“Wind has less than 1/10th the energy density of wood, wood half the density of coal and coal half the density of octane.”*
The largest coal generation plant in the UK is transforming itself by converting half of its coal burning generation units into biomass (wood pellets) by 2016.
By that time Drax Group PLC will have three of their six, 660 MW units, converted to biomass and will require 7 million tons of wood pellets annually for fuel. To put a context around the latter number, the information available through research on the Internet indicates it takes approximately 2 ½ tons of forest to produce one ton of wood pellets. One acre of mature forest contains approximately 4 tons of wood, meaning to produce 7 million tons would require about 4,375,000 acres or 6,800 square miles of forest. That amount is equal to clear cutting mature forests 10 times the size of Toronto each year.
h/t James Mac.
Yeah I’m familiar with out friend from other issues. The most current map I can find from the feds in Canada show the northern most extent of beetle kill at Fort Nelson, which is well south of 60. Perhaps our friend is actually in a boiler room in Toronto monitoring RSS feeds. 🙂
“Quite frankly, I don’t know why we don’t riot over this stuff.”
Right now, you aren’t even hearing about the devastation of people’s lives that is happening right here in Ontario, right now, due to this year’s TRIPLING of the cost of propane. The reason you aren’t hearing about it is because it isn’t happening in Toronto. Yet, anyway.
Propane is primarily used by farmers and rural households because up until about December this year is was convenient and inexpensive compared to fuel oil or electricity. No one heats with natural gas in the country, because there are no gas lines in the country. With oil at ~$1.25/litre and electricity going up and up about every month, the no-brainer was switching to propane, at about 30-40 cents a litre. Well now its about $1.08/litre and heading up. Ask me how I know.
The price gets mentioned periodically with shocked tones on the business news outlets, but other than that nobody knows about it. Not being mentioned is the number of people losing their homes through bankruptcy, the people forced into fuel poverty, the kids sleeping in the cold because there’s no heat, farms going bust and etc.
Because rural people vote conservative, and nobody in the media cares a rat’s whatsit if something bad happens to them.
In six months, all this is coming to urban Ontario in the form of HIGHER PRICES FOR FOOD. All the little baby chickens that got turned into dog food this winter because Farmer John couldn’t afford to heat the chicken barn will not be available to eat or lay eggs come July. All the cattle that got turned to McDonald’s hamburgers this winter because of heating the barn will not be giving milk come July. Pigs for bacon, goats and sheep for wool and meat etc, its all going to show up like a problem at Loblaws Real Soon.Then the screaming will begin.
Also, a not inconsiderable number of people are burning wood now to keep from freezing, in the coldest March I have ever seen in my life. I’ve never heard the snow squeak in March. March snow storms, sure. But -5 Fahrenheit temps in March? Never happens. Where’s all that wood going to come from, hmmm? Want to bet the price of a cord doubles by next fall?
How long before trees start vanishing off road sides and people’s front lawns? Probably not real long, would be my guess.
Just remember you read it here first.
North of 60’s numbers are pretty close. As a professional forester with a career almost behind me (I still do a little consulting), the average growth of timber on the Coast ranges from 5 to 10 cubic metres per hectare per year (exceptional sites – double that). For the sake of this discussion consider a cubic metre of green wood (all species)one tonne. In the Northern Interior and Boreal, about 1 to 3 cubic metres per hectare per year (exceptional sites – double that). One hectare is 2.47105 acres, say 2.5.
The posting is considerably under-estimating the area required to supply that mill. Waste wood makes sense as a residual bi-product such as shavings, sawdust, etc at mill sites but becomes quite costly when sought out in the woods and transported any distance. The lowest cost producers in North America with good Ports on the Atlantic are in the US South East.
John Chittick, as a fellow tradesman you should realize that
what you learned, the person in question simply looked up on the
Internet.
I never challenged the numbers, it was too easy for him to look
them up on a web site. And imagine my surprise, it was warmist
web site!
When a guy asked for a citation, he got hit with a big GFY!
The problem with this issue is that there are far too many
cut and paste dilettantes at work on the Internet. When
challenged, they throw a tantrum.
It is like the definition of a racist. It is anyone winning
an argument against a liberal.
Nord O 90
U got outed again. U thought you sounded smarter and were a wizard. Butt U fooled only yerself!!
“One acre of mature forest contains approximately 4 tons of wood, meaning to produce 7 million tons would require about 4,375,000 acres or 6,800 square miles of forest. That amount is equal to clear cutting mature forests 10 times the size of Toronto each year.”
I think the cut and paste here from the piece posted far above it is pretty clear. They aren’t talking about annual growth. They are spouting BS. The rest is spin and reframing trying to save a broken meme. As a transplanted stubble jumper living in the BC interior I’m happy to cut Kate some slack on this given the lack of trees in her area. The others…not so much.
Yes,as “dirtman” said, 4 tons is about 8 trees in the interior of B.C.
I has a small business timber sale for a couple of years in the BC North, 1980’s, had 28 acres of pure “whitewood”, spruce and balsam. I harvested 2200 cunits of wood from that part of the sale, approximately 80 cunits per acre.
This was on a rather mediocre piece of forest, a prime area would probably have turned out double that.
As more wood is considered for energy, the costs will escalate into the absurd. Residual fibre concentrated at a plant can generate electricity within a few cents/kwh of current BC hydro rates. As soon as one tries to bring it in from the woods on it’s own (not paid for by the accompanying solid wood reflecting lumber prices), the costs double, triple and then the sky is the limit. Fuel wood competing with pulp wood alone ($50/ton opportunity cost) would result in local electricity costs of around $0.20/kwh. Shipping the wood half way around the world plus additional handling costs overseas is additive. In the UK, where green theocracy has replaced economics, that might be considered viable for a while.
Suffice it say that if the world used wood for its energy requirements, there would eventually be no more forests but long before that happened the world would go broke.
environmentalresearchweb
“Does it make sense to burn wood instead of fossil fuels, even when the wood has to be shipped all the way across the North Atlantic Ocean? That’s the question being asked of the Drax power station near Selby, UK, which is now dependent on imported wood after recently converting some of its units to run on biomass. A comprehensive analysis of greenhouse gas emissions reveals that despite the long transportation distance, burning imported wood is still better than using fossil fuels.
By 2020 the UK has to source 15% of the nation’s total energy consumption from renewables. Recently the country started taking significant steps to meet this legally binding mandate. In April 2013 the coal-fired Drax power station, which typically produces around 7% of the UK’s electricity, converted one of its generating units to run on biomass alone. By 2016 three units will have been converted – subject to Drax securing the rights to a sustainable source of biomass – and the power station will burn nearly 7 million tonnes of biomass every year. Much of this biomass is expected to come from wood pellet plants in Louisiana and Mississippi, in the southern United States.
Relative savings in GHG emissions with respect to a unit of electricity derived from fossil fuels in the United Kingdom range between 50% and 68% depending upon the capacity of power plant and rotation age. Relative savings in GHG emissions increase with higher power plant capacity. GHG emissions related to wood pellet production and transatlantic shipment of wood pellets typically contribute about 48% and 31% of total GHG emissions, respectively. Overall, use of imported wood pellets for electricity generation could help in reducing the United Kingdom’s GHG emissions.”
So what would be interesting to know is how much of that incremental pellet export comes from originally sourced fibre in the woods versus that diverted from residual fibre normally converted to hog fuel and used to power pulp and paper mills. Displacing hog fuel due to the higher price offered to satisfy carbon mandates, would result in natural gas or coal-fired electricity and heat replacing the lost hog fuel thus nullifying the whole rationale.
Hog fuel….using sawdust to fire a steam powered mill.
That’s why most of them saw mills rarely survived 5 years….and none could afford fire insurance.