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Comment by GekkePrutser | Hacker News Reader

The only reason this "biomass" is so popular is an artificial reason. It's just a means for electricity companies to continue using coal and basically not doing anything, while selling their power as 'green'. All they need to do is throw a few wood chips in the mix..

This practice should really be banned. Or at least not be allowed to be labeled as green power. But if they did that the governments look really bad because they won't even come close to meeting their Paris accord goals.

So big business is burning the forests for no other reason than a green label .. While not improving anything for the environment.

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> The only reason this "biomass" is so popular is an artificial reason. It's just a means for electricity companies to continue using coal and basically not doing anything, while selling their power as 'green'. All they need to do is throw a few wood chips in the mix..

I'm not sure that's the core of the problem, as biomass plants are specialized plants.

I believe the problem reflected in the Guardian article is, again, unintended consequences from policies driven by subsidies.

The EU puts up policies whose goals it tries to meet by throwing money in the form of subsidies to the private sector. However, the private sector (fostered by irresponsible governments from member-states) tries to meet their goals of getting money in the form of exploiting subsidies. Therefore, once the EU puts in place policies that gives away a pile of euros to those that meet the letter of the law (i.e., build a biomass power plant) what we get is a bunch of unsustainable projects that barely meet the letter of the law (i.e., biomass power plants that can't even secure their own supply of biomass).

Taken from the Guardian's article:

> Siim Kuresoo of the non-profit Estonian Fund for Nature (ELF) doesn’t just blame the Estonian government. He says there is a direct connection between the subsidised growth in the biomass industry encouraged by EU renewable energy policies and the acceleration of unsustainable Baltic tree-felling.

Exactly, burning biomass (there are huge corn fields in Poland that end up as biomass in Germany, economy of this is crazy and has zero positive effect on the environment).

The most ridiculous part is that Germany is questioning "greenes" of nuclear energy plants, because they invested in solar and wind power plants plus gas flowing from Russia through Nord Stream 2. I hope France will successfully oppose this madness.

How burning gas or trees is more CO2 emission friendly than nuclear power plant is beyond my understanding, but something tells me that environment is far from being a main point of this awkward exercise that Europe is doing now.

"has zero positive effect on the environment" and a lot of negative effects: pesticides, fertilizers in water, monoculture bad for the animals, etc.

Growing seasonal plants with sole purpose being biomass energy (burnt or whatever) should be banned. Using the leftover is something else, but the amounts are too small.

If that biomass is offsetting coal/oil/gas then there is still a net positive of not adding more fossil carbon to the atmosphere.

The first step in slowing down or stopping climate change is to stop releasing fossil carbon.

Eventually we need to figure out how to sequester the excess carbon, but that's still sadly in the future. It's going to be hugely expensive but still less expensive than losing every coastal city to flooding. Unfortunately the latter is probably going to have to happen before we make progress on the former.

Sequestering/fixing carbon can be done by constructing buildings from wood instead of concrete.

Imagine wooden buildings with wall thicknesses of 30 cm or more.

What angers me most about this is not the burning of forests (which is bad), but how politicians could allow this to happen in the first place.

You can reduce your electricity demand and then buy the remaining electricity from 'true green' providers.

Don't have to wait for the politicians.

That's nice, but the unfortunate thing is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc

It's a Kurzgesagt video about why individual action is far from enough, and why we need systemic action. Do your part, but also pressure politicians, because that's where the main pain point is.

Well yes, do both, do your thing and pressure politicians. still no need to wait for the politicians.

I just loath people putting the blame on politicians, China, capitalism or some sort of world cabal just to have a rationale to continue their own unsustainable style of living.

Shifting to only buying green electricity only actually works if so many people and businesses move to the green energy providers that there becomes more supply of carbon-based energy than there is demand. All that a marginal level of people making the request does is shift what production goes where, and not the overall level of demand for electricity in the grid. And since very few businesses are willing to make this type of change, and businesses consume a greater portion of electricity than direct consumer use, personally switching to “true green” has very little effect on the situation unless it becomes a mass cultural movement to do so.

Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, it can only become a movement if enough people put their money where their mouth is and make the switch. But the current situation appears such that, without politicians intervening, there will not be enough entities willing to make such a switch to have an effect on the overall grid. (And therefore without politician intervention, our only real hope is non-carbon based energy becoming so cost effective that it displaces almost all carbon based energy use)

I noticed 7% of Germany’s electricity production comes from biomass: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris...

It seemed like a lot to me.

How can it be considered green? Doesn't burning wood produce emissions too?

Not net emissions. 1 ton of carbon was removed from the atmosphere in the tree growth, and that same ton is emitted on burning. Digging up coal that 1 ton of carbon has been sequestered under ground for millions of years, but is now in the atmosphere.

No net emissions if you burn the tree close to were it grew. In the Netherlands we get our biomass from Scandinavia and Canada with boats and call that green energy. Ignoring the fuel for the boats and trucks to move the biomass to the power plant.

Good furnace produce little particulate emission so its almost on par with burning gas.

Biomass - so mostly wood, wicker or straw has all its carbon content coming from the air - they capture CO2 as they grow, when you burn them you release exactly the same amount of CO2, hence they're carbon-neutral.

They’re only carbon neutral if you replant what you’ve cut down.

You don't really have to replant -- coppice and pollard are out of fashion, but maybe they can come back.

Sprout Lands by William Bryant Logan is a fascinating read.

But that's the idea behind the biomass burning.

If you just burn all the forests an be done with it it's a bad idea. But if you replant the forests with fast growing species you can cut them down every 5-10 years and have a lot of biomass to burn in basically a closed cycle.

The new species can be worse for the ecology than not planting. It's not that easy as just plant anything.

It does, but if it is young wood it contains newly captured carbon and so the net effect over a short time period (in climate terms) is that it doesn't change the overall atmosphere.

In comparison to coal or other fossil fuels, which adds tons of carbon that had previously been outside the atmosphere, a net zero over 50 years is pretty green. Of course, this supposes you actually manage to get enough new trees grown in that time which might not be true if forests are logged by clear cutting and not supported after that.

Yes it does, but full burning isn't the only option. You can also char or pyrolize wood to produce heat while leaving behind [mostly] the carbon. The carbon can be easily sequestered by burying it in the ground, or with more difficulty upcycled to industrially useful forms like carbon black, graphene, or diamond.

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