That calculation works just as well for solar panels and wind farms in an oil-based global economy, but it's just as fallacious. When there's only one solar panel in the world, each solar farm requires X barrels of oil / CFT of gas, but as you get more and more renewable energy in the mix that number goes down to zero.

(Unless, of course, the pellets take more energy to produce than they produce themselves after burning and conversion... but that just makes them inefficient under any energy market mix, not CO2-producing under any mix.)

Sorry, this didn’t make any sense to me.

The reasoning about non-neutrality is that a tree has captured some carbon (its growth), then we burn it and release that carbon back into the atmosphere (1:1 equality).

However, anything on top of that (production of pellets, transportation, retailing) takes significant carbon, too.

Solar panels don’t take carbon from the air, and we don’t burn solar panels. We do manufacture, transport and retail them, though. So yeah, solar capture is non-neutral.

The merits of one are independent of the other. Neither of which are carbon neutral. Last point, some might argue that solar panels reduce the carbon needed to combust; it’s hard to see that as carbon neutrality, that’s a broken argument. But, I’m not sure who’s making that point.

The difference is that solar panels are only moved and retailed at the point of sale, but after installation there isn’t anything because it’s where it’s supposed to be and it only gets installed once.

Wood is the fuel, so to power a wood stove you need to constantly be moving it to its ultimate destination.

That's how you do LCAs, nothing fallacious about it. Solar or wind isn't CO2 neutral either.

His example is wood shipped from US to EU. This is bogus in many cases as wood for pellets is sourced and processed locally, hence energy input is much lower.

It takes a lot of physical work to stack logs, sure. I figure it's my annual gym exercise when I get the delivery from my neighbour.

I really should upgrade to a motorized/automated burner that can eat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_briquette though. There is a plant that makes those about 30 km away.

I doubt your neighbour has a machine that requires no energy input to go from tree to logs.

I think you problably never witnessed the brutal effiency of modern logging machines. It's quite a sight to behold. These are very expensive machines, so they are typically not owned by the people owning and maintaining the forests.

Yes, it's not zero, but when comparing the extra co2 cost these machines add compared to the fossil fuel alternatives, it might as well be. In a few years they'll probably start to be battery powered, charged via clean nuclear and water power.

Your claim was CO2 neutral, it's what I originally replied to.

I'm sure the machines are more efficient compared to older machines and maybe your neighbour knows approximately how much fuel he has to put in to get a a certain number of cubic meters of wood. It would be sort of interesting to know, you can find some data online but it's very situation specific so it's probably not representative. What happens to all the waste? Does most just turn into mulch?

I don't think we'll see battery powered forestry machines any time soon, the batteries would have to be enormous but most importantly there would be no way to charge them.

Fight the big wins, not the very very small ones.

I.e. be a pragmatic, not a fundamentalist.

Also: If you feel like you don't really understand a particular context: please do feel free to stay quiet until you have aquired an understanding of said context.

I don't really get where your passive aggressive reaction suddenly comes from? The main claim, that it's CO2 neutral is false, so I'm trying to get a better understanding of your specific situation and we can maybe also do some napkin math. To do that, you need to provide some details such as what happens to the material that doesn't get turned into wood logs. And if you also know how much gas is being used to provide a certain amount of cubic meters of logs that's even better.

> These are very expensive machines

Both to purchase and maintain. Some operators depreciate ~usd70/hour.

> they'll probably start to be battery powered

Expensive machines are typically worked hard (long hours) when they are working. They need to keep working to make them pay. They typically work in forests not near the iTesla charging point by Starbucks.

When working, fellers are ferocious. The cabs are basically bulletproof.

Agreed. I wrote "will start to". There'll be pressure for that.

And perhaps in 10 years with new battery tech and more remote charging infrastructure they'll actually be mostly fossil-free.

If you burn it at utility scale, like in most eastern european towns, then you can add co2 scrubbers effectively making it carbon negative.

Considering wood is at most as expensive as petrol per kWh (at least here in Belgium, heating fuel is not heavily taxed), I have a hard time understanding that it takes more fossil fuel energy to manufacture pellets than burning the fossil fuel directly.