal just to massage your carbon emission figures is outrageous.
The proper title for this video is: "Devious carbon accounting fuelling burning of forests"
I've been telling people not to use pellets for years but you put it so much better.
Copied to my MP. Sheffield, in the fallout from Drax
If only it were as simple as, "thing bad" or "thing good" the Daily Mail would be able to list everything that causes or prevents cancer and teenage boys would be able to definitely know which things are, and aren't gay.
The problem isn't the pellets, it's the implications and erroneous conclusions that have lead to governments paying for deforestation in the name of renewable energy.
@@recklessroges absolutely
Thanks Lindsay. Fingers crossed we get some movement there.
I'm going to write my elected representatives about this. I'm shocked, though I shouldn't be. Thanks for the reporting.
LOL Ya, that will certainly make a difference, why didn't I think of that thousands of times over the last 40 years..Oh, wait, I did....And things just continue to get worse...No one cares what you or I think..I know you must believe you live inside some sort of democracy, but, you don't...It's a plutocracy, kleptocracy, corporatocracy,
Got notified mate 👍
aye, me too!
I was not. He was defiantly put on in depended political media algorithm. Look on his view history. It fall from 300 000 view to 200 000 then 100 000 and now 30K. Left political commentators saw same numbers when they were put on this algorithm.
I got notification about 12h ago. Nice work Dave! Sharing.
Now a few days passed. Look on number of views and compare it with number of view on videos about 4 month old. Near 1 mil compare with less then 100K for last 3 month. more like 50 K last month. He is clearly shadow banned for last 3 month.
I'll be sharing this video with a lot of people. Yet another thing I've been banging on about for years...
I must admit, when I first heard about this biomass energy system, I couldn't make sense of it. Donkey's years ago, there had been one installed at a monastery not far from me, and I did ask the monks there - where does the wood come from to make the pellets? They had merely repeated what they must have been told: that it's from all the little leftover bits trimmed off trees at the time they're felled or at the sawmill.
The reason I found that confusing was - I live amidst vast plantations of trees. They're everywhere around here! And when those trees are felled, all those leftover 'bits' are just piled up to rot. Never, ever have I seen any trucks arrive to remove the stacks of abandoned cut branches, roots, dead or thin trees, or felled 'weed' trees with no commercial value. Nor have I seen woodchippers arrive on site to even begin processing all the dead material to make it easier to ship.
No, they push them into piles, into rows, bury them, or - worse still - burn them. I expect a lot of other people living near plantations can report the same.
As for the sawmills local to me - well, none of the waste from my 2 closest sawmills goes into the production of wood pellets. It's all snapped up by the agricultural or horticultural industry in the shape of sawdust and woodchips. It makes more money that way (that from the mouths of the sawmill owners themselves).
So there must be entire forests being felled purely for manufacture into wood pellets, because it would be way too expensive, complicated and time consuming for wood pellet producers to collect a little bit of wood waste from one sawmill and a little bit more from another mill 30 miles away, etc, etc.
It makes my blood boil and just have a think! Rather akin to when we were told 15 years ago (here in the UK)to buy diesel cars because they emit less CO2. It has an element of truth but ultimately we are being conned and for who's short term benefit? How on earth can it be financially viable to chop down trees in North America, make them into a suitable format, transport them in ships to Europe, get them to Biomass burning facilities and then use them to produce energy to generate electricity? I assume everyone in that chain is taking a slice of the profit ultimately all propped up by the poor consumers at the bottom. I blame the term renewable-energy which has quickly come to mean anything that isn't coal, gas or nuclear produced. While Biomass hides a multitude of production methods, ranging from better to worse, according to this report worldbioenergy.org/uploads/191129%20WBA%20GBS%202019_HQ.pdf, in 2017, 70% of renewable energy (n.b. not purely electricity) worldwide was produced by Biomass.
I’ve been telling my friends about this Drax scandal for years. Thanks for confirming it. If it had continued on coal the CO2 per kw would have been less!
Greetings from an American in the Philippines. My idea about biomass use a useless waste product, rice husk that the rice mill is happy to give us, use it as flooring in our Piggery. Every few weeks change it out, compost it and use to improve what little good soil is here to grow fruit trees and vegetables. Win win all around and with the rice husk down in the pig pens, people are amazed; no bad odor at all.
Biochar is good in pig pens too.
@@Flumstead True but with natural rice husk we have found it is very effective at eliminating odor and after a few weeks in the pig pen composes extremely well. Please be safe and remain well during these difficult days.
They should use hemp for most of those products. Paper, rope, bags, etc.
Biomass from hemp is cleaner than burning wood also
Especially toilet paper. Crazy to cut down trees to wipe shit on the product.
Yes. Thank you. I love how nobody mentions this because engineers rarely see above the walls of their cubicles. Hemp regrows every year, in crap soil. Burning hemp produces less ash than wood. Pellets can be made from depleted stalks after the fiber and oil has been removed for other purposes. We can scrub the exhaust of hemp-fired power plants with converter‘s to capture the CO2 for repurposing in agriculture.
hemptoday.net/industrial-hemp-fiber-is-better-than-wood-in-every-way/
Whats the cost compared to using wood? If your electricity bills doubles or triples do you think you would be pushing for hemp? Follow the money friend!
First, I love your videos; they are well researched and clearly explained for most audiences. I do think in this case, there have been a few too many generalizations. I have been involved in studies related to biomass combustion for thermal energy, and have learned about many of the issues you have raised in this video. What is not fully covered are the mitigations that some regions have implemented to minimize or eliminate the issues. In my region, we have regulations and enforcement for forestry management, something that is, for the most part, taboo in the US. That's not to say it's perfect; there are always those who put profit first and take the risk of not getting caught, but on average, our forestation exceeds our deforestation.
Rules to consider for biomass:
1. Source biomass must be from new growth, managed forests or cycled crops (i.e. for each plant removed, one or more equivalent plants are planted to create a cycle).
2. Biomass must be locally sourced (e.g. < 200 km transport distance).
3. Ensure a hierarchy of biomass usage based on maximizing sequestration period (e.g. construction lumber - furniture - pulp & paper - agricultural charcoal - combustion).
Even with these rules, there is still the issue of the carbon debt (initial carbon released at the beginning of the cycle). There are a couple solutions for this; specific forestation or carbon capture. Planning for advanced forestation prior to the beginning of combustion can offset the balance of carbon emitted. Large amounts of land that have a low sequestration factor are necessary, and the new growth must be given ample time to reach a level of development to ensure adequate CO2 absorption (> 5 years).
Carbon capture can be used to make the process carbon negative (carbon sink) if done correctly. The end use of the CO2 is important in this process. If it goes to something like the bottling industry or greenhouses, most of the CO2 is released back to the atmosphere almost immediately. Long-term storage in the ground, or infused in concrete are examples of effective sequestration. I'm still on the fence, based on principle, whether I support the oil industry using the CO2 to help extract oil, but it is another long-term storage option.
With all this said, the first solution in our 30-year plan is to use hydroelectricity, preferably run-of-river, to supply our production equipment. Combining run-of-river, reservoir (dams), solar, and wind, the operating emissions are about 2g/kWh compared to about 180g/kWh for natural gas, and lifecycle emissions are about 22g/kWh (lifecycle emissions for NG are not easily determined). (note, the numbers are extracted from my aging memory so forgive me if they are wrong and feel free to reply with corrections)
Once again, another great video! I'm going to try to comment on every video even if I have nothing really to say just to increase the comment numbers 'cause this is a great channel. Thanks!
Thanks Amanda. I really appreciate that :-)
Great video. I still don't think biomass itself is a scam, we still have a lot of biomass waste! No need to destroy our lands for wood pellets, we could just use WCO or food waste.
While I whole heartily agree that cutting down living trees and burning it for fuel is not carbon neutral, I do think that there is a place for certain biomass energy technologies. Specifically I am talking about biochar optimized pyrolysis. This converts up to 50% of the carbon stored in biomass into a recalcitrant (a.k.a. doesn't breakdown and release over time) form of carbon. If this were used to convert forestry waste (read this as forest fire fuel reduction), agricultural waste, woody construction debris, etc. into biochar you can sequester carbon for hundreds or thousands of years, while harvesting energy and heat from the process that can displace fossil fuels. That said you have to be extremely careful to make sure that the process you use is optimized for biochar production (carbonization/torrefaction), and not energy (such as gassification technology), otherwise you basically are just burning it, which does no one any good. I would love to see you do a video on biochar, not only looking at its carbon sequestration potential but also the soil amendment properties it has. Cheers!
Absolutely! I'm a big fan of biochar and biogas, where the benefits to soil health and resistance are even more important than the energy generated. But even then there are stupid applications of these processes, especially if the material to be digested and/or charred is trucked any significant distance.
Yes! I don't know why there is not more of an uproar over this! Thanks for speaking up! BestRoy
Yes, incentives can have perverse consequences, so I can somewhat understand a scheme for domestic use like Korea's getting out of hand... But holy smoke how can anyone look at a 4 Gw project running on burning wood and think "yup, that's sustainable." !?
Holy smoke indeed!
Biomass is a big issue here in Nova Scotia, Canada. We are cutting down forests to make wood pellets to ship to Germany and Europe. The answer here is to require all biomass burning be done as part of the process to create biochar. Creating biochar does not allow for the same level if energy production, and still has emissions, but we have to sequester as much carbon as possible.
Our future holds a level of forest management that has yet to be fully understood, but there will be lots of biomass to deal with. Wood as a building material is highly favoured over steel and concrete, so there will be sawdust for pellets too. All the assessments I have seen show that localizing the sourcing of building materials is important. The production of biochar must be local as well, as shipping this carbon material is antithetical to the idea of sequestration. The idea that we can create wood pellets in Canada, enrich this material with the fossil fuels required to ship it to Europe, is the crazy talk of a pre-transitional period. The future of sourcing power sources, building materials, and biomass to be sequestered must be local.
Looking at the breakdown of biochar production shows that the degree of localization required, prohibits the domination of large power companies. These companies will fight hard to retain control over the means of production. The math will win, I have no doubt. But how long they retain control, is up to us.
Shipping logs across the pond from the U.S. to Europe to make wood pellets makes no CO2 reduction sense at all. I know from working on ships that they burn at least 200 BARRELS of heavy fuel PER DAY while underway. How is this good for CO2 reduction? I hope biomass power generation and corn ethanol both get phased out. The only way corn ethanol survives in the U.S. is with MASSIVE government subsidies and biomass plants too often need more than just tree waste to power them so they cut down whole trees which are a valuable carbon sink.
Yes, but under this argument solar doesn't make no CO2 reduction sense either. Many of these solar panels and batteries are made in China and shipped all over the world using barrels of heavy fuel every day. With this "shipping" factor removed as a variable, biomass as a fuel is much better than fossil fuels and certainly has CO2 reduction effects.
@@RUclipsChannelsNearMe You have to compare the energy density. A 20kg 400W PV module in Spain produces 12000kWh of electricity in 20 years. A 20kg sack of wood pellets only produces 80kWh of heat or 40kwh of electricity. Many pv panels are also constructed locally (glass and aluminum frame) and only the 60 modules per panel are shipped around the world with a size comparable to a shoe box.
Beef production is the top driver of deforestation in the world's tropical forests.
Ever heard of hs2?
Not the same scale but still ancient irreplaceable woodland
Replace cows with turkeys. Doesn't taste that different on a burger if you season it right. If you need milk use goats and almonds.
Thats coz beef taste better then leaves
Walking around in the clear-cuts and fir plantations here in Sweden, I know about the forest industry's traces and tricks. Here is a video that dives deeper into what Dave touches upon in this excellent video ruclips.net/video/q51FMbTOn_Q/видео.html
Thank you Stina
People like you are one of few reasons why I look through utube comments
Thank you for your comment and video.
Thanks, really interesting video, well worth the time to watch
thanks for the referral to what is a very informative movie. I’ve always known the term “sustainable forestry” to be a lie. Its like saying a natural meadow is the same as a planted flower bed.
Looks like they’re burning coal, before it even has a chance to turn into coal......
RUclips suggested i should watch this. Clever thing.
Good tube.
Like and Sub my friend this channel is REALLY worth a deep dive into it's archives most of it is FAR from stale even a year + ago....
Excellent news. Thanks David :-)
I can't believe they got me with their BS.
don't worry they are still fooling most people
How have they convinced everyone that burning Wood is green. ? 😡
From a purely materialistic rationale that growing your carbon is better than digging up carbon - and always having a profit motive.
But as completely locked tight materialistic thinking goes, it completely missed the wood from the trees - ignoring the externalities of cost of ecocide from single crop plantation forests/corn/rapeseed oil as well as the end goal of the first being cut down to recoup cost.
Same way they convinced people that eating meat is healthy.
It's the old recycling definition at work.
Recycled wood is another name for smoke!
How have they convinced everyone that trees will capture carbon?
How have they convinced everyone that cows emit CO2 when they actually are the best way to put it into the soil?
@@planetvegan7843 you kill thousands of animals to protect your crops. One cow feeds a person for 3.5 years and only dies once
The civilization we build is like a huge train at high speed and with no brakes. We are voracious consumers of wood, coal, gas, and oil products. The other sources of power generation also have major impacts on the environment. The only possible solution is to decrease the world population and this will happen in one way or another.
Reducing world population is underway now: Plandemic/ vaccination / lots of dieing.
@@pm6613 Yes, that's it, but I'm afraid that worse things are yet to come.
As a forest management specialist in the U.S. I have to correct you on some of your information. Widespread clear cutting for the sole purpose of wood fuel is exceedingly rare in the United States. Mostly because we have a thriving paper industry the utilizes pulpwood grade timber for paper which keeps carbon out of the system for a period of time as the fiber is recycled. Clear cutting entire stands for biomass production is reserved for unhealthy stands of low production as a means for public land entities to regenerate the stand naturally hoping for greater vigor in the next crop of trees. Many of these stands have small diameter trees of poor fiber quality. Generally planting is not required as the trees reproduce vegetatively through root suckering and stump shoots. In other words the stumps left behind facilitate the regeneration. Clear cutting is in fact an excellent way to regenerate hardwood species.
We don’t harvest solely for the production of biomass because biomass is worth roughly a quarter of what construction material is. It simply is not a common practice. In addition biomass harvesting is not allowed on sites which are nutrient poor. Rich mesic sites with low water infiltration are not harmed by harvesting limbs for biomass.
Worldwide carbon uptake in forests is dropping because worldwide forests are predominantly older and as trees age they sequester less carbon.
I caution you in using vague descriptions of special phenomena. People dislike the forest industry in the U.S. too much as it is because they are emotionally charged and uninformed. Videos like this with half truths don’t help matters any. I however agree that power production by biomass is not economically feasible. Rather supplying individual homeowners with wood pellet boilers would take a significant strain off of petroleum resources
Would you please tell me where did he say this is happening in the US?
From what i understand the point he was making was (but i didn't have the patience to re-listen the entire video to confirm), the problem with importing wood from the US to Europe is the fuel burned for transportation of biomass which kind of defies the purpose of "zero" emissions.
Good one! This needs to be talked about a lot more.
They should stop all subsidies, and spend that money planting trees.
Why the hell are these wood pellets being considered as green energy/carbon neutral? It takes the carbon from on the ground, and in the trees, and puts it in the air. And like you said, the trees take decades to grow, and unlike corn and other ethanol based fuels, tree fuel does not have a net positive impact due to its demonstrated unsustainability, and it requiring more and more trees chopped down to meet the ludicrous demand for wood-fuel.
To meet the demand for corn, sugar cane etc. forests are cleared and destroyed. So what's the difference? There is no 'green' biomass fuel.
All 'sustainable energies' (Biomass, wind, solar...) are destroying the environment and are not 'green'. Just think of the horrendous environmental impact of Neodymium mining in China!
f you want to avoid CO2, the only option is nuclear. It has by far the least impact.
Just have a think: One nuclear power plant has the same output as 5000 wind turbines and can deliver electricity 'on demand' when it's needed and where it's needed!
@@TheSpecio true on all accounts, but the point I was trying to make is that trees would be the literal worst way to do "green" energy. Yes, to meet demands with the other biomass fuel like corn and sugar cane and whatnot you would need to take much more land than feasible, but the difference between them is that corn and the others take maybe a season to grow, whereas a wooded area takes many times that.
Any kind of "green" energy that uses a burning fuel (Hydrogen itself excluded), whether it's ethanol, plant oil/gas, or whatnot, at best, it would be carbon neutral, not even taking into account all the energy and resources it takes to grow these things.
(I'm not counting the energy required to produce the hydrogen because there are clean ways to do it.)
Good point on the resource mining needed for the renewables damages the environment as well, but keep in mind that the damage is a different type of damage, rather than the standard CO2 emission. So yes, we should definitely look for a different way to make the renewables, and make them more efficiently, but the way you phrase it makes it sound like we should just cease all production of it.
I would love it if that were possible, but to even start scratching the surface of higher efficiency and larger distribution of renewables, we need to start yesterday, rather than today.
I'm a big advocate for Nuclear energy, and I would love it if all of earth's civilizations could be run off of it, but the drawbacks of nuclear (minor operational safety risks aside) are things that need to be better optimized before world and local governments "take up the torch" of nuclear power. These being the waste materials and dealing with them, along-side the ever present problem with renewables, energy storage and distribution. (I'm not counting any operational safety risks because they've been planned for, mitigated, and practically made a non-issue)
The only thing keeping us from a nuclear future at this point, is finding a way to effectively re-use the nuclear waste, (not talking about just depleted uranium, but also the heavily radiated materials used to moderate the reactor.) and to move the power around better. (corporate/governmental corruption aside of course)
I would rather "meet our CO2 reduction goals by 2050" in 2025 if we could do it.
@@Theminecraftian772 There IS a way to deal with radioactive 'waste':
Fast neutron reactors like the IFR (Integral Fast Reactor - Our present reactors use slow or moderated neutrons)
'Fast' neutrons can 'burn' anything above Lead in the periodic table; They are often called 'Actinide Burners'. Actinide Elements are Uranium (Yes, depleted uranium too), Plutonium, Americium, Curium etc, all the 'bad boys' of nuclear technology are destroyed and transformed into energy.
What's left are very short-lived Isotopes, which decay in just 200 - 300 years and such a timespan is manageable - Just think of the pyramids which are many thousand years old. In fact, the dry cast containers used today for intermediate storage would be sufficient for safety.
In such Reactors, the DU (Depleted uranium) 'Waste' in Paducah, KY would be sufficient to generate all electricity in the USA for more than a thousand years!
Look for 'Integral Fast Reactor Ardenne Labs' in YT!
@@TheSpecio That's fantastic news!! But there's other radioactive waste to take care of other than the depleted uranium. The first one that comes to mind is the Graphite that's used as a moderator. (among many other things in the reactor)
After a certain point, the graphite gets so irradiated that it stops being effective and needs to be changed out, and after a bit of research, I found this paper that says that 30% of the nuclear waste in the UK was the irradiated graphite.
(indico.ictp.it/event/7633/session/1/contribution/17/material/0/0.pdf)
I saw some videos a few years back about "Radioactive Diamond Batteries" where they take the graphite, turn it into a gas, then grow a diamond out of it, then grow some more diamond around it made of regular carbon sources, as to trap the radiation. This little device produces a small current and it's extremely interesting, but I haven't seen much on the tech's development recently.
So to effectively use up the graphite waste, we would need to advance this avenue of technology much further to create larger power crystals and at a much faster rate. I'd say that if this gets made well, we would actually run out of the radiated graphite and have to find other ways to make it.
This episode came up on my notification bell. Hope that helps you identify JHAT's recent YT problem.
Agreed, it's a style I appreciate & am attempting to emulate as I speak with others about the issues.
Limited success to date as our Federal politicians in Australia are total fukcwitz.
Capitalists will always find a way to push the cost onto someone else.
Indeed
That's called free market economy and has little to do with capitalism.
The freedom to screw over everyone else and the freedom to take away freedom of others.
Just like the freedom to set up monopolies in order to kill off competition.
In a free market economy, it's about cutting corners in order to be a few steps ahead of the competition - similar to cheating a game in order to win.
In a properly managed capitalist system, the ecological costs - just like any other cost - are part of the pricing of the goods or services a business provides.
@@QoraxAudio What people have been mistakenly calling a free market economy is nothing more than a power vacuum. An actual free market requires some strong regulations to protect that freedom.
@@JakXLT Free market is basically an euphemism for financial anarchy.
The most powerful business(es) has/have all the freedom by means of monopolies, price fixing, corporate espionage, political power through lobbying and legal power through expensive lawyers, while every other independent entrepreneur is at the mercy of those businesses.
Long ago, free market economy used to be generally known as a bad thing and was called "laissez-faire economy" because of that.
But since of the rise of communism after the second world war and the cold war fear that came along with it, managing the economy has become incorrectly associated with communism by people who are vulnerable to fearmongering.
I can't speak to industrial wood pellets, but when I had a pellet stove I got oak pellets. I doubt if anyone is clearing forests for oak to make pellets. Oak is worth a lot more for other uses. Oak pellets should be a true waste product that is being put to use.
Sadly in Atlantic Canada people do burn oak for fuel in home wood stoves. It's insane and a few people make money trying to intercept these logs and swap them for equal BTU in dried softwood. But it's still rampant and also maple and birch and cherry ...which is just nuts given their value to carvers and finish woodworkers.
I'm from New Brunswick Canada and there is a wood pellet plant not too far from here .. they ship all there pellets to EU and I can tell you that It is non sense, follow this.
A 1million dollar machine cuts the trees in the forest (feller buncher) .. another million dollar machine delimbs cut to length and put into small piles (multi processor).. another million $ machine brings it all to the side of the logging road in big pilles( forwarder) and then a truck with a trailer equipped with a log loader , picks up the wood and hauls it to the mill( 1/2 million $truck / trailer). Then the mill makes wood chips with the timber true a huge wood chipper...
The wood chips then go true a dryer powered by BURNING WOOD CHIPS.and are presses into pellets which are shipped acrosed the freaking ocean to Europe in a boat that burn fuel... then its mixed with coal and burned....... all of these machine burn fuel and they run 24/7.... its Total nonsense.. ITS DESTROYING THE ENVIRONMENT..
The Drax power station burning biomass produces 80% less emissions than coal. That is taking into account emission along the entire production process.
@@Flumstead good to know! the funny thing is that the wood pellet plant I'm talking about is less then 1km from a NBpower coal burning power station, who to my knowlege burns exclusively coal . 🤔 strange how things work sometimes
Absolutely insane!
@@JustHaveaThink The sane solution is?
@@Flumstead To me it just seems like a made up excuse to keep burning stuff to boil water to turn a turbine tu supply the electric grid..
If there is a immediate solution to replace coal ,i would really like to know what it is.. but my personal opinion is that Burning something to avoid CO2 emission is like trying to put out a fire with....more fire ....🤔
I concur totally with everything you said. Biomass is not the solution, it’s exhilarating the problem.‼️‼️
This video took you from uninformed, to poorly informed on some topics, and misinformed on others. Congrats!
All carbon emitted out from the burning process is carbon taken in by the tree through its growing stages. 1 tree equals 1 carbon, we burn it & 1 carbon goes out, we plant another tree -1 carbon is taken in.Thus equals net 0 carbon emissions. Biomass is still more renewable then solar.
You've convinced me on this one. I didn't want to believe it was this bad. Aerobic decomposition turns a large portion of the carbon into soil carbon, hummus which can sink anywhere from inches to meters deep into the soil, sequestering carbon permanently and promoting soil fertility and biodiversity for decades. It's absolutely not comparable to burning
Follow the money. Who's lobbyists were working in Korea the decade before the power plants were built?
Follow the money... and then make them pay. Without accountability, knowledge is stamp collecting.
@@recklessroges _bruh_
That hit
I have a cabin in the woods in northern Saskatchewan and what I see is that if you leave to many dead trees rotting in the woods they ferment into ch4. The forests are also host to many inhabitants and important creatures. Farming forests is a difficult balance. We certainly shouldn't be doing anything industrial scale in them ever. Just let people live in them and be happy that they do.
If "renewABLES" aren't "renewed" then they were never renewable at all.
but the Sun hydrogen supply....
With enough patience, fossil fuels will renew themselves.
@@np4029 how does that fit in a 5 years business plan ?
wrote to my local mp, thanks for continuing to make great content to help me cope with climate grief. you're providing a hugely important service
showed up in my subscription feed straight away unlike the last couple of videos so looks like it's all fixed.
If the policy of growing forests for biomass is to continue, it should be done in specifically planted areas, where trees like black locust, which has the highest BTUs of any wood, are grown in a coppice. With a coppice the trees can be planted once, harvested in winter, then in spring the stumps put out new shoots. On each trunk one shoot is selected to grow big and the rest are cut off. That single shoot grows quickly into a full sized tree in a much shorter time than planting conifers, because it is growing from established roots, which then it can be harvested again. Coppicing can be done for centuries to the same forest. Bamboo would be another crop that could be used like this.
A better choice would be to use compostables for power generation. Compost heat to power turbines or methane digest compost to make natural gas for power and heating. Both processes leave a high quality soil amendment, and don't produce atmospheric carbon.
Great topic and well covered, thank you. Fungal soils are the key loss here.
Indeed, burning wood and food doesn’t make much sense but I think there is much more to biomass:
Bioenergy infeed such as manure, wastewater sludge, household waste, and industrial by-products can be processed into biogas and biomethane. This can help replace coal and oil as sources to supplement wind and solar when the weather isn’t good enough to meet electricity demand.
Furthermore, digestate is a biogas by-product and is used as a fertilizer in agriculture. All this can be produced locally on farms which means less transportation is needed.
My guess is yes, before watching. Enjoy the day. We are flucked. Don't have children. Adopt.
Welcome back got a notification this time.
Hope all is sorted now.
Thanks for sharing
This appeared on my recommended if you’re worried! :D
That's a relief. Thanks for letting me know :-)
@@JustHaveaThink ow a few days passed. Look on number of views and compare it with number of view on videos about 4 month old. Near 1 mil compare with less then 100K for last 3 month. more like 50 K last month. You are clearly shadow banned for last 3 month. Many of my political independent channels are shadow banned for much longer, last few weeks they were completely demonetized, preventing from getting any income from YT in any way. Your channel about 4 years behind. Long time subscribers still notified and/or recommended, but no one else does.
There is a ban for cutting tree for biomass in Europe. The problem is that Europe allows pellets from unknown sources being imported to Europe. Also, there is a loophole allowing local wood pellet producers using good quality wood whereas the original idea is to use only wood scrap. For statistical comparison, 87% wood pellet producers in Lithuanian used better quality wood than scrap, and only 17% wood scrap (which is the original idea behind sustainable biomass).
In sum, there is still a lot of possibilities legally tightening the use of biomass as sustainable energy, disallowing clearly unsustainable use of good quality wood being turned into biomass.
Is there a buddhist monk theme going on?
Sit still and breathe
Nothing will be revealed
Yay! it's great to see you again! I've missed your videos.
This video is a grim revelation, though. I had absolutely no idea all this burning of wood pellets was going on. Though given our local government's continued enthusiasm for opening new coal mines in 2021, they'll probably discover "biomass" a couple of years from now and dive in feet first.
It seems like the remedy for biomass carbon loopholes has to be legislative. The industry is going to continue to promote itself, so it has to be made clear to all of our governments that their citizens do not find this acceptable.
"All forms of carbon, kill plants." -------Sandy Cortez 2021
Interesting and valuable video but I can't fully agree, the title should focus on high-energetic crops and pellet technology. The idea of promoting biomass as renewable source of energy is strongly dependent of the distance from its source (in the video it seemed as transport via the ocean is the main method), and it was told very little about the residual biomass sources. Moreover the vast majority of big power plants use biomass as supplement to their basic power supply, power industry based only on biomass is as bad as any other single source power industry... Pelletization leads to indirect energy loss, but in some cases it is necessary to avoid problems with combustion - boilers need to be prepared before using unprocessed biomass thus you don't have to always use pellets. That's the next thing that didn't appear in this video. To sum up, we can't tell that something is bad only because it's used in the wrong way in some areas of the globe. Please forgive me if I misunderstood some part of the video, but I felt like some of the people are afraid of biomass-only vision of the world which has no place today and will not ever in the future. Feel free to discuss, no hate ;)
Residual biomass: I'm still waiting for that to appear as was promissed about twenty years ago. Problem is that it is tightly bound within fibre and it takes a lot of energy to release it aand the enzymes to do that haven't been developed yet. So up to 50%, depending on country, are permitted to be mixed in. This means that the energy yield is rather low and we're basically burning food for a simplistic idea.
What also rarelly gets mentioned is by-products of combustion. Any fuel you burn with air will give out some nitrogen oxydes, besides other nsaties, even if you'd burn hydrogen. In my book any energy production that requires burning with air is rather accellerating the problem than helping to solve it and should be abandoned.
@@heggedaal yeah it exist, however not in all cases a proper way to use it has been developed yet. I'm talking about straw, bagasse, orchard branches, beet pulp, corn stalks (and similars coming from agriculture), sewage sludge, animal poop :) These are the examples. Some of them are suitable for direct co-combustion, some of them are used to gain biogas and some of them are waiting to be used in the future.
*yeah poop is also classified as biomass
@@fabianszymanski2660 as I said: in my book any energy production that requires burning with air is rather accelerating the problem than solving it. I just don't see biomass energy conversion on an industrial scale without causing major problems. E.g. a couple of years ago in Europe a sludge tank burst and the poop, sewage etc. ran into a river. Most of the fish died. A year later the same accident happened again to the same farmer with the same results. This is what I'm concerned with. In order to scrap up even small qantities of energy every farmer needs to service and maintain industrial machinery besides his farm work. Having thousands of tanks like this is a disaster waiting to happen.
EU: Let's go green!
Also EU: BurN TrEeS!!11!!
Fucking hell we live in annoying times.
EU ..... let's go green, by allowing Germany and Poland to burn enormous amounts of coal.......whilst telling UK to stop and shut down our options. Good bye EU happy we left.
The least you could do on such a quality channel is spell-check your comments: It should have been "TrEe$". ;-)
Wood is natures supreme sustainable construction material and it should absolutely be humanities too, but our appreciation and understanding of it has been degraded by industrial history promoting the disasterous alternatives instead - plastics and underpriced metal and concrete. Burning waste wood is not a problem in itself (notice that nature does it too) It just needs to be a sensible proportion of overall production for construction grade and pupling grade wood. Wood habitat management and harvesting just needs to be done intelligently for it to be the foundation a sustainable economy which protects and restores nature and our living and working connections to it.
@@adymode Using trees for soil building would be more useful at the present. Trees to biochar and useful energy seems fairly ideal.
Superb video, thank you! I'm sharing this with all my friends!
Very optimistic video. Just when you think that we all gonna die, you can watch educative content to realize that it's a good thing.
..just when you think we are all going to die of climate grief, along comes Just Have a Think and confirms it.
..just when you think we are all going to die of climate grief, that smile appears on your face because you know its what you want, bastards all of them.
we do all have to die some day
@@huwwiliams8426 yers, and we can do it a la normal, individually, or we can aspire to be part of a bigger thing and 'go out with the brotherhood of man'. We may not be able to choose the circumstances of our birth, but if we align with others, I believe we can do this. Take out humanity :) 0h shut it all down R2!
I'm gonna split a few extra cord of wood this year after watching this.
What about Bio-gas from human or other animals? Is this "sustainable?"
No because of how they/we are fed.
@@crhu319 By plants and animals - Which absorb carbon when growing. Thus it is renewable, if it wasn't then life wouldn't exist on this planet.
Good to see you back. :) There are other issues with burning any biomass and that is the reduction in available nutrients. You are harvesting energy but also nutrients from an area. If you keep removing the biomass eventually you also reduce the productivity and also guess what? Soil carbon stores go away too. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Then imagine what has to be done with all those ashes at the other end? Still more problems to deal with like coal ash piles.
They could sell the ashes as soil fertilizer.
Biomass from Trees not feasable, large scale.
Upcycle poop instead.
Poop as a fertiliser can be up cycled into trees and other plants, which have much greater value.
@@Flumstead Poop is full of chemical contaminants. Poop pellets to burn is a great idea. Spreading on the land not so much.
@@penguinuprighter6231 Which chemicals?
@@Flumstead George Monbiot did a thread on it today. Have a look if you're on twitter. A lot it seems.
@@penguinuprighter6231 Lol can't wait to listen to George and his big fantasy ideas........introduce elephants to Britain etc.....lol.
Best way to help is to build a wooden house. A forest is cut to lumber and carbon stored for 50+ years, while a new forest will be planted to start storing carbon. But to grow lumber grade wood the forest must be managed with thinnings that produce smaller wood (pulp/burn/degrade on the ground). If the forest owners income from the thinnings is decreased, the incentive to plant trees decreses as well, and the forest total stored carbon will start to decrease. Non managed forests grow slower and store less carbon.
"We haven't got decades to wait" ofcourse we have, every year we have ten more years
Their doomsday prophesies are going to backfire. Either more people will stop believing them or they will insist we must use geoengineering schemes that will cause real problems.
In Denmark it has dawned on politicians that cutting down trees is not the way to reduce footprint. So they have transitioned to trash burning! However the demand for power and for distributed heating has meant that we are now importing household waste from Germany! The whole notion that distributed heating is an environmental benefit, has been shot down as it means now that we are forced to burn stuff and some coal for heating in winter, even when we have wind power surplus. That surplus is sold off, so in the grander scheem, it might not be as bad as it sounds, as this helps reducing other countries footprint. But it shows that yesterdays environmental solutions are todays curse.
A couple of thoughts: burning wood can be a good idea. In small scale and local in rural areas where there are lots and lots of wood. You know, the kind of villages - as an example - in north Scandinavia, Russia etcetera where there are a tradition to go out and cut your own firewood for the comming winter. Thing is, that is allways very localized, with very short transports and will never be about getting electricity and energy to vast amounts of people. As an example from my own country, the total amount of people who live in places like that are smaller then any decent sized town in UK. But as soon as you start to doing the same for millions in a country? There are - as stated in this video - lots of problems with that. There are also some problems with the idea that wind power has zero emission, by the way. But that is kind of a different topic all together.
Cornahol subsidies here in the states are a bonanza for Midwestern farmers. The corn yields are so high now that you can distinguish cornahol crops from those grown for food by the extreme density of the plantings.
Cornahol production, like all other monoculture crops lessens biodiversity and removes arable land from food production - in a world where millions of children die from hunger every year. At least we can hold their wakes in climate controlled funeral homes.
Biomass for energy is perhaps the most egregious example of first world problems that cascade their most negative aspects down the socioeconomic ladder. Yes, we industrialized nations have finally figured out how to capitalize on and export misery and human suffering - bloody fantastic!
"We should never underestimate human stupidity." - Professor Yuval Harari, author of the popular book Sapiens, versions 1 and 2.
Thanks , this was very enlightening.
I’m surprised that wood pellet biomass is seen as carbon neutral - the main issue here is the time period for renewal of the resource, and the destruction of diverse habitat for monoculture forests. It seems the driver for wood pellet biomass is 60% of milled log mass becomes waste, which would otherwise have to be disposed of. Perhaps a compromise may be to deem only wood pellet production from milled timber as carbon neutral, although that will likely introduce verification issues.
In Australia, about 67% of biomass energy is annual sugar cane crop waste.
I received a notification for this video, so hopefully the RUclips IT guys have fixed your problem.
wood pellet heaters for home use are an expensive option here in Australia but great for the elderly who can't move normal firewood and its tidy
Yet another well researched presentation. Thank you. For what it's worth, we don't stand a chance in hell.
Brilliant as always David!!👍. Wrapping a compilcated issue into an easy digestable summary. Keep up the great work.
Overly simplistic as ever.
Cheers Peter :-)
Bonkers is an understatement
I am very glad to have watched this video. I had no idea. The only argument I would have to some of what you said was that the leftovers being left to rot in the forests would have a better impact than felling them and removing. I believe this is exactly the issue the US is having with these massive wildfires - all the dead and decaying material left to degrade without proper forestry management. I wish I knew the best possible way to accomplish the forestry management AND keep as many trees as possible. I have often wondered what happens to all the trees and such that are felled for road projects, new developments, and all these massive solar and wind farms. I guess now I know.
I don't really think you do know. Of the examples you listed off the majority would go to saw mills if a logging firm was hired to do the clearing....otherwise they would likely just be bulldozed out of the way. The rate at which wood chips are needed to feed these commercial operations for home heating, electricity generation etc requires very efficient processes to make big money which means clear cutting for the majority. While it is possible trees are cut for solar and wind farms I suspect that would be for road and platform access for windmills (so not huge) and I think it unlikely that this would be done for solar as it wouldn't be cost effective unless the solar is going in after a wood chip company has clear cut the forests...then it becomes a chicken and egg argument...but I think it unlikely that all the clear cut land would be used for solar so it becomes a case of using otherwise destroyed landscape effectively. Replanting trees will take decades before they have any appreciable impact on the carbon lost to the atmosphere by destroying the forest in the first place. At least the solar will reduce the need for as much biomass generated electricity.
Does it chop forests down AND is it still burning something creating smoke and carbon emissions? How then can it possibly be carbon neutral?
Plant growth has increased due to higher levels of CO2, plants are storing a percent of our emissions. That is carbon negative. Simple.
@@Flumstead Trees grow too slowly to ever be a carbon neutral fuel.
@@Flumstead And mass deforestation and mega fires have increased due to climate change releasing megatons of Co2 which is very very far from carbon negative. Simple.
@@JakXLT The evidence shows plants have removed human emissions, that is by fact carbon negative.
@@Flumstead What you just said is refuted by what you replied to. Please educate yourself.
The only way the UK Govt can get close to CO2 reduction agreements is if shipping pellets across the Atlantic for burning is allowed to be recorded as carbon neutral when it is no such thing.
Need to replace combustion with pyrolysis. If you return the char made from the pyrolysis to the soil you sequester a lot of carbon and promote plant growth.
Is that so? I can imagine that putting carbon rich char onto soil will spoil it. Otherwise you could fertilize crops with coal dust; or am I mistaken?
@@heggedaal carbon is the battery of the soil. It holds water, chemical nutrients (nitrate, phosphates, minerals) and provides habitat for beneficial organisms. Look up biochar.
The issue with using mined coal as char is that it can have more free heavy metals than a manufactured char but in theory, yes you could use it.
@@tonydeveyra4611 thanks for the information. It might work when the heavy metal issue is solved and the nergy balance comes out on the positive side.
It's interesting how so many comments indicate suprise at this revelation. Again this is more informative and balanced content from JHAT. Does it not however make more sense to start looking at how Policy is being developed and invest energy in influencing that. You do some very revealing stuff, would it make sense to understand and explain or at least note where such items of interest fit into the wider framework and where we as individuals could best invest our own energies. This is not meant as criticism, many people viewing your excellent videos would I'm sure like to change their behaviours and influence the macro picture, the big question is how leaders in driving opinion such as yourself can help society become more invested and less fatalistic. Of course we all have to overcome our pet biases which I think you do very well. Thanks and keep up the great work.
Hi Derek. Good feedback. I'm hoping that's the sort of thing that these new 'Just Have Another Think' videos will start to delve into. All the best. Dave
It's time to stop them & groups of people getting rich from government subsidies
Got notified. Thanks for working to get the issue fixed.
We used to coppice trees instead of chopping them down too, which is way more sustainable. It doesn't take decades between harvests. With rotation, you can harvest the same plot every three years.
If there is a politician that is not corrupt, now is the time to speak up
Must be written with fossil fuel funding. Plenty of pellet companies operating and selling pellets in the US and NA for home heating at competitive pricing without subsidy. The pellet industry can thrive on just cleaning forests without clear cutting and most forests need severe cleanup do to beetle infestation. Like most RUclips videos it assemble opinions, and non-peer reviewed data to create the argument. France has so much woody biomass available it is put to unproductive uses.
Excellent. Showed up in my notifications & in youtube sidebar.
I think the critique of energy systems you are doing is really invaluable. I noticed some factual inaccuracies in the presentation that I'd like to draw attention to because I think they might complicate the narrative on offer somewhat.
First, the pellet market in the USA is not really as old as you are suggesting, nor as widespread. Pelletization is a technology that has traditionally been reserved for home heating applications. Industrial plants have co-fired their boilers for a long time with residuals from the milling process, this is true, but the pellet market has largely been confined to hardwoods, and largely geographically limited in scope to places that have winter. So the US Southeast where the initial round of industrial pellets were coming from had never been a major source of pellets previously because a) there was a robust paper sector, b) the climate, c) these are largely mono-cropped pine plantations since the 1930s.
Second, the pellets that are going to service the UK coal plants are not the same as the typical pellet you see in a hardware store. Home heating pellets are mostly made from residuals like sawdust because they compact easily without additional processing. A lot of pellets historically were made from the residue of flooring mills because they're using hardwoods, and using very dry ones at that. The pellets getting exported for electricity generation are "black" pellets because they are made from green wood and include the bark and branches in some cases. they have a much lower energy density and produce more soot. They are coming from the forest where, since people stopped reading newspapers, the paper.mills that used to use these small diameter trees either needs to re-invest in new technology to produce things like board-type papers for packaging you see in amazon and other shipments, or simply shudder. Sawmills became anxious as the growth of these forests was slowing and therefore raising their costs - they wanted a new partner to help manage the pine plantations. These states looked at other uses: biofuels, bioplastics, manufactured woods...pellets were chosen for a variety of reasons, but had they not been another industry would likely have made use of the forests given that the US South had some of the cheapest material in the world and many people looking to continue to work in a sector their families had for generations.
Finally, I think that there are many reasons to question the emissions impacts of these changes. As soon as the ink was dry on some of those contracts DEFRA ran new LCAs that showed how questionable those decisions were...should we be shipping wood half way around the world to incinerate in a few seconds when it offers so many properties that would 'store carbon' for much longer if used as a building material? I share many of the concerns of this video and channel in general, however, I am not certain that I share the cynicism that the only thing to take away is that the state has been captured or hoodwinked. There will always be trade offs in any scenario, and the science and our understanding of how these systems interact will continue to improve. I feel like many of the comments reflect a takeaway of "biomass = bad" which runs the risk of simply advocating for the status quo or a hope for some idealized alternative which (even if it were actualized) would contain its own trade-offs.
Anyway - glad to have found your channel. I hope you keep engaging with the complexities of energy!
Over here in the Netherlands, biomass from trees is very big, because of the pressure of multinationals like Vattenfall on politics.
People who care about the environment call the biomass power stations "tree crematories".
Yes, you can always trust industry to be honest and straightforward with facts.
I have serious issues using trees, korn for burning or biogas. The problem is politicians have no clue and they have feel good policies that distort reality with subsidies
Thanks indeed, these issues you've raised are so interesting and important to address. Seems like few in government or the wood-pellet industry have any ecological understanding - its very frustrating and sad.
Fact: ex Brit, 30 yrs.proud British Columbian.ex tree planter. The pandemic has unleashed the forest destruction here. The government has decided that any monetary short falls can be fixed by wood harvest. Near and above my ranch a once beautiful and, planned national park reserve is now just pay dirt for loggers. Chainsaws are old world now from 1am every morning the fancy mechanized tree cutters cut trees 20.seconds apart. I have one old timer I think of, at least 700 yrs old wider then my huge ATV 7 ft across, 4000 ft up, good luck old guy, hoping greed doesn’t take you.
That's very sad indeed.
this video has a very bad assumption - it claims, that biomass should be harvested from forests and forests takes decade to grow. In reality forest is a bad source of biomass. The forests provide around 3 tons of dry biomass per hectare per year. The hybrid trees plantations, like willow or poplar are providing around 10-15 tons of dry biomass. You can harvest them after two years from planting. You also save a lot of fuel for transportation, because its easier to harvest and you can make the plantations very close to the power plant
I have often wondered why pine needles aren't used as biomass. Properly managed and ventilated needle fires (as in a burn barrel) burn for a surprisingly long time with almost no smoke. It seems to me that we have a potentially great source for heating energy which would, at the same time, mitigate the danger of forest fires.
Here in Australia we could collect our dry wood from forests and make electricity from it before it is wasted in bushfires. We could even target areas around towns and cities to keep them safer from fires.
seems odd that they count it as zero, shouldnt the country doing the export subtract it from their total? this might give other bad incentives, but it makes more sense than the person burning it counting it as zero.
Just analyzing the UK's 6th Carbon Budget now to unpick the assumptions made. They propose the whole range of energy renewable energy production but also some BECCS, so bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration to give, not just zero but, negative carbon. This only works with managed forest control, which we still don't have, but forest at the agricultural level is needed. By the way, plastic bags were patented by a Swede to stop unsustainable forestry. Now there is an outcry to use paper bags or agricultural products to replace plastic bags!
i believe that the eu announced that directive regarding the biomass coming from garbage, as a measure to promote recycling, but this way it seems to be getting out of hand
Many Thanks for another insightful video. Dave, with regard to the arguments made in this video, how do other biomass sources such as willow coppicing and cellulosic biomass (e.g. Miscanthus) and particularly chipped waste wood compare? Though none are carbon neutral (unless the transport and processing were accomplished by renewable energy means), they must be preferable to what you've shown?
Other biomass sources do have a low energy content. There is a reason why only a few bacteria and termites canlive on cellulosis. Low energy yield and hard to get by.
I work in forestry industry. I agree that burning a tree emits CO2. However it is quite a complcated topic. And in different countries there are different aspects.
If it stops the renewable energy(wind and solar) usage, it could be considered bad. However in my country-Estonia we use it mostly for heating and much less for electricity. We get electricity as a side product of using it for heat.
Before we used fossile fuels for heat. And yes burning timber emits more co2 than fossiles but ourforests are well manged. Most of biomass actually comes from the forests that were planted 50 or 100 years ago and after harvestig we replant them.
When we use the harvesting residues we don't burn fossiles. Now part of the CO2 of the residues would go back to soil but if I remember correctly most of it would still be released to the atmosphere and it would be released within 2-3years.
In addition to that in private houses and in the before oil era people used timber for heat. We need to heat our houses 6 to 7 months per year. The carbon that my grandfather released to atmosphere 100 uears ago has alreadybeen through 2 to 3 cycles considering the harvedting age of our most common firewood.
If he had used coal, we would have released even more co2 from that time.
In additon... if we make a solar farm, we need to turn forestland into an area that can not be used by many species. In forest they can live many years and our forest practises shos ensuesomewhat good oportunities for them the survive the cuttings.
This is only for my country and thereare manybig and small "but-s" even here. However we should understand that renewable energy cant give us all energy yet and building renewable takes land away from nature.
Therefore i suggest to consider trees as a form of stored solar energy. And if you compare the efectiveness of solar plant and a tree, you mightat first find that solar parks are about 5times more energy efficient. However it depends on the trees, latitude and many other aspects. Therefore I don't know exactly how much more the solarcpanel is effective.