Emissions here can't refer to carbon, because burning wood doesn't inject any new carbon into the carbon cycle. So he's only referring to particulate matter. Which, sure, coal beats wood on. But my main concern is about carbon, not anything else.

Is someone suggesting burning wood?

One of the ways the UK has reduced emissions is by burning wood pellets.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drax_Power_Station

"Wood pellets are the most common type of pellet fuel and are generally made from compacted sawdust and related industrial wastes from the milling of lumber, manufacture of wood products and furniture, and construction. Other industrial waste sources include empty fruit bunches, palm kernel shells, coconut shells, and tree tops and branches discarded during logging operations."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellet_fuel?wprov=sfla1

Interesting. I wonder how much power is available from that.

Right now 7.1% of our power generation is coming from biomass.

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk

I'm not convinced it's all waste product.

This was from 2015:

> Europe imported more than 4 million tons of wood pellets from US forests last year and wrote it all off as renewable energy.

https://www.businessinsider.com/europe-imports-wood-biomass-...

I think this is partly why he believes wood burning can be worse than coal. Yes in theory growing trees and burning them is closed-loop ... if you assume the trees are grown right next to the power station and requires no energy input to grow or move them, which isn't the case.

Coal is very energy dense. Imports and other automated machinery like wood-cutting machines, planes for seed planting all burn oil. If you import coal and import wood, you could end up burning a lot more fuel with the wood option.

Now, that's kind of a tricky form of accounting because it would make wood burning worse from the perspective of the importing country only. But the carbon was still pulled out of the atmosphere in the exporting country.

The real reason wood burning/planting doesn't make much sense for reducing emissions is just one of scale. You end up needing to plant billions of trees to balance even just airline travel, let alone everything else. There isn't enough space short of terraforming deserts and other very energy intensive activities that probably wouldn't balance.

This is true, but where I live, leftover plant matter, typically from logging, is routinely just burned. Capturing that energy is a win up to the point it takes more to capture than it produces.

Wouldn't it be better to return that organic matter to the soil?