Is Biomass Energy Really Renewable?

[mitchmaine]

my only gripe, geoff (probably yours too), is locals being ripped off for “their” natural resourses. poland spring pumps billions of gallons of fresh water out of thousands of wells in many maine towns. trucks it off, sells it away, and maine towns get a few dollars for local taxes compared to millions in profits to the corporation. who owns the water? great argument and not directed at the real point. local economy based on local resourses. same argument for wood chips and pellets. or oil, gold, minerals, fish. you name it, the “farmer” seems to get the smallest check, and it bothers me.

[jac]

The original question was ” is biomass renewable.?” As far as I can see, yes it is..but, only if you give it time… and if demand grows faster than the material they use, we end up asset stripping again !! When I say “we”, I mean society.. Its happened with nearly every mineral/resource on the planet so I see no reason why this will be any different..Scott clearly is doing a good thing with his end of the operation.. but what happens when others jump aboard ??..
John

[goodcompanion]

@Carl Russell 18737 wrote:

This point is missed by most. There is very little profit margin in this low grade and most of the value of the product goes to machinery that harvests , processes, and transports it to market. It is not as bad as ethanol, but there is a lot of diesel used to make the wood into a product that can be used to make energy.

Furthermore the economy of scale required to make harvesting this type of wood creates a lot of impact through traffic on the land, removal of coarse woody debris, and density reduction. There is very little sustainable about this “new” energy source. In our region the forest soils are in the preliminary stages of recovery from being over-pastured, compacted, and eroded, and now we are poised to rob them of any future productivity.

DUH!!! Forestry my ass:mad:

Carl

Wow! Hit a nerve!

It is amazing how easily and swiftly the sustainability dialog has been taken up and taken over by institutions that have an interest in easy solutions that don’t force us to greatly change our way of living or doing things. The public approves, not knowing anything about it one way or another.

I agree, it is so totally, completely depressing. An institution for instance like Middlebury College, a source of much good though and good work, that ought to know better, promoting and using this approach. How many others will follow suit? How much damage exactly are we going to do to the landscape before the chickens come home to roost?

[near horse]

Hey Mitch,

What I meant by an amalgam of power generation was similar to the concept of local food production. The huge power companies/brokers that purchase cheap power from all over the country and resell it wherever needs to stop. There are huge losses in the process. So locally produced power should be supported for local/regional use. Hopefully something like that would stop the Polan Springs-type stuff from happening.

Also – who came up w/ the idea of carbon neutrality? That’s like the cholesterol-free banana! No sh-t. Cholesterol is an animal product not plant. So with regard to carbon, unless we’re doing some type of nuclear stuff (like neutron activation), we’re not creating carbon. Changing it’s form perhaps (as in CO2) but not making more of it (carbon). So then most E generation (should actually say conversion since we don’t make that either) is carbon neutral. There’s carbon in fuels and the gases they release during combustion as well as carbon in my horses feed (and their tissues) that comes out the back end as a turd or is released upon death. Carbon neutral.

Also, renewable and sustainable are not interchangeable terms. We can eventually harvest a renewable resource into oblivion by unsustainable practices. Timber is a great example. It is renewable because it can be replanted or regrown etc. The sustainability part comes in how we manage the renewable resource (and ourselves for that matter!).

I’m now decending from my soapbox. Sorry.

[dlskidmore]

@near horse 18791 wrote:

Also – who came up w/ the idea of carbon neutrality? That’s like the cholesterol-free banana! No sh-t. Cholesterol is an animal product not plant. So with regard to carbon, unless we’re doing some type of nuclear stuff (like neutron activation), we’re not creating carbon. Changing it’s form perhaps (as in CO2) but not making more of it (carbon). So then most E generation (should actually say conversion since we don’t make that either) is carbon neutral. There’s carbon in fuels and the gases they release during combustion as well as carbon in my horses feed (and their tissues) that comes out the back end as a turd or is released upon death. Carbon neutral.

Also, renewable and sustainable are not interchangeable terms. We can eventually harvest a renewable resource into oblivion by unsustainable practices. Timber is a great example. It is renewable because it can be replanted or regrown etc. The sustainability part comes in how we manage the renewable resource (and ourselves for that matter!).

Egad! Words mean things? 🙂

The catchphrases that go around tend to get further and further off from the actual meaning of the words in them. I’m glad you’ve pointed it out.

The thing is, all carbon sources are “renewable”, but coal, oil and gas have a several million years longer cycle than the sources commonly labeled as renewable.

If you were really bent on reducing atmospheric CO2, the only way to do that is to bind up more carbon in the ground than we’re pumping out, but I don’t see anyone anytime soon advocating packing defunct mines full of sawdust.

[Carl Russell]

near horse;18791 wrote:

……
Also, renewable and sustainable are not interchangeable terms. We can eventually harvest a renewable resource into oblivion by unsustainable practices. Timber is a great example. It is renewable because it can be replanted or regrown etc. The sustainability part comes in how we manage the renewable resource (and ourselves for that matter!)…..

This is the key. I have said for years,” I don’t manage the forest, I manage my impact on it.”

The only way that Biomass, or any other energy will be sustainable is through conservation. We, as a society, have a huge readily available energy source just waiting for us to tap into. Turn off your lights, air conditioners, street lamps, neon signs, etc. and when we reduce our consumption then we will hold the key to using these sources in a sustainable manner.

carl

[near horse]

yah, I read that BP is taking all the cull cows in the region and trying to use a hydraulic ram to compress them while adding massive amounts of heat – sort of a make your own dinosaur oil w/ no waiting. (I’m just being stupid – cause that’s about all I can do about it). BTW – My answer to plugging the leak is bundle up a bunch of those financial guys that screwed the economy and left us with the bill (think Madoff) coat ’em with tar and shove ’em headfirst into the pipe. Then dump the concrete on. 2 birds w/ one stone!

[jac]

Well said Geoff:D We could send a bunch over too…Royal Bank of Scotland has a thing where they go into schools and advise kids on how to manage money:eek: And they were one of the biggest receivers of tax payers money when greed nearly made them go bust!!!…Anyway.. back to topic.. over here in Ayrshire county a new coal fired power station is being built. They plan to capture the carbon and pipe it into huge undersea caverns ??. My image of the carbon thing regards burning timber is that coal/oil carbon was locked up in the earth at a time in earths history when the air was different from what we have now.Heavy sulpher and such.. We burn timber and release the carbon the tree has stored in our recent history.. coal on the other hand is an added carbon load..almost like importing the stuff. Least thats how I convince myself that burning wood is ok.
John

[dlskidmore]

@near horse 18804 wrote:

yah, I read that BP is taking all the cull cows in the region and trying to use a hydraulic ram to compress them while adding massive amounts of heat – sort of a make your own dinosaur oil w/ no waiting. (I’m just being stupid – cause that’s about all I can do about it).

Not really that far fetched. http://cleantech.com/news/2076/tyson-syntroleum-to-build-biodiesel-plant
http://news.cnet.com/Tyson,-ConocoPhillips-link-up-for-biodiesel/2100-11392_3-6176812.html

[Author]

Posts