Burning Wood Can Be a Clean Source of Power After All

Источник:
Christian Morasso
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Burning large amounts of wood from forests can cut greenhouse gas pollution—but only alongside policies that encourage new trees to quickly absorb carbon dioxide.

That’s the conclusion of new research published in Science Advances, which seeks to counter the prevailing view that biomass can worsen climate change.

Energy companies in the U.S. and Europe—including Drax Group Plc, once the U.K.’s biggest coal power plant—are turning to biomass fuels harvested from forests or farms as a way to wean themselves off coal. While wood is the largest biomass source, it can also come from other organic matter such as crop waste or even garbage. That material is then burned to run steam turbines that produce electricity (and heat as a by-product) that can be piped to homes. It can also be turned into biofuels for transportation.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that to hold global temperature rise to below 1.5° Celsius, the world will need to rely on both biomass fuels and creating new forests. The role of wood-based biomass in tackling climate change is controversial, however. A series of scientific reports have determined that cutting down trees for energy releases carbon into the atmosphere faster than the next generation of trees can absorb it.

Carbon accounting is complex, especially when it comes to forests, because it depends on soil type, weather, the types of trees, how the wood is transported, and where and how it’s burned. But the new paper’s authors, led by researchers at the Universities of Maine and Ohio, found that high demand for bioenergy can actually increase the amount of carbon dioxide stored in forests. That’s because higher turnover would encourage greater replanting and better forest management, they claim.

To achieve a net climate benefit, biomass must be governed by “efficient” climate policies that take into account both the amount of carbon dioxide that forests soak up as well as how much they release when chopped down and burned. As the researchers put it, “Incentivizing both wood-based bioenergy and forest sequestration”—forests soaking up carbon from the atmosphere—“could increase carbon sequestration and conserve natural forests simultaneously.”

By Bloomberg Scienze

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Richard Olson
Richard Olson
Wood-based biomass is sustainable while coal is not, but neither affects "climate change". CO2 is NOT pollution; H2O, O2 and CO2 are the (3) basic molecules essential for life as we know it. The IPCC is a political organization, not a scientific organization, whose ultimate goal is not about the environment but disruption of the industrial economy and redistribution of wealth. IPCC gives the impression they study all causes of climate change - which they do not - in order to ignore all natural causes of change including the Sun. Planting trees to sequester C is laudable but has no effect on climate. The hypothesis that CO2 contributes to higher temperatures cannot withstand scientific scrutiny when laws of physics, chemistry and thermo- dynamics are applied to it. There is no positive correlation - cause and effect - between CO2 and atmospheric temperature going back +/- 500 million years. Physicists describe the idea of CO2 caused global warming as a fictitious mechanism never proven scientifically in our freely convective atmosphere and violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Nikolov and Zeller (2017) described the real mechanism controlling average surface temperature of the Earth. Scientists who study natural causes of climate change have empirical evidence of a coming Global Cooling - a Grand Solar Minimum (NASA agrees). This GSM could resemble the Dalton Minimum (1790-1830) during the Little Ice Age, or even colder, the Maunder Minimum (1645- 1715): brutal cold crop loss, shortened growing seasons, famine and increased cold weather fatalities. This Climate Change is a cause for concern and a threat to society. Some workers think it may have already started, based on Solar Magnetic Field and Solar Irradiance Zharkova et. al. (2019) projects it will occur during 2020-2055. We'll see
Francesco Dianese
..."To obtain a net climatic benefit, biomass must be governed by "efficient" climate policies that take into account both the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the forests and the quantity they release when they are cut down and burned. As the researchers said, "Encouraging both wood-based bioenergy and forest sequestration", forests that absorb carbon from the atmosphere, "could increase carbon sequestration and simultaneously conserve natural forests." By Bloomberg Sciences...." That's the point !! .... and this challenge can be faced -and let's hope to win quickly- only through the union of forces among all the world's countries which finance adequate and in-depth studies, led by serious professionals, possibly far from the media's hype...; Obviously all that must be adequately supported by operators in the wood sector !!!