Please stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments. If you have a substantive point, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

No, they are actually burning less trees (although they are still burning trees and waste). Biomass is a shrinking part of the renewables. The increase in renewables is mainly solar and wind:

https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/index.php?tbl=T...

As long as they are being replanted, this is carbon neutral

I guess that would depend on the tree, wouldn't it? How is a tiny little seedling going to clean as much carbon as a tree that took 40 years to become anything substantial?

Well... the process of that seedling growing into the big tree over 40 years is what takes carbon out of the atmosphere. The carbon just goes into the tree's biomass. So - long term, if you have a steady state where the biomass of the trees you're talking about remains roughly constant (or dips but comes back to the same level) - it is carbon neutral. Even if you're cutting down big trees and planting seedlings.

Of course, you're right, there's nuance there. If you start with a mature forest, cut it all down, and replant it with seedlings, that's not a steady state (yet) - particularly when you take ecosystem effects into account, I suspect.

If you take land that doesn't currently have trees on it, and plant a bunch of trees that you periodically cut down and replant then you're at worst carbon neutral. Unless that land would have otherwise be planted and left alone entirely.

What do you mean?

It is wrong wrt scale, but biomass burning electrical generation is a thing.

As an example, I had a massive old oak tree that needed to come down for safety reasons. I desperately wanted to keep some of the wood from the trunk either to carve a statue or convert to lumber, just so that something from the original tree stayed with us.

None of the professional (i.e. insured) services around could do that; all of them had a contract with a local power company to grind up everything they cut so it could be burned for electricity as part of their "green" commitment (which admittedly also included solar and maybe wind).

Were they willing to do a handshake deal under the table on the day of or did you not try? Just curious, no judgement either way.

They were already making money from the power company for the wood- no idea how much, but enough that they didn't seem open to it.

I'm surprised, as the wood is worth more as timber than fuel in this case.

Not when you factor in the cost of labor and other market dynamics. Like most markets, supply chains and expertise have become highly specialized and adapted to economies of scale. Wood is either sourced from farms, managed forests, or from people who make a living in niches, such as recovering sunken logs or scrap industrial and commercial framing, which are easier to scale and offer more consistency.

I've dabbled a little in woodworking, and AFAIU while there are still people out there willing to do the work for small, one-off jobs, they're few and far between, especially in regions without significant hardwood stocks. Fewer still willing to actually pay you for the privilege.

It also doesn't help that engineered wood products are displacing quality lumber even at the high end of the market. These days a new, solid hardwood floor would probably appear cheap or antiquated to people accustomed to the look of laminated flooring.

This is spot on. I tried reaching out to some local mills and forestry folk, and dealing with a single tree was simply too small a job for them to bother with.