101
Biomass power station produced four times emissions of UK coal plant, says report
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
101 points (96.3% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
5243 readers
469 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Additionally, The CO2 emitted from a biomass electricity generation plant isn't new CO2 pumped out of the ground. It's the CO2 that was already captured from the atmosphere by living things. On balance, net carbon emission is zero, since the input fuel is a net negative CO2 source.
It's probably more complex than this. For example, every tree you remove mean less carbon capture in the world.
it depends on whether that tree is re-planted.
Its not that simple sadly, saplings and young trees capture significantly less than older mature trees. We're talking a 30+ year return on that carbon investment. Planting trees and restoring wilderness for carbon capture and sustainable ecosystems is good, ripping them up every 20 to 40 years for biofuels is not. If your end goal is sustainable energy, nuclear, wind or even solar would be better use of that space and still probably have land left over for forestey renewal. The reason nuclear is the ecologically best choice is because it uses the least amount of land per kwh produced, leaving more land that can be used for conservation and long term carbon capture efforts.
If you remove a mature tree and replace it with a young one, you will actually increase uptake as the growing tree will absorb more CO2 than a mature one will.
However, I agree that it is complex because you need to take a long term view and there are always risks. For example a wild fire would offsetting the equation as the young trees are more vulnerable.