Are from ClimateREALITY
A recent article in a newspaper based in the United Kingdom (UK) Guardians gives fair coverage to the idea that biomass energy may not be as environmentally friendly as its proponents claim. This is especially true in the case of wood pellet biomass power plants in the UK, where the majority of pellets are shipped across the Atlantic from the US and Canada.
Posts, “Burning imported wood in Drax power plant ‘makes no sense’, says Kwarteng,” Describes recent comments by UK Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng. Kwarteng said that “[t]he imports wood to burn in the Drax power plant “unsustainable” and “makes no sense,” Guardians report.
The Drax power plant is one of the largest biomass power plants in Europe, and used to be biggest coal generator before converting some of its units to burn biomass in the form of manufactured wood pellets. The company receives billions in “renewable” energy subsidies because of its supposed “non-pure” generation of electricity. However, like Guardians report, “[s]Advocates and campaigners have long argued that burning wood for electricity is no longer green and could even increase CO2 emissions causing the climate crisis.
Drax also gets about 70% of its wood biomass pellets Made in United States, importing them by freighter across the Atlantic. Producing and transporting wood pellets across the Atlantic is energy-intensive and creates additional emissions and makes “zero” power generation a problem.
The Heartland Institute released a report, here, concurs with the European Academy Scientific Advisory Council and Kwarteng; Wood burning in power plants can produce more emissions than fossil fuels and less energy.
The report suggests it can take between 44 and 104 years to offset the carbon dioxide emissions from burning biomass by planting trees, and that assumes the trees planted to replace are a comparable carbon sink. equivalent of the original wood that has now been burned — which are not usually ‘ t
The Heartland report found that biomass power plants also “emission 50 to 85 percent more carbon dioxide” than coal plants, and “more than three times” as much as natural gas.
Emissions from biomass power plants alone would not be seen as an alternative to fossil fuels at the industrial level, but the impact on land use and habitat is also an issue. large, especially when wood pellets come from plantations or primary forests.
This problem is explored in a Climate realism parcel, “Real threats to biodiversity and humanity“, saying that “nearly 300,000,000 trees a year” are cut down and turned into wood pellets that are shipped to the Drax factory. As Paul Driessen explains in the post, “[t]hat is one year for farming and burning fuel, and fifty years for replanting replacement trees. “
Kwarteng was right to call this practice pointless.
If a climate alarmist-friendly publication like Guardians willing to promote the idea that biomass energy is unsustainable or unreasonable, they will be credited for reporting it honestly. The most “inconvenient truth” is that power plants like Drax can actually save emissions by switching back to modern, clean coaland for peaceful forests to become important plant and animal habitats, as well as natural carbon sinks.
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy. As a Heartland Institute intern in 2018, she co-authored the Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Drawling Four Persistent Myths of Hydraulic Fracture.”
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