The statement is made that it is not carbon neutral in the time that it would "take to save the world from global warming". The " - " is my parapharase.
Of course burning biomass is carbon neutral. Carbon from the atmosphere goes into the biomass and is released upon combustion (or decomposition.) Note that the carbon is going to return to the atmosphere in either case, one quite rapid, one quite slow, but both will return the same amount of carbon to the atmosphere. One obviously draws useful work in the process.
It is a carbon sequestration gain if some of the bio mass - let's say wood - is used to produce durable goods that store carbon for a lengthy period of time.
So if you are burning woody waste from logging or pulping operations, the wood that goes into a 2X4 that goes into the structure of a house that will stand for potentially hundreds of years (there are houses in places with wood in the construction that are quite old) you have removed and sequestered carbon.
Wood made into paper that either is stored for years (think the paper that the Declaration of Independence is written on or old books) or that is placed in land fills as waste paper sequesters carbon.
This seemed to me to be written by someone with some kind of agenda, not sure quite what, since the premise of their conclusion is wrong in my view.
Probably one of those anti progress people that want us to revert back to the stone ages.
It isn't a crock, it's an agenda. Gee, if no new trees are grown, there is no offset. If you drink heavily, smoke heavily, don't exercise, abuse drugs, are overweight (crap where you eat, stick pointy objects in your eye, tug on Superman's cape, ad nauseum) it is probably bad for you. If all the paper from these inane and pointless studies are burned, would it be carbon neutral (assuming new trees are planted)? Back in the 80's there was an agenda based on trees giving off deadly gases, hence "killer trees". Apparently, that satisfied a short term agenda. Nothing new under the sun.
I have to admit that having previously discussed this issue with my company's environmental guys, I had taken their view that if you burn trees then you had to plant new trees to absorb the CO2 that had been released by combustion. This appears to be the definition that is applied by environmentalists and seems to be aimed at burning trees without increasing future CO2 emissions.
This begs the question that if burning wood is carbon neutral (except in very specific cases), why are finanacial incentives offered for wood burning.
In the UK there are projects that are either under construction or development that burn trees rather than wood waste. In one case it is planned that trees for a 700MWe plant will be imported from the west coast of Canada.
Well, what is the end game? If some Gov't mandates that we will all feel good all over if we burn a "renewable" fuel, and generously passes out credits and the like, and mandates that X% of a power companies output will be via renew-ables, then it doesn't much matter where the trees come from or if it is actually carbon neutral. The end game is satisfying some Gov't mandate and reaping what is available from the credits, and, of course, making the do-gooders feel real good about themselves so that they will have more enthusiasm for driving their carbon not neutral cars to another "save the planet" rally.
The goal is met, the Gov't is satisfied, and the do-gooders can break their arms patting themselves on the back for having saved the planet.
Most of the biomass burning is just that type of hokum (or is it hokem?). Wood processing companies burned trees (or the remnants thereof after processing the wood) since time eternal because it was more cost effective to burn a waste product than have to land fill it and purchase other fuels for their power requirements.
A sugar mill Manager once told me not to make his process more efficient because it would result in excess bagasse (left over after grinding the cane to extract the sugar juice) that he would have to pay to have land-filled.
I could just as easily make the case that bio mass burning will never be carbon neutral, even if new trees are planted tree for tree or switch grass is replanted blade for blade.
The carbon burned by the equipment used to cut, harvest, and haul the biomass will never be recouped unless trees are planted on a 1:1+ ratio. Then you have to burn fuel to prepare the land for planting the extra trees/grass.
Nature has a way of regenerating itself, so the Canadian trees will probably grow back naturally, so Canada will be the beneficiary of England's do gooder gov't. I think it has been established that new growth trees absorb carbon out of the atmosphere much more rapidly than old growth trees, and if those trees died on the stump, the planet would die starting first in Canada.
If it were financially viable, no one would have to pay anyone to burn trees. The planet would be denuded of trees. The plain truth is that there are less costly fuels to burn, but some of them (think for example that dirty nasty "C" word - why, you can't even say that 4 letter word anymore can you?) are just too un PC.
Therefore, you have to have financial incentives to burn these "desirable" fuels to keep companies from having to burn the undesirables.
Let's all have a group hug. I feel so good about myself. I have burned many, many, many a ton of wood in the day. Why I may even be Al Gore class with respect to saving the planet. I can see a Nobel Peace Prize in it.
I hope somewhere in all the overstatement and hyperbole there was the answer to your question. I feel better now, really.
our own EPA has recognized burning biomass will result in CO2 and that CO2 must be accounted for.
I just returned from a 3rd world country. They have cut down the forests to get wood to cook with. The tress are not being replace. In the Congo, they cut down forests to make charcoal. It has been calculated that less CO2 could be released if they switched to butane.
I am going to a third world country next month that has such a problem that they have police check points aling the highway to look for people hauling wood. That country has cut down so much wood for cooking, etc that their forests are denuded and in crisis. Problem is, for the average poor person, there is no alternative fuel for cooking.
Burning woodwaste is better than burning fossil fuels if the waste was going to rot otherwise (such as when landfilled). That is a no-brainer.
Cutting down trees to produce power is just as stupid as growing corn to produce methanol. It takes government grants to make it economically feasible and such grants are made available by people who don't have a clue about what they are doing.
As for a 700 MWe plant in the UK using biomass? I can't beleive it. It would take maybe 7 million tons of wood a year to run the plant; that's something like 500 truckloads a day. It just makes no sense.
You can reduce CO2 by growing trees and burying them whole in airtight geological formations. After a long while, you get coal (there, I said it) and natural gas. So there you have it: coal is as carbon neutral as biomass if you consider a long enough timespan.
