The absurdity of Europe burning wood for energy

Re:The absurdity of Europe burning wood for energy by acidburnNSA on Saturday September 17, 2022 @12:46PM (#32878926)

Biofuel is the most striking example of why "renewable" is not always equivalent to "desirable". While you can indeed re-grow wood, combusting it at scale maintains an equilibrium level of CO₂ in the atmosphere (which causes climate change), and also releases a equilibrium level of particulate matter, which causes large numbers of deaths from lung and heart diseases.

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Re:The absurdity of Europe burning wood for energy by abraae on Saturday September 17, 2022 @02:53PM (#32880245)

> While you can indeed re-grow wood, combusting it at scale maintains an equilibrium level of CO₂ in the atmosphere (which causes climate change.

True but meaningless.

Sitting in my deck chair also maintains an equilibrium level of CO2, but it doesn't provide any heat or benefit to anyone.

We can't look unfavorably on energy approaches just because they fail to actually reduce CO2. That's some kind of unrealistic purity test.

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Re:The absurdity of Europe burning wood for energy by acidburnNSA on Saturday September 17, 2022 @03:13PM (#32880451)

It's not meaningless. CO₂ in the atmosphere causes the greehouse effect, which allows the sun to heat the earth more. To avoid greenhouse effect you can't have things that require CO₂ to constantly remain in the atmosphere. You need non-carbon sources like wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, geothermal, etc.

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Re:The absurdity of Europe burning wood for energy by Someone on Saturday September 17, 2022 @05:01PM (#32881545)

> To avoid greenhouse effect you can't have things that require CO₂ to constantly remain in the atmosphere.

But we don’t want to fully avoid the greenhouse effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect:

“Earth's natural greenhouse effect keeps the planet from having the below freezing temperature that it would have if there were no greenhouse gases”

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Re:The absurdity of Europe burning wood for energy by cma on Saturday September 17, 2022 @08:04PM (#32882938)

He's talking about the excess unnatural greenhouse effect.

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Re:The absurdity of Europe burning wood for energy by Someone on Sunday September 18, 2022 @12:43PM (#32889001)

I don’t see how one can read that from “To avoid greenhouse effect you can't have things that require CO₂ to constantly remain in the atmosphere.”

The natural greenhouse effect has CO₂ constantly (I think at least since there’s any carbohydrate burning on earth) remaining in the atmosphere.

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Re:The absurdity of Europe burning wood for energy by cma on Monday September 19, 2022 @02:24AM (#32894924)

It's all implied. Maybe he doesn't know about some of those things, but it is incredibly common to talk about it in those terms without spelling out that you mean excess / problem-causing amounts of the effect, etc. When he says can't have things he's talking about human energy use. He says right after you need to use wind, solar, etc.

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Re:The absurdity of Europe burning wood for energy by jlawson on Saturday September 17, 2022 @02:30PM (#32879973)

You're right about the particulates, but I believe that burning wood can't really cause climate change.

Wood is already in the biosphere. Even if we don't burn it, it will decompose and release all its CO2 that way, or burn in a forest fire. The CO2 of that wood is already circulating.

It doesn't actually increase CO2 levels the way that digging up long-buried fossil fuels does.

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Re:The absurdity of Europe burning wood for energy by acidburnNSA on Saturday September 17, 2022 @03:15PM (#32880475)

If you cut down and burn trees that take 50 years to grow in 3 seconds, you've increased the amount of CO₂ in the air. Sure it will eventually go away, but the thing that causes climate change is the CO₂ being in air at elevated levels, even if it's in a cycle.

Biofuel is almost as bad as fossil at 230 gCO₂-eq/kWh. [1]. Compare to solar pv at 40 and nuclear at 12.

[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...

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Re:The absurdity of Europe burning wood for energy by ZeroGravitas on Saturday September 17, 2022 @03:43PM (#32880803)

The footnote on those numbers says:

> Direct emissions from biomass combustion at the power plant are positive and significant, but should be seen in connection with the CO2 absorbed by growing plants. They can be derived from the chemical carbon content of biomass and the power plant efficiency. For a comprehensive discussion see Chapter 11, Section 11.13

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...

> have led to strong forest Carbon sinks in many OECD regions (Pan et al., 2011; Loudermilk et al., 2013; Nabuurs et al., 2013; Erb et al., 2013). However, the capacity of these sinks is being reduced as forests approach saturation (Smith, 2005; Körner, 2006; Guldea et al., 2008; Nabuurs et al., 2013; Sections 11.2.3, 11.3.2). Active forest management, including management for bioenergy, is therefore important for sustaining the strength of the forest carbon sink well into the future (Nabuurs et al., 2007, 2013; Canadell and Raupach, 2008; Ciais et al., 2008), although countries should realize that for some old forest areas, conserving carbon stocks may be preferential, and that the actively managed forests may for some time (decades) act as sources.

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Re:The absurdity of Europe burning wood for energy by wodenokoto on Saturday September 17, 2022 @02:48PM (#32880181)

But burning fossil fuel does _not_ maintain an equilibrium level of CO₂ in the atmosphere (which is the main reason why we have climate change in the first place)

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