Re:Data centers need power – lower income, rural residents p...
by sarchertech on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:07PM
(#50478159)
The plant that I was talking about when starting this thread plans on harvesting 5.5 million tons of timber per year.
That’s not all that much unused wood scrap, so if you’re building a large biomass plant you’re going to end up harvesting timber.
> In if someone is cutting down a tree in a first world country it's generally either because the tree was grown intending to cut it down and they immediately start growing new trees there, or because it's going to be cut down regardless of what you do with the tree because they're removing it in order to make some other use of the land.
In Europe maybe. In the US and Canada it’s very common to harvest timber from naturally grown forests (vs managed plantations) that are being cut primarily for the timber.
Which tracks since it's in England and they're getting pellets from the US, Canada and Europe.
> Over 50-100 years for short lived species. And much longer for longer lived species.
But who is logging old growth trees for biomass?
In if someone is cutting down a tree in a first world country it's generally either because the tree was grown intending to cut it down and they immediately start growing new trees there, or because it's going to be cut down regardless of what you do with the tree because they're removing it in order to make some other use of the land.
Moreover, you can always find that one asshat doing something ridiculous, but the world also generates a lot of scrap wood or cuts down a lot of trees just to clear the land. Burning them to generate electricity is never going to be large proportion of world power generation, but doing it to the extent that the trees were just going to rot anyway seems pretty hard to object to.